Hugh Sharman is the founder and principal of Incoteco, an energy consulting firm based in Hals, Denmark. A native of the U.K., he received his degree in civil engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1962. Since then he has worked on energy infrastructure projects all over the world, including electric power plants in the Philippines, carbon dioxide injection projects in the North Sea, and the potential for electricity storage applications in Europe. In 2005, he wrote two papers on wind power for Civil Engineering, the publication of Britain’s Institution of Civil Engineers. His analysis led him to conclude that in late 2003, western Denmark was exporting about 84 percent of its electricity generated from wind turbines. He corresponded with ET’s Robert Bryce in early July.

ET: You have worked on many different types of energy issues. What motivated you to look at the Danish wind sector?

HS: I am a British “energy nerd” living in Denmark, bearing still-painful memories of the failure of my own renewable energy company back in the 1970s. Renewable energy was then and still remains an area of enormous “hype,” so I am always suspicious about claims made by this sector. I read the groundwork documents produced, mostly by academics, that were the basis of Tony Blair’s first Energy White Paper in 2003. I was shocked by the rosy vision they painted of transforming the U.K.’s energy infrastructure by 2020 from a fossil energy and nuclear-based system to one increasingly reliant on renewable energy.

ET: Your research found that back in 2003, Denmark was exporting most of the wind power it generated to Germany, Norway, and Sweden via high-voltage transmission lines. Is Denmark still exporting a similar portion of its wind power?

HS: Yes.

ET: During our recent phone conversation, you said that as wind power capacity increases, there will be more need for spinning reserves, not less. Why?

HS: I must qualify that. Wind power can be forecasted, but its actual output at any given moment was not known even a minute before, whereas demand is known within a fraction of 1 percent. The preservation of power quality requires that inputs and outputs in the grid system must balance the whole time. The stochastic uncertainty of wind power has no consequences for the grid balance at low levels of penetration. But when this exceeds, say, 5 percent of penetration by energy, to say, 12 to 15 percent of power penetration, there must be sufficient balancing reserve in constant operation to keep the inputs and outputs to the grid in balance.

Thus, any increase in wind power needs an increase in reserve capacity. This is neatly solved in West Denmark, which has only 3 MW of hydropower, by relying on hydropower in Sweden and Norway and the 600 GW UCTE grid to the south.

ET: How have Danish electric power providers and government officials reacted to your findings? Have they reacted at all?

HS: There is nothing I can teach my mentors in the Danish power industry about the situation I describe. In general, Danish politicians are no different [from] politicians elsewhere and seem to prefer the advice they receive from the highly active Green lobby. Thus, they conflate energy production with energy consumption and the myth continues that Denmark gets 15 percent of its energy from wind power!

ET: The recent CO2 emission numbers from the E.U. show that Denmark’s per-capita CO2 emissions are greater than those of the U.K. How much of that can be blamed on the wind sector?

HS: Don’t get me onto the subject of CO2 emissions! The power industry in both countries contributes roughly 25 percent of their CO2 emissions. It is a visible source but not necessarily the most important contributor to CO2 emissions, most of which emanate from space heating and transport. Wind power has played a very minor role in reducing Denmark’s CO2 emissions mostly because more than 75 percent of it is consumed outside Denmark. Wind power exported to, and thus used, in Norway and Sweden saves the consumption and use of hydropower!

ET: Like the U.S., it appears that the E.U. has been overwhelmed by the hype over wind power. And yet, it appears that wind power will never displace substantial amounts of fossil or nuclear power plants. Why are so many people eager to swallow the hype?

This concern is compounded when we have such excellent reasons for doubting the veracity of the published reserves. It is positively alarming that the inter-governmental authorities, like the IEA, on whose statistics, analysis, and judgments we should be able to rely, do not highlight the doubts about the claimed reserves properly.

There can be no doubt that the increase of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from 270 parts per million a century ago to 370 ppm today is a direct consequence of the enormous growth in the use of fossil fuel. Today, the global economy is burning an average of 16,000 tons of carbon per minute, and this rate is set to increase as poor countries like China and India attempt, quite legitimately, to catch up with us. In this dark context, renewable energy, to replace such hopeless dependence, sounds so seductive. In particular, wind energy is a highly visible, and for some, iconic “can-do” energy source that “proves” we can switch from nuclear and coal to “free” emissionless energy if only we try hard enough.

ET: The U.K. expects to get 15 percent of its total electricity needs from wind power by 2015. What are the odds of that target being met?

HS: I cannot answer this question as I would prefer, with a simple bet.

The U.K. has enormous energy problems. These are likely to become visible in the electricity sector, long before 2015. Tony Blair’s government has had ten years to address the deep underlying issues of keeping the U.K. functioning. On energy, he has been deeply affected by every passing fad. In his 2003 White Paper, the passing into history of nuclear power was accorded a careless shrug. In 2007, there seems to have been a Pauline conversion as he insisted that nuclear power would play a vital role in keeping Britain warm and lit, while reducing CO2 emissions.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, has done everything that he could possibly have done to obstruct the construction of vitally needed, clean coal power stations that would capture CO2 and use this for the recovery of fast dwindling oil and gas depletion in the North Sea.

The Conservative opposition that might well be in power after the next election shows not the slightest understanding of the energy facts, and goes along with the Tony Blair mantra that climate change is the greatest problem that the globe faces today. We will see what happens when the lights actually go out.

ET: You’ve been doing a lot of work on electricity storage. Why is storing electricity so difficult?

HS: Physics. Zillions of electrons are very hard to corral. For this reason, until very recently, we have stored bulk power as elevated water which can be turned back into power when it runs downhill and turns a turbine generator. The overall...efficiency of pumped hydro is in the range of 70 to 80 percent, which is more or less acceptable.

ET: If an electricity storage machine were to appear on the market at a reasonable price, how big an impact could it have over the next, say, 10 years?

I am amazed at the continuing interest in hydrogen as a means of storing electricity. The round-trip efficiency from turning electricity into hydrogen, then storing and compressing this, then turning it back into electricity, is childishly simple to calculate. It is, at best, 26 to 28 percent; at worst, about 20 percent. And at huge capital cost. Yet the NREL [National Renewable Energy Laboratory] and many private companies are still betting on a hydrogen economy. Amazing!

ET: What’s your view on the best way forward? Given that the E.U. (and now, the U.S.) appears to be eager to limit CO2 emissions, what electricity generation technologies are the most promising? Nuclear?

HS: With great reluctance, my answer is (probably) yes.