November 21, 2005 | posted by Michael Baxter in Uncategorized |

It’s easy to be cynical about the long term weather forecasts; there was a day in August which was supposed to be the hottest ever recorded in the UK, which in fact it turned out to be a damp squid of day. In the end we had to wait until October 27 before we saw any records broken.

Now they are predicting it will be an unusually cold winter. If the last week is anything to go by, maybe this time they will be right. /

And that could be a problem, with CBI director general Sir Digby Jones predicting a possible return to the three day week, as our overstretched gas supply struggles to cope.

If the gas switch off does occur, it will only be a temporary problem. Only with North Sea gas running low, most of the replacement pipelines from abroad are not yet ready and at the moment we are vulnerable to a sudden upsurge in gas use at peak times.

It’s not a new problem. It’s just that last winter was mild and it never became an issue.

The gas crisis in waiting comes at a time when more eyes are turning to the UK’s target for green house gas emissions. The smart money is saying that the UK has no chance of meeting its 2010 target, largely because green house efficient nuclear power stations are generating less power and in their place carbon gas thirsty energy is pumping out more global warming gases into the atmosphere.

Now a growing chorus of voices are calling for nuclear energy to make a return. The UK currently has 14 nuclear power stations generating a fifth of our energy. But by 2015 only half the plants will be left, and by 2030 there will only be one.

It’s amazing how things come around in circles. Nuclear energy was heralded as the solution to the planet’s energy problems, until a growing lobby warned of safety repercussions. This was dismissed at the time until the Chernobyl disaster, since then nucleur energy has gone out of fashion.

In this age of growing concern over nuclear arms proliferation, at a time of ambiguity over Iran’s plans to generate nuclear power or create weapons of mass destruction, it is difficult to reconcile these concerns with the growth of nuclear power again,

But maybe the answer lies in Scotland. Now new technology, backed by the Scottish Enterprise’s Intermediate Technology Institute Energy, is under development which could prove to be the panacea for the future of energy.

In all £9.3mn has been invested into a company called Plurion which has ideas for developing a battery which can store up to four hours. The Plurion technology facilitates a battery the size of a small room supplying enough energy for 50 homes. It is said that the market could be worth £1bn by 2020. Presumably the technology could be applied to unpredictable energy sources such as wind power.

As ever there’s a fly in the ointment. A company with a similar name, Plurion Systems, was also into technology for electrical storage. The company enjoyed sizeable funding too, until two years or so ago, when its management decided that “commercial success was unlikely.”