This is an excellent attempt at illustrating the challenges. For example, even if you improve all the home and travel indicators, manufacturing still completely stuffs you up. I'm sure some nitpickers will find flaws in your tool, but this is a great tool for the layman.

Is there any chance you could do a similar tool for running the economy? I despair at how many armchair economists claim they could do better - a tool like this would prove the impossibility of pleasing the whole of the electorate.

Thanks @GravyAnecdote!

Lovely idea about doing an economic version. I'm not sure how easy it is to get hold of the right data for something like that, but I'll try to look into it.

It is an excellent tool, but there are a few quirks. You can only add about 18,000 GWh of additional nuclear output, which the model characterizes as coming from six new reactors. You'd actually get that output from about 2.5 modern reactors of 1 GWe capacity.

Being able to add only two and half new reactors to the current capacity seems artificially constraining compared to being able to add 40,000 wind turbines. Can the model be changed to allow more? France demonstrates it is practical today for a country with a similar population to the UK to generate around 400,000 GWh of nuclear electricity , rather than the cap of 75,000 GWh as the model's vision of the future.

@JBCC Interesting thought. The upper limits were tricky to choose. We might reconsider those.

@MaireadOConnor Thanks for the reply. At least in the current set up there is enough nuclear and renewables output available in total to be able to have a zero carbon generation mix for even the maximum electricity demand that can be specified. In terms of trying to achieve the 80% reduction it doesn't matter too much what particular mix of renewables and nuclear is used.

(I mean it doesn't matter too much in terms of using the calculator - obviously for achieving the reduction in real life it is a little more complicated!)

Complicated is the word! At one point I considered trying to tie in the relative costs of the different power generation options, but that's a whole new world of data pain :-)

Hi JBCC,

The number of nuclear reactors is based on the average output of existing reactors - I take your point that if new ones were built, they would be larger. As Mairead says, we should be able to adjust the model to reflect this.

Even so, I find it very interesting that when we line everything up like this (and make some sensible energy demand reductions), it becomes clear that nuclear, far from being essential, is just one option in a mix. We have other viable choices and so can take it or leave it. Which is where all the arguments about the costs, reliability, risks and wastes associated with different power generation options start to come to the fore...but sadly, it's hard to include these things in the model!

It's a good tool, but I'm surprised that you haven't made it possible to save/share your results.

I'd also be keen to see an explicit link with/discussion of David Mackay's 'Without hot air'. I attended an event at the science museum where we split into groups and basically came up with scenarios along similar lines. I think that Mackay is likely to use different data but his book would still be good further reading for people interested in the tool.

Interesting tool. It quickly becomes apparent that it is possible to drastically reduce emissions from electricity and transport; but consumption of manufactured goods seems to be the main problem.

Is it not possible to reduce the carbon intensity of each kg of manufactured goods? I would have thought that once energy and transport emissions are significantly reduced then the carbon intensity of consumption/manufactured goods should come down.

I agree with the posters above that the limit on nuclear power is arbitrarily low. If the timeframe is 2050 then it is plausible to have far more than 25 powerstations (and each EPR is 1.6GW). I think David Mackay was suggesting 40 at one point.

I think it would be worthwhile to try to factor-in cost. If you are feeling brave, there is EU data for electricity and heating costs here:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SEC:2008:2872:FIN:EN:PDF

It also includes indirect CO2 emissions for various electricity options, and even has projected figures for carbon capture & storage (CCS).

@ColinG,

Yes, reducing the amount of energy (both electricity and directly from fuels) used in manufacturing is important. We've tried to factor this in as the "Manufacturing efficiency" slider - so you can say, let's consume the same amount of UK-produced goods, but let's make them 150% more efficient to produce.

The imports slider is based solely on how much "stuff"we import, because we felt that if you're "playing UK prime minister" you don't have direct impact on the efficiency of overseas manufacturing.

Thanks very much for the dataset on electricity and heating costs - I'll see if there's anything I can do with that. Totally agree that cost is important in making these decisions.

Mairead, thanks for the reply.

Yes, reducing the amount of energy (both electricity and directly from fuels) used in manufacturing is important. We've tried to factor this in as the "Manufacturing efficiency" slider - so you can say, let's consume the same amount of UK-produced goods, but let's make them 150% more efficient to produce.

I see. I wasn't so much thinking of the efficiency, but rather the carbon intensity of production. i.e. You can use the same amount of energy, but if the energy comes from low carbon sources then the carbon intensity of each kg of goods will be 90% (or whatever) lower.

Other than energy (including transport) I am not clear what the manufacturing emissions will comprise of. There are some hard-to-avoid carbon emissions from concrete and steel production, which are not due to energy use, but I would have thought that most manufacturing emissions would be directly related to energy usage. So if the energy is low-carbon then the emissions per kg of goods should drop, even if there is no improvement in energy efficiency. Does this make sense?

I like the idea and well done for the effort. It needs some serious fine tuning though!

1. If I increase energy supply from renewables without touching anything else why does the CO2 emissions go down? Surely they would go up slightly

2. Also, if I put fossil fuel electricity production up to maximum emissions only go up 2%. This surely can't be right as electricity production is responsible for such a large proportion of CO2 emissions

3. If I get rid of gas power only it goes down 4%. If I get rid of coal power only it goes down 5%. If I get rid of both it goes down 24% Huh? Am I missing something?

4. Oil doesn't seem to have any effect on carbon dioxide emissions!

@ColinG that does make sense, although Danny Chivers and I have commented about the direct energy use (i.e. not just electricity) over on the Libe Dem piece.

@EwanB - thank you for letting me know. I'll look into those issues and dig around in the spreadsheet. Hopefully I can make some improvements.

Any more reports of errors and glitches most gratefully received!

Mairead

@ColinG that does make sense, although Danny Chivers and I have commented about the direct energy use (i.e. not just electricity) over on the Lib Dem piece.

I still think the model ties up rather a lot of carbon in manufacturing/consumption and I don't see where it all comes from. (Direct fossil energy usage is not that huge, and some of this can be substituted with clean electricity anyway.)

This recent report from the Royal Academy of Engineering proposes models for energy solutions for the UK which include transport, domestic and industrial energy use (including direct heat). The engineering challenge is huge, but it does seem to be possible to cut emissions by 80% without cutting industrial production.

It is not clear to me why the carbon calculator basically makes an 80% cut impossible unless we cut manufacturing rather drastically. Surely if the energy for manufacturing is low-carbon then this will cut manufacturing emissions without needing to cut production?

Incidentally the RAEng report might also be useful for setting the maximum values for the numbers of wind turbines etc. It estimates the maximum plausible capacity for wind, PV, hydro and marine renewables. This is large, but not large enough to avoid the need for CCS and/or nuclear in any scenario.