Science and the Assembly 2007

Attended the third such annual meeting organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry (and supported by organisations from the other sciences including the IOB) at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on the 22nd of May. The meeting organised a petition to the Senedd advocating that that body should have a Chief Scientific Advisor (like Sir David King at Westminster) to advise on 'local' science issues (such as the proposed creation of a Severn barrage to generate electricity from tidal power?). The topic this year was 'Energy'. Some of the numbers presented by Dr Richard Pike, Chief Executive of Royal Society of Chemistry and a former petrochemicals worker, are striking. He noted that 30% of energy generated in the UK is lost before it even reaches the home or factory and then a further 40% is wasted. 74% of UK oil use and 25% of carbon emissions are associated with transport. If this was to be replaced by biofuels, we apparently would have to utilise around 19% of arable land to generate the materials. Dr Pike suggested that there is massive scope for saving energy and noted that much of the associated science is not new. On a world-wide basis, 80% of energy use is currently from fossil fuels (largely coal, gas and oil) which annually generates 11.1 gigatonnes of carbon with 40% (around 3.5 gigatonnes) apparently going into the atmosphere (a 6% annual increase). He suggested that there were currently two sustainable alternatives. We could continue to use fossil fuels but employ carbon capture and storage (with some unanswered technical problems) to alleviate the atmospheric problems. We could also move to renewables. Dr Pike noted that the average energy of sunlight striking the Earth's surface is 164 watts per square metre over a 24 hour period and that photovoltaics can capture 20% of solar energy. It is striking that biofuels capture less than 1%. Planting trees was mentioned as a possible means of carbon-offsetting but doubts have been raised about this approach in temperate locations. There are certainly many apparent challenges in this area and appropriate science applications will have to play a real role. Some of these were explored in other talks in the session. Given the current debate about nuclear power stations, it is worth recording that the uranium/plutonium fuels have to be reprocessed when as little as 4% of the material has been used.