Energy for the future
Putting in place the energy infrastructure for the UK’s low carbon future
Energy is the engine of our society and our economy. Since the industrial revolution, the world has been dependent on high carbon fossil fuels for its energy needs.
That will change dramatically in a low carbon economy. In the years ahead we will be transforming our electricity generation and energy grid to deliver power more efficiently and to adapt to new forms of power generation.
By 2020 we will need to increase energy from renewable sources by nearly 10-fold to meet our renewable energy targets, saving 20 million tonnes of CO2 each year. Alongside our civil nuclear sector and a shift to clean coal through Carbon Capture and Storage, these new technologies will vastly reduce the carbon released in generating our electricity supply and heating our homes. The shift to renewable energy sources could also help to reduce the UK’s dependence on imported oil and gas, helping to reduce the vulnerability of UK businesses to shifting energy prices.
But it is not enough to increase our use of low carbon energy generation sources. We must also transform the electricity grid itself, ensuring that it is equipped for the rapid connection of new forms of energy, able to adapt to the move to low carbon vehicles and increasingly efficient in the way it transmits and distributes electricity. Improving our grid architecture will be essential as we support more small-scale generation through the advent of our new Feed-in Tariffs. £5 billion of investment in the grid is already planned for the next five years, and we have set an aim of having smart meters installed in every home by 2020. We could also achieve carbon savings by generating heating centrally and distributing it to local homes and businesses through district heating networks.
The UK’s Low Carbon Industrial Strategy will develop further our approach for delivering maximum economic benefits from the UK’s shift to greater use of renewables, civil nuclear power and Carbon Capture and Storage. It will set out our strategy for making the UK’s energy grid more efficient and ‘smarter’. Details of our proposed approach for improving heat generation, creating opportunities for UK businesses are set out in the Government’s Heat and Energy Strategy for consultation on 12 February, and we will continue to explore other opportunities such as Combined Heat and Power.
- What are the key opportunities for UK business in moving to a new energy infrastructure?
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It would be worthwhile considering how well any of the proposed measures contribute to meeting the proposed emission targets for 2050. For example:
- use of CCS is mentioned in respect of coal but what about use of CCS with gas fired power stations and with other industrial sources of CO2?
- has a serious analysis been done comparing small scale electricity generation with large scale units (nuclear or CCS) distributing electricity to users. The latter has been the more economical way to do this for many decades; I doubt the economics have changed that much. If so, this would mean that policies to encourage local generation could handicap the country by moving to a more expensive form of electricity generation.
- the saving in C-emissions by generating heat centrally and distributing it via district heating would not achieve emission reductions anything like the targets proposed for 2050 unless these plants were all fuelled by biomass (not feasible because of the scale and cost) or all of the CO2 was captured. However the latter would need very large district heating plants - in fact full size power stations - to make it economic. Sorry to say it but district heating is not a solution to the climate problem relevant to large scale use in the UK.
On a separate point, how important is a reduced dependence on imported oil and gas? Unless we stop using oil and gas altogether, we will still be dependent on imports to keep the country fuelled. Suggesting “reducing dependence” seems like rhetoric rather than serious policy.
It would greatly encourage users to generate their own electricity if greater remuneration was given to surplus energy being fed back into the grid. In most EU countries this is happening, resulting in Germany being well ahead in the appropriate technologies because of it.
A team of experts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that a new generation of geothermal plants is a top priority for tackling global warming. They say that holes drilled less than 10k beneath the soil could supply America’s 27 trillion kwh energy requirement for 2 millennia to come and it is technically accessible right now.This must be applicable to the U.K.
In the future energy requirements are bound to increase, so i would recommend the abandonment of as much of the dangerous nuclear fission generation as possible, replacing it with the above and then investing heavily in nuclear fusion as a permanent solution.
To maximise the opportunity for UK business we should be concentrating our efforts in energy systems that are not already dominated by imported technologies. Due to the hiatus in new nuclear build in the UK over the last 20 years we have lost the ability to supply the bulk of the components required for new plant. The plans to develop over 40GW of wind power to deliver the 2020 renewable energy target is heavily reliant on wind turbine manufacturers who plan to deliver the turbines from manufacturing facilities in Europe, mostly in Germany and Denmark.
We need to make sure that the scale of the offshore wind market in the UK brings with it the substantial economic benefit and jobs that come through the indigenous manufacturing and supply chain activity that can be enabled by this £100bn market opportunity.
In an open market situation we cannot guarantee that this will be the case.
Where are the indigenous renewable energy technologies that could be the basis of a global industry for the future?
Marine Energy is an area in which the UK currently leads the world and yet we are failing to capitalize on this lead through a lack of the Government investment needed to commercialise these technologies at the pace required to deliver a step change. The Government have already made strategic investments such as the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney and the test facilities at NaREC in the North East that has helped put the UK in the lead in the first place but now greater vision is required to deliver an industry that can not only make a substantial contribution to the 2020 target but create thousands of jobs in the process.
What is required now is to assist this emerging industry to overcome the challenge of bringing new technologies to the market, to de-risk this technology through Government intervention and to make the investment in infrastructure to bring electricity from marine energy resource areas to the demand centres. This will require £200-300m in investment over the next two years from the Government but the rewards are enormous. When compared to the capital cost of decommissioning one nuclear power station this is a small price to pay to put the UK at the forefront of a future global marine energy industry.
Insentivise the consumer to generate locally at all levels. If you can make money from it and its low carbon, everybody will oblige!
Small scale renewable electricity generators are becoming competitive. According to the International Energy Agency, the era of cheap oil is over and we also need a major de-carbonisation of the world’s energy system to avoid abrupt and irreversible climate change. As the price of fossil fuel rises and Governments ensure that they cover their full environmental costs, efficient and renewable energy technologies will be introduced both in the UK and throughout the world. Small scale renewables can generate electricity on site where the heat is utilised, giving efficiency in the region of 80 to 85%, compared to the grid efficiency of only 35%. More development is needed to bring to market micro wind energy collectors designed to operate in turbulent urban air conditions. Solar photovoltaic systems could be installed in new and refurbished buildings, along with heat pumps. Developers of micro-hydro systems point out that their systems are anti-inflationary in that the value of their energy output rises in line with the price rises of other conventional energy. Paul O’Brien (above) explains that the UK leads the world with marine energy, which with modest investment, could bring enormous economic benefits through indigenous manufacturing. There will also be potential for exporting all renewable energy technologies to developing countries, particularly where there is little electricity infrastructure. Joe Beale and Andrew Gillies (above) suggest that more people would generate their own electricity if there were a better return for the surplus energy they export to the grid and this could be achieved under Government proposals to introduce Feed in Tariffs for small electricity generators. Alternatively, innovative technologies for storing intermittent renewable energy could be utilised, such as hydrogen fuel cell systems. Once large scale production is achieved, renewable energy generators, in conjunction with smart meters, will provide an efficient and cost effective means of generating both electricity and heat for buildings and industry, as well as contributing fuel for electric vehicles.
The sooner renewable generation increases, the better.
Feed-in tariffs are great news as well as the support for small-scale generation.
The key opportunities for business in moving to a new energy infrastructure come from localised energy generation from combined heat and power stations in towns to microgeneration in homes and communities. A better case needs to be made for technologies such as anaerobic digestion and demonstrator projects could show the public that local plants can be a loved part of the landscape such as the incinerator in Vienna at Spittelau.
CCS is one of the necessary evils to get us from A to B. The UK will have to become a front runner in CCS by making it a requirement for new build coal plants. There has been some discussion in the past about how difficult this is, but technically it is very easy. Some change of legislation is needed, but that is all.
I’m glad the above article mentions “grid architectures”. I notice last year that Poyry produced a report that was rather condemnatory of how the UK proposes to connect round 3 off-shore win (basically point to point connections). So far HMG has been amazingly silent on the issue of a North Sea Grid - which would vastly improve off-shore utilisation factors. This is most unfortunate given that it looks likely the Germans, Dutch, Belgians and Danes will interconnect their off-shore farms. Given the short distance from, for example, the Dogger bank to the German block of developments (120kms?) there is no reason why there could not be significant interconnection.
I have significant concerns over the number of major facilities being planned for energy from waste and energy from biomass. We must maximise the energy outputs and minimise the carbon outputs from all of our resource streams. The Government must ensure that it discourages inefficient technologies and actively supports and promotes those that maximise the opportunity and that can deal with the resource close to site to avoid mass transportation issues. Fast pyrolysis (a technology in which the UK is leading the world) appears to offer best performance potential-a scaleable technology that allows material to be processed close to source and gives greater opportunities to use the heat outputs as plants can be sited adjacent to heavy heat loads.
We need to get away from talk of heat networks for new residential developments. If built to the right standards, new homes need little in the way of heat and a heat network will only make any financial (or carbon) sense in very high density develelopments.
The Government should seek to advance any emerging UK technologies that can potentially convert low grade heat to electricity and any UK fuel cell technology.
While BERR acknowledge the UK’s switch to importing energy in the form of oil and gas, at least from a Climate Change perspective, one must ask whether BERR has confronted the prospect of Peak Oil, the peaking of global oil production. Peak Oil for the UK is already a reality (1999) and many experts including the French energy company Total expect a global peak within the next 5-6 years. This does not belittle the importance of steps to mitigate Climate Change, it simply makes the issue that much more urgent. Concerned about this urgency, I am not sure that BERR yet appreciate the difference between reserves of oil and production of oil.
Reply to Joe Beale
I’m not sure why he suggests ‘investing heavily in nuclear fusion as a permanebt solution’ It all made sense up till then. Is he saying new nuclear fuel would be safe and is necessary for capacity?