Choice of Fuel
Energy sources generally fall into two types: renewables and non-renewables. Where you decide to put nuclear energy is a bit of crystal ball gazing because whereas nuclear fission is looking quite limited due to the amount of high quality uranium ore available, nuclear fusion may, just, by the skin of its teeth, come to the rescue in time. Then we would all have limitless safe energy. Don’t hold your breath.
The two problems with nuclear fission are that accidents can be catastrophic, and no-one has yet found a secure way of dealing with the waste products. (There is also the insidious link between nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons - though it can be argued that this is more a matter of politics than technology)
Renewables
So if you want a renewable way to heat your home (and stepping aside from the nuclear debate) the choices are -
- solar hot water
- solar PV
- passive solar including Passivhaus
- biomass including timber
- wind
- hydro
The biomass options available depend to a large extent on how much space you have to store fuel. Logs, bales of straw, wood chips, pellets etc. all require considerable dry storage areas which are not usually available in urban areas. However, in rural situations they may be a very practical choice. This brings up two further questions to do with whether these fuels can be made to burn cleanly and how sustainable they are as a fuel source.
Non renewables
Well there’s coal (do you remember coal?) and there’s gas and there’s oil - all ways that Gaia sequestered carbon under the ground in order to stabilize world temperatures.
The best of these to burn in your boiler is natural gas because it is partly hydrogen and so produces relatively less CO2. The idea of burning coal or oil is in some ways bizarre when you consider how polluting they are and how useful they are for making plastics, chemicals etc. In future years this practice may be looked back upon with amazement.
The problem with electricity
Although, on the face of it, the idea of simply signing up with a supplier of renewable electricity for heating seems like a good one there is a major flaw in this approach. (We are talking here about electrical resistance heating rather than electrically powered heat pumps). This is because the long term demand for electricity is very high and it is generally very inneficient to generate it in the UK. It is better to save what electricity there is for uses which can only be fulfilled by electricity (such as lighting, telecoms etc). The arguement is powerfully put by David Olivier and Cath Hassell here
