Article #3 : the first three movers… national infrastructure : power, fuel and hydrogen, and industry

I’m on article #3 of my series on ‘Navigating a journey to Net Zero’, I’ve introduced a visual narrative and described that journey over the next 30 years. ?This article looks at the overarching contributing factors to decarbonisation, and then in more detail at the first three of those seven themes.

The UK government has written a Net Zero Strategy published in October 21, that sets out how it expects to reduce carbon emissions across multiple sectors in the UK economy.

The government’s strategy touches on seven themes that must each play their role in decarbonisation to better than net zero.

Functionally we must either do and have less, or we must find alternatives for the things that we have, need and want but that cannot continue as they did.?

We must use less power and fuel to heat our homes, and / or find better ways not to waste heat and / or find better ways to repurpose and reuse that heat loss.

We must either travel less and / or we must find cleaner ways to do that.

By different measures, we are advancing forward in some areas, and lagging behind in others.?We do not have the breadth of renewable resources of many Scandinavian countries, nor the historical choice to create such a heavy base power supply through nuclear as some other European countries.

We are not leading the growth by market share of zero-tailpipe vehicles, nor do we have a fully integrated public transport alternative.

Yet we are accelerating off-shore wind production, and have the innovation capability to harness other power sources off the shores and tidal approaches to our islands.

We must also look more widely at the the opportunities to change how we live and use our land resources to reforest or change the things we eat.

So, look in more detail at the first three themes of power, fuel and hydrogen and industry.

National networks powering the economy must decarbonise (first)

My first bundled descriptions of the challenges, potential choices and stated commitments for decarbonisation are grouped around power production, distribution of fuels and then the industrial sector, which uses much of the energy produced.

Indeed, as a share of the total carbon emissions, the three themes discussed here have already been decarbonising significantly since the 1990s.

But around the world there are some very different choices to the sources of power (to electricity and heating) around the world. I posted on this recently - global production may be suggested to be reaching a tipping point, but in the superpowers of China, India and across Africa the sources used are still heavily fossil fuelled. Even in Europe there is the divergence of choice, the highly public closure of German nuclear will increase a gas and coal dependency, whilst France have a massive nuclear baseline production (>70%) and little fossil fuels. The Nordics are nearly entirely renewable, and the UK has all but removed coal, but still relies significantly on gas).

The Net Zero strategies for power, fuel and hydrogen and industry are heavy on the alternative productions (and / but whilst I'll come to it in a later article), far lighter on the reduction of need, the re-purposing of the created energy into multiple users in the value chain.

And I want to see far more made of the simple (and old tech) solutions that have significant possibility such as gravity energy storage in mine shafts and pumped hydro in the highlands .?

The challenge of future fuels may be less about the production of the fuels such as hydrogen, but more to do with how we more the fuel / energy to those that need it - and the billions of pounds such infrastructure will require. Equally, challenges (physically and morally) exist around the demand for (and the lack of forecast supply of) the rare metals necessary for many of the fuel cells and tech related control of vehicles and wider storage needs of the future.

Power generation on its own isn't the challenge... Doing it more sustainably is within reach - but choices must still be made as to the route desired... where power supply is unpredictable balancing storage is needed - and less commitments have been made in these spaces.

Secondly, the greatest value in power reduction remains the solutions that mean that we don't need to create it in the first place - and again more needs to be done of the circular economy of energy and the products (such as heating) that the power is used for...

Power

?“cheap clean electricity, made in Britain”

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Challenges:

• The UK remains dependent on both fossil fuels, and power imports (generally fossil fuel created)
• Our total power usage continues to increase, both as a nation and per capita.
• We have life-expiring obligations to turn off a number of existing nuclear power generators over the next decades.
• The building of nuclear power plants will not increase load to the UK, rather it will replace that which is lost.
• Our uptake of green power, through wind and solar has increased over the last decade, but there remains a challenge to provide both the total demand and the storage capacity / solutions for variability or renewables supply.

Choices:

1. Produce more – at worst through continued burning of fossil fuels, else through the growth of a strong base supply (nuclear and renewables) and new energy storage capability to balance fluctuating production vs demand of renewables)
2. Use less - both through efficiency gains, and better creation of a circular economy for use of energy and heat in the end-to-end usage chain.
3. Manage demand to supply better - through more effective power to energy storage

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Key policies:

• By 2035 the UK will be powered entirely by clean electricity, subject to security of supply.
• Secure a final investment decision on a large-scale nuclear plant by the end of this Parliament, and launch a new ￡120 million Future Nuclear Enabling Fund, retaining options for future nuclear technologies, including Small Modular Reactors, with a number of potential sites including Wylfa in North Wales.
• 40GW of offshore wind by 2030, with more onshore, solar, and other renewables – with a new approach to onshore and offshore electricity networks to incorporate new low carbon generation and demand in the most efficient manner that takes account of the needs of local communities like those in East Anglia.?
• Moving towards 1GW of floating offshore wind by 2030 to put us at the forefront of this new technology that can utilise our North and Celtic Seas – backed by ￡380 million overall funding for our world-leading offshore wind sector.
• Deployment of new flexibility measures including storage to help smooth out future price spikes.

March 2023 - Powering up Britain

March 2023 - Offshore Wind Net Zero Investment Roadmap

Fuel Supply and Hydrogen

?“significantly reducing traditional oil and gas fuel supplies, whilst scaling-up low carbon alternatives such as hydrogen and biofuels”

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Challenges:

• Fuel, oil and gas supplies play a critical role for almost every household, as a source of fuel for power and heating across homes and industries, particularly in rural communities.
• The transition towards a society where electricity is the primary source of power will require both the transitions of existing networks to a repurposed use, and potentially the creation of new infrastructure and networks.
• The next generation of fuels, whether new sustainable fuels – synthetic or bio-created – will require new and additional innovation and research.

Choices:

• Accelerate innovation into alternative supply, both synthetic and hydrogen
• Drive the market to invest in alternatives (pricing / taxes)

Key policies:

• We have set up the Industrial Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Revenue Support (IDHRS) scheme to fund our new hydrogen and industrial carbon capture business models. We will be providing up to ￡140 million to establish the scheme, including up to ￡100 million to award contracts of up to 250MW of electrolytic hydrogen production capacity in 2023 with further allocation in 2024.
• Introducing a new climate compatibility checkpoint for future licensing on the UK Continental Shelf and regulating the oil and gas sector in a way that minimises greenhouse gases through the revised Oil and Gas Authority strategy.

April 2023 - Hydrogen Net Zero Investment Roadmap

Industry

“accelerating decarbonisation in ‘clusters’, which account for approximately half of the UK’s industrial emissions”

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Challenges:

• Industry; both light (and dispersed) and heavy concentrated (and often high temperature) industries are heavily reliant on fossil fuels and on occasion direct supply.
• Much of the UK industrial estate is aging, built in 1960-70s and not to standards of construction and insulation that would be required today, let alone those that would provide the highest possible energy efficiency.
• The industrial estate touches almost every square kilometre of the UK, through towns as well as farming and rural agriculture; therefore any approach to rationalise and decarbonise will require movement and disruption to affect many of these.

Choices:

• Accelerate innovation into alternative supply, both synthetic and hydrogen

Key policies:

• Following the Phase 1 of the Cluster Sequencing process, the Hynet and East Coast Clusters, will act as economic hubs for green jobs in line with our ambition to capture 20-30 MtCO2 per year by 2030. This puts Teesside and the Humber, Merseyside and North Wales, along with the North East of Scotland as a reserve cluster, among the potential early SuperPlaces which will be transformed over the next decade.
• Future-proofing industrial sectors, and the communities they employ through the ￡315 million Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), (￡289 million for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, ￡26 million for Scotland).
• Incentivise cost-effective abatement in industry at the pace and scale required to deliver net zero, through the UK ETS by consulting on a net zero consistent UK ETS cap (in partnership with the Devolved Administrations).

April 2021 - Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy

April 2023 - CCUS Net Zero Investment Roadmap

It is clear that large scale infrastructure change, and building will be necessary, whether that is in retrofitting of existing industry, or the creation of new networks to handle the increases in production and distribution of non-fossil fuel energy.

Much has been done to reduce the carbon footprint of the early late 20th century, and yet, much more now needs to be done to accelerate the creation of multiple times more our current base creation to meet the energy needs to tomorrow.

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A series of articles

In the series of articles that follow this one, I set out to present the visual narrative, and the contributions that are made over seven themes set out by the UK government’s Net Zero Strategy.

Video : navigating a journey to zero

Article #1 :?a description of the journey over time

Article #2 :?a description of the journey over time

Article?#3 : the first three movers… national infrastructure : power, fuel and hydrogen, and industry

Article?#4 : the middle two… within our gift : heat and buildings, and transport

Article?#5 : the final two… the world we live in : natural resources, waste and fluoride gases, and greenhouse gas removal

Article?#6 : a complex system of systems

Article?#7 : the mindset and capability for net zero readiness

Article?#8 : so what’s missing?