On Preliminary Thoughts on Brexit Related Water and Energy Security

[danieldwilliam]

Prompted by some wild speculation I have had a quick go at gathering my thoughts and some data on how energy and water supplies might be affected by a hostile No Deal Brexit.

Don't Panic!

By a hostile No Deal Brexit I mean the worst case scenario where we leave the EU in a sulk, with No Deal, refusing to pay any money, and the EU essentially shuts the border in retaliation. This is far and away worse than the base case for a No Deal, which is that we fail to agree withdrawal terms and the we lack a whole bunch of legal compliances and the volume of paperwork jumps ten-fold and all the lorries are stuck in Kent or, more likely, somewhere else in the EU. I'm talking the EU being so cross with us that they are actually trying to be difficult.

Still Don't Panic.

Water

Britain has lots of water. Almost all of our water comes to us via a gravity fed series of reservoirs and pipes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment

https://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/sewage_treatment_explained.html

About 4% of California's energy goes on water processing and pumping. California is rubbish at dealing with water. I'd guess we spend about 2% of our energy on dealing with water.

We have cholrine plants in the UK for disinfecting drinking water.

See this one. If you look in the upper right hand side of the photograph you can see my old powerstation.

https://www.vynova-group.com/sites/runcorn

If things get very bad - remember that most of the water that is delivered to your taps as drinkable isn't used for drinking.

You need to drink about 1.5 - 2.0 litres of clean water a day.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/six-to-eight-glasses-of-water-still-best/

Worst case that clean water can come in a bowser under armed guard. In the unlikely event that the army has either mutineed en masse (unlikely see the 1914-1918 war and also the Glorious Revolution in 1688) and joined the Brexiteers but decided not to help them with water supplies or the army has lost control of the mainland UK. The later is a thing that has not happened since 1745, arguably not since 1066. Remember, if the situation gets that bad that hordes of  Brexiters are rioting for water you only need about 5 days supplies and a safe place in order to survive them. We're talking the first 20 minutes of 28 Days here. By Day 4 of the Great Water Riots anyone without water will be dehydrated to the point of death.

To be honest drinking untreated water is unlikely to kill you. (See human evolution passim). Certainly not before the government collapses and the EU "invades" - again see Glorious Revolution of 1688 for details.

Sewage - similar story. Most of the sewage treatment is passive, using gravity tanks and naturally occuring bacteria. A complete system failure might mean inadequately treated sewage (not raw sewage, just not tertiary treated sewage) is released in to environmentally sensitive areas. Don't go swimming in Cornwall.

So, the water supply is probably okay so long at the electricty supply is adequate.

Electricity.

I've done this pretty quickly but given the margin for error we have I'm pretty sanguine -but do chip in if you think I've missed something and have workings to show it, or you have some sort of qualification in energy and have advised at least one government on energy policy.

Roughly, 70% of the UK's electricy comes from sources that are domestically produced or immune to an huffy EU.

19% of our electricity comes from nukes. Those nukes will have an average of 12 months of fuel already inside them. The UK has about a thousand years worth of nuclear fuel available to it in spent fuel. Reprocessing this will cost twice as much just buying it from Australia or Canada. NB fuel costs make up about 5% of the levalised of nuclear electricty. So doubling the fuel cost will add about 5% to the over all cost of electricty from nuclear plants.

We are probably dependent on EU regimes for legally running our nukes but in the event of a hostile No Deal Brexit I expect EU nuclear safety inspectors will be shot on sight (or on site). Certainly the plant manager will be taking his orders from the SAS security team and not the EU inspectors.

 

So that's about 1 electron in 5 squared away.

Coal accounts for about 15% of our electricty needs.

Most of that is imported - about two thirds. Not all from the EU. In fact we import most of our coal for electricty from Russia, Columbia and the USA.  Would Russia stop selling us coal because the EU said so? Would the USA (current President Trump - friend to coal miners everywhere) stop selling us coal because the EU said so? I don't think so.

We also do have indigenous supplies of coal which could increase production to cover some of that shortfall. It's a good thing the Conservative Party has got excellent relationships with the coal mining community.

Gas.

Gas is problematic.

We import about 15% of our gas. Depending on pricing a lot of this comes from Norway or from the European gas grid via Belgian and the Netherlands. We use gas for electricty and the way we use it is problematic. We also use it for heating. UK controlled gas storage has decreaesd in recent year.

The problem with our gas-generated electricity is tha we use it for load following. Currently in the UK if you want electricty when you actually want it then that is being supplied by gas plants.

The better news is that one of the recent years we imported about 40% of our total gas needs from Qatar via Liquified Natural Gas terminals at the Isle of Grain, Dragon and a few others.

I think Qatar would continue to sell us gas, perhaps in exchange for diplomatic efforts on their behalf, or some bombs.

Hydro provides about 20% of our electricity and is entirely indiginous.

Wind provides about 15%

So roughly I think about 70% of our overall electricity demand is secure. A shortage of gas and the interconnectors being switched off might mean we have intra-day shortages of electricy. That means rationing, demand managment (perhaps at gun point) rolling black-outs or brown outs. It could impact grid stability leading to a shut down of the UK grid for a period of up to three days.

Other energy needs

We use gas for heating and petrol for transport. Expect petrol prices to rise. A lot. Petrol is traded in US dollars. GBP:USD currently $1.30. If the pound hit dollar parity - all other things being equal, petrol goes from £1.20 a litre to £1.50. Add shortages to that. Get ready to walk or bicycle. Worst case petrol is rationed at gun point and used to drive food about the place.

Gas for heating is problematic. Expect price rises and rationing. Buy jumpers and thermal vests and hope for a mild spring, summer and autumn whilst the EU decides how (and if) to invade to protect us from ourselves.

All of this applies to the UK as a whole. England, if, for some crazy reason Scotland makes a universal declaration of independence and shuts off our interconnectors with you in order to  gain a financial advantage in the Sexit withdrawal agreement then it will be more problematic. For you.  Good thing for you that your Conservative government has maintained excellent relations with Scotland and the Scottish government.

But basically my conclusion is that a disordely Brexit is unlikely to lead to a failure of the water supply or a complete failure of the electricity and heating supply. For sure, poor people will die, but that is largely Conservative Party policy on most matters.

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

It's not churlish at all - all economies are the result of a process of exploration and we are on a voyage of discovery about the economic production and consumption frontiers of our various countries. I know quite a lot about UK energy infrastructure. I'm extrapolating from that to trying to understand how the water situation will be. In order to achieve Brexit in One Nation we need to grow and learn together.

If someone who actually knows pops up and says - we need X, X is very perishable, the only factory in the world with capacity to supply X to the UK is in Brittany, it arrives daily on the back of a lorry with lots of EU paper work, we actually do have a potential problem then I'm happy to be corrected. Relieved in fact. However, I think people need to consider the situation from the point of view of the UK goverment which has very, very capable armed forces and security services and has demonstrated on several occassions that it is perfectly happy to deploy those in the UK in furtherance of its policy objectives.

We probably currently get our water decontaminates and other consumables from the EU-27. I expect we have a stock of it although I confess that my knowledge of water chemistry is not sufficient to know how long you can store things like chlorine or carbon filtration units before they expire, or explode or otherwise become useless.

(Although, I don't think chlorine is something that one transports at all if one can avoid it.)

My main point is that I think that we have the right kind of manufacturing facilities in the UK to make chlorine and ammonia and therefore also chloramine which are the main chemicals used in water disinfection.

https://www.thameswater.co.uk/help-and-advice/water-quality/how-we-look-after-your-water/drinking-water-treatment.

I think we can probably buy it (for triple the usual cost) from North America. We're facing a situation where physically moving things in or out of South East England will be very difficult. This is especially true of perishable foodstuffs which can't sit on a lorry for a week without going off. Legally moving things from the EU to the UK may be, at best, very, very slow, at worst impossible. We're not looking at unrestricted submarine warfare or a complete embargo by the UN.

The volume of disinfectant needed to supply drinking water is much, much lower than we current consume because we treat almost all water delivered to residential and commercial property as if it were drinking water. Worst case, we declare tapwater unsafe and supply bottled drinking water off the back of an army lorry.

So we probably avoid an immediate outbreak of typhoid or cholera or giardia. Which is about the bar I'm setting. What is going to kill people within the first 12 months after a hostile No Deal Brexit?

When government policy becomes nationalising or commandeering at gun point a chlorine plant so that we can backfill supplies of water decontaminants then either Brexit fails or we have bigger problems than whether our water is perfectly clean.

I would certain tuck away some water decontamination tablets and enough drinking water in bottles so you can lock the door and keep your head down for a week or two of rioting. I would not start using them on the 30th of March on tap water. I'd save them until the army are distributing water in bottles and the water lorry hasn't arrived for a day or two.

For me, beer might well be a convenient way of storing some of the safe, clean drinking and cooking water.

Water needed for cooking can be reduced by microwaving vegetables.

And here's an article on water filtration. It's aimed at hikers so the likes of you and me can trade weight for functionality / cost.

https://www.cleverhiker.com/best-backpacking-water-filters/

You can build a useful water solar UV water disinfecting plant out of plastic bottles. Not sure how well that works in an Edinburgh winter compared to summer in sub-Saharahan Africa.

Perhaps also some dehydration recover sachets.

Fundamentally, we need to think about the problem we are trying to solve.

Will we have sufficient safe water for cooking and drinking? I think very, very likely and if not we have other more pressing problems.

Will we be able to turn the taps on and have unlimited, time-cost and money-cost free drinking quality water? Perhaps not? How much of a problem is that really? Especially if you consider what people might otherwise be doing with the time they end up spending waiting in queues for water.

How long do you need to cope with that situation? Or the situation turning a bit rougher for a period. 2 weeks? 2 months? 2 years? 2 weeks of no drinking water at all will kill people or drive them to desperate measure. 2 years of the army supplying drinking water out of the back of a truck will have political ramifications but probably only kill a few thousand people.

Are you worried about about your own personal safety and health? Or are you worried about an event bad and large enough to permanently damage a large city?

I am absolutely expecting people to die as a result of a disorderly, hostile Brexit. Mostly these are people who are already vulnerable in some way. A shortage of medicines will kill people with pre-existing conditions. If there are food shortages, poor people will suffer hunger and malnutrition, perhaps acutely. We might well get food riots if the situation is acute. Those will be nastier than the summer riots a few years ago I think. Best to be in a position where you can sit those out. If we get a very cold winter energy prices and shortages will kill people through hypothermia. Army or police units might panic and open fire on people. If one is poor and vulnerable in other ways a disorderly Brexit has several ways of killing you.

I am currently not expecting an outbreak of cholera.