‘GREEN’ STRATEGIES AND NET ZERO CARBON
per cent, and nuclear around 17 per cent for the past 12 months.
Dame Sue told the webinar audience: “So, we still have a long way to go. If we look at the lower carbon sources of electricity,” she continued, showing another slide, “you’ll see that biofuels are counted as low carbon – lower than gas and coal, but not as low or nuclear or wind. It always fascinates me that nuclear is excluded from being ‘renewable’, when it can actually be recycled. This slide shows you what has been delivered since 1990 in terms of the renewables – offshore, onshore, solar, and biofuels, and you’ll see that nuclear, which is low carbon, basically matches onshore and offshore wind and solar in terms of what it delivers. So, over the last 30 years, we have managed to match nuclear with our wind and solar resources.”
Nuclear power plants
Looking at nuclear power plants, with nuclear ‘forming a big chunk of our base load’, the speaker pointed out that many of them will no longer be operating by the end of this decade. Dame Sue said: “Only Suffolk’s Sizewell B will be left by the end of this decade, with our newest nuclear plant still being built at Hinkley Point, which may be available towards 2030. That big chunk of nuclear – giving us our low carbon energy – will not be there unless we get a shift on with building some new plants.
The speaker said she would like to recommend to attendees what was shown on the next slide – a ‘particularly user-friendly, open-source website called ‘electricityMap’, which presents a map of Europe, and on which one can ‘tap on the country one wants to know about’. On this map, ‘green’ countries were low
A graphic taken from the Committee on Climate Change’s 2019 report, Reducing UK emissions 2019. Progress Report to Parliament (Committee on Climate Change).
carbon, and brown ones ‘not’. Dame Sue said: “France is nearly always green because it is nearly 80 per cent nuclear, and the rest partly hydro, Norway, nearly all hydro, Sweden, half and half – nuclear and hydro, Poland – coal, so not terribly ‘green’, and, interestingly, Germany isn’t always very ‘green’ either, because of the extent of its coal and gas imports.” Tapping on the UK, and back in January 2020, pre-COVID, peak demand was around 40 gigawatts (GW), with gas the main contributor, with the map showing the variability between night and day in terms of demand required. Dame Sue elaborated: “Tapping on the UK also showed you, in light blue, the variability of wind, and the paucity of solar in the
winter, plus the steady base load that’s provided by nuclear and biomass.”
A fall in energy demand
The speaker’s next slide, produced about a fortnight previously, showed the drop in overall energy demand – of some 10 GW – resulting from the fall in industrial activity during the pandemic. The slide again showed the same variability in demand between night and day, and that, in the winter, energy from solar was ‘pretty variable’.
Dame Sue said: “Looking at the grid yesterday, and there was no wind at all on the grid, because of the high pressure sitting over us. One of our key challenges is to cope with the variability of the renewable energy sources, and at the moment the only thing keeping your lights on, and maintaining power to industry, is gas on the grid. We need to think hard about this in terms of how we move forward.”
UK’s energy imports
Low carbon sources of electricity – from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014.
22 Health Estate Journal June 2021
The speaker pointed out that the UK also imports ‘quite a bit of its power’, mainly from France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and sometimes from Ireland, when the country has excess wind. She said: “We are heavily reliant on France and the Netherlands particularly for imports to keep our grid going.” Dame Sue next explained that in 2010 the Royal Academy of Engineering had undertaken a study, Generating the Future, to show ‘just how challenging’ it would be to meet the then 80 per cent target to reduce emissions, which had taken the line: ‘Don’t challenge the target; estimate how much it’s possible to build using the best industry ‘can do’. Dame Sue here slowed a slide highlighting what would have to be ‘built’
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
