‘GREEN’ STRATEGIES AND NET ZERO CARBON
at that stage to meet the target – some 9,600 large onshore turbines, 38 London Arrays, 25 million solar panels, 1,000 miles of Pelamis wave machines, and a tidal stream, and pointed out that even then, we would still need 80 large either nuclear or fossil with carbon capture and sequestration plants and demand reduction to meet those targets –‘a massive challenge in engineering space’. Dame Sue’s next slide showed what has been built, energy plant-wise, since 2010. She said: “It shows you that in terms of onshore wind, we needed to have built 24 gigawatts of capacity by now; we actually have 13, for offshore wind, 38 arrays, but we actually have 8, and with solar voltaic, we needed 72 gigawatts, but we in fact have just 13 GW. Nor do we have any wave or tidal – of either stream or barrage – while hydro- wise, we only have small local schemes. So, of the 157 gigawatts of capacity we needed to have built, we have only built 33.2, so there is a big, big challenge.”
Energy from hydrogen
Here Dame Sue said she would discuss hydrogen – ‘seen as a really important energy vector’, and an alternative to North Sea gas for central heating. She said: “We know we can’t use fossil fuels, and hydrogen is seen as key, but there is a lot to do to actually make sure we can generate hydrogen cleanly.” ‘Green’ hydrogen, she noted, could only be generated ‘cleanly’ from either nuclear or wind, and possibly solar. She added: “Currently, eight out of 10 homes in the UK use gas boilers to fuel their central heating, and if we could make a large- scale switch to hydrogen-fuelled boilers, it would reduce carbon emissions considerably. We need to either do that, or to look at alternative heating systems, such as heat pumps, in 80 per cent of the UK’s homes, or widespread district heating – a big challenge.”
Successful local initiatives were already under way to try to put hydrogen into the gas grid, but there were still challenges around running the main grid with
hydrogen. Turning to transport, where hydrogen would be ‘a good energy vector’ for trains and commercial vehicles, tests and trials were under way, using a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and batteries, with ‘a lot more potential for success’.
‘R&D’
On the research front, meanwhile, both the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering had produced several reports looking at how key technologies can help, looking ahead, but also highlighting the R&D challenges still to address. Topics examined included options for producing low carbon hydrogen at scale, for sustainable, synthetic carbon-based fuels for transport – including air transport, and at using ammonia as a potential vector for zero carbon fertiliser fuel and energy storage, and the potential and limitations with using carbon dioxide for other purposes. Dame Sue explained that in addition to
its July 2017 Sustainability of liquid biofuels report, the Royal Academy of Engineering had also produced reports on electrifying transport, while in 2019 the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) had unveiled its report Transitioning to hydrogen, and in September 2018 the Academy and Royal Society their joint publication, Greenhouse gas removal. She added: “There are thus a lot of reports already out, and, no doubt, many still to be produced.”
Use of heat pumps
Heat pumps – both ground and air source – were ‘seen as one of the big sources of success’, while on a separate note, The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, had in March this year set ‘ambitious targets’ for the capital to be Net Zero by 2030, and 28 London Boroughs had declared their commitment to this target by that date. Dame Sue said: “Again, although the political will has never been stronger, some of the engineering challenges are
The speaker said she would like to recommend to the webinar audience a ‘particularly user-friendly’ open-source website called ‘electricityMap’, which presents carbon intensity updates country by country.
June 2021 Health Estate Journal 23
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