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    Electricity Generation and the Environment
    Electricity Generation and the Environment
    Electricity Generation and the Environment
    Ebook192 pages1 hour

    Electricity Generation and the Environment

    By Paul Breeze

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    About this ebook

    Electricity Generation and the Environment is a very concise, up-to-date, and accessible guide to the evolution of environmental awareness, what that environmental awareness has taught the industry, and how technologies can be used to test and improve power performance. There is a strong emphasis on the related social impacts and economic factors involved in the various methods of generating electricity which Breeze explores, making this a valuable and insightful read for those involved in the planning and delivery of energy, such as energy engineers, power generation planners, policy makers, managers, and academics.

    • Explores various life-cycle assessments
    • Covers fast-advancing renewable and alternative power sources such as hydropower and transportation
    • Discusses various externalities which impact on the decisions to implement systems and technologies
    • Evaluates the economic and environmental viability of each power generation system covered
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAcademic Press
    Release dateMay 18, 2017
    ISBN9780128095140
    Electricity Generation and the Environment
    Author

    Paul Breeze

    Paul Breeze is a journalist and freelance science and technology writer and consultant in the United Kingdom. He has specialised in power generation technology for the past 30 years. In addition to writing Power Generation Technologies, Second Edition, he has contributed to journals and newspapers such as The Financial Times and The Economist and has written a range of technical management reports covering all the aspects of power generation, transmission and distribution.

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      Book preview

      Electricity Generation and the Environment - Paul Breeze

      India

      Chapter 1

      Introduction to Electricity and the Environment

      Abstract

      The power generation industry is a massive global industry, and it inevitably has an impact on the environment. That impact has grown as the scale of the industry has grown with fossil fuels and nuclear power both presenting challenges in the 21st century. The main challenge is the global warming caused by the release of greenhouse gases into the environment. Acid rain and photochemical smogs are also a hazard to both health and the environment. In order to combat these, a range of cleaner renewable energy technologies has been developed. However, renewable power generation has its own impact on the environment. Power production in 2014 was 24,000 TWh, while global generating capacity was around 6000 MW.

      Keywords

      Power generation industry; global warming; acid rain; photochemical smog; fossil fuel; nuclear power; renewable energy

      The power generation industry is one of the world’s largest and most extensive industrial sectors, and one of its most vital. A supply of electricity has become essential to modern life, and economic prosperity of a nation can often gauged by the level of access of its population to electrical power. The provision of that access requires investment in power stations, a transmission network to convey the energy to different regions of the nation and distribution systems to bring the electricity to the consumers. Modern renewable and distributed energy systems can provide power locally rather than from a central source but even so, security of supply still demands a high level of interconnection as well as central management and planning.

      The electricity industry that supplies this resource is now highly developed. Globally there is probably around 6000 GW of generating capacity in operation, equating to thousands of power stations, and millions of kilometers of associated transmission and distribution lines. Industrial activity on this scale will inevitably have an impact on the environment at all levels at which it operates.

      The earliest power stations, built at the end of the 19th century, were based on either hydropower or used oil or coal to generate heat and raise steam to drive a turbine. Both were extensions of established technologies; water had been exploited for centuries using dams to provide water for drinking and irrigation while industrial use of coal was a century old. Coal-fired power generation became the mainstay of power generation in many countries during the 20th century, and much of the industrial growth and prosperity of the advanced nations of the world was built on the back of coal combustion. Both hydropower and coal-fired power continue to be important sources of electricity. However, the environmental impact of fossil fuel combustion, of which coal is the primary component, is now seen as a threat to global security.

      Nuclear power was added to the generating mix in the middle of the 20th century and soon presented its own environmental challenges, while gas-fired power plants began to be used widely during the last 20 years of the decade. New renewable technologies started to advance from the 1970s onwards, but these did not become economically competitive until the beginning of the 21st century. These technologies are generally more benign, environmentally, than their predecessors but the scale of their deployment brings its own problems. This was becoming apparent at the end of the second decade of the 21st century when two new technologies, wind power, and solar power were advancing rapidly. Meanwhile the complex generating mix that has evolved from the combination of all these technologies needs much more sophisticated technology to manage effectively and to fully exploit the renewable potential. The challenge for the remainder of the 21st century is to provide the population of the world with electricity, while limiting the environmental impact of its production to ensure the global community remains secure and safe.

      1.1 The Awakening of Environmental Awareness

      The human species has been changing the environment for thousands of years. We no longer even recognize some of those changes, for example, the clearing of forests to create the agricultural farmlands of Europe. No one now sees these fields as forests that once were. Similar changes elsewhere are more obviously detrimental to local or global conditions. Tropical rain forests grow in the poorest of soils. Clearing them, as is happening in many parts of the world, and the ground is of very little use. Not only that but also the removal of forest cover can lead to erosion and flooding as well as the loss of ground water. Most of these effects are negative.

      Part of the problem is the ever-increasing size of the human population. Where native tribes could survive in the rain forests in Brazil, the encroachment of outsiders has led to their erosion. A similar pressure resulting from the volume of human demand is at work in power generation. When the demand for electricity was limited, the effect of the few power stations needed to supply that demand was small. But, as demand has risen, so has the cumulative effect of those plants on the environment. Today, that effect is of such a magnitude that it cannot be ignored.

      While power generation developments have in recent years been driven by environmental demands, this was not the case when the industry was born. Take hydropower, for example, one of the earliest sources of electric power and still a clean source. In the 19th century hydropower dams were known to fail and in rare cases these failures were catastrophic. However, the effects were local and were not considered as a major hazard that required hydropower should be treated with excessive caution globally. Nor was it considered that a stable dam and reservoir could be a potential cause of concern for other reasons. Today, any new hydropower project requires an extensive environmental assessment within which every aspect of its potential impact should be

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