Fuel and the environment

Energy crisis gives sense of urgency to conference

Delegates from the nationalised fuel industries, local government, universities and private enterprise were welcomed to the Fuel and the Environment conference at Eastbourne last week with an apology that heating in the congress theatre would not be up to the usual standard. It was with a sense of urgency therefore that delegates went on to discuss papers written some months before the current troubles in the Middle East brought the fuel crisis to a head.

Lord Zuckerman would have discarded environmental issues but he underestimated the concern which delegates from the fuel industries would have for them. Clearly they were not going to be fooled easily, with the distribution of petrol ration cards having been announced that morning. Lord Zuckerman chose not to draw attention to his written statements about our ‘liberation from the domination of the seasons and not freezing in the winter’.

The Duke of Edinburgh explained how we grew rich on our coal resources and maintained our lead after coal ceased to be the chief source of energy by buying cheap oil from the Middle East. Most people would agree that the coal industry in this country should be revitalised and reopened, but labour troubles prevented Derek Ezra, who had prepared a paper for the conference, from actually attending. The engineering problem which could most usefully be tackled is that of getting coal out of the ground without sending men down to dig it.

The oil industry would appear to have the responsibility of exploiting North Sea oil resources as soon as possible, although it sees considerable problems in doing so.

Internal combustion engines are inefficient and produce several pollutants, genera1ly caused by poor combustion. Lead is added to petrol to improve mileage and performance, but legislation governing permissible levels of harmful emissions has been postponed because of the current fuel shortage. Britain’s nuclear power industry is hampered by indecision, although it offers by far the cheapest way of generating electricity.

Advanced gas cooled reactor systems have so far only worked on a very small scale and the project to build five full size stations is now well behind schedule. The central Electricity Generating Board is interested only in large plant because it is short of sites. The light Water Reactor has been so heavily criticised in America that it would take a great deal of work to make the system acceptable in this country.

Thus the fuels available to us at home are to be oil, coal, and gas. Public opinion expressed at the conference is increasingly in favour of utilising home produced fuel resources, only sparingly so as not to deplete them too rapidly.

Waste heat pollution was identified at the conference as the ultimate environmental problem, together with the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere holding heat in when the proportion of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was increased. The combined effects of these two pollutants could seriously alter the climate.


CHRIS GRAHAM

New Civil Engineer 1973 December 13th.