‘GREEN’ STRATEGIES AND NET ZERO CARBON
massive, and London’s targets can’t be met unless there is a rapid transition to low carbon.”
Here, the speaker showed a slide highlighting how London’s greenhouse gas generation is split by sector – from transport, to residential electricity and gas, and non-residential electricity. These sources - but particularly residential gas – generated ‘quite substantial’ carbon emissions. Her next slide showed some of the heat pump initiatives already undertaken. She said: “You may have heard in the news recently, however, about some of the issues with heat pumps, and district heating schemes where – a bit like with leasehold properties – people are locked into paying for the price of installation for many years. So, there not only need to be engineering, but also financial solutions, in terms of how you enable some of the poorest sections of society to move to low carbon energy, and not be penalised by either the installation or the fuel costs.”
Successful projects to date Examples of successful ground source heat pump use to date, such as to heat a school in Northumbria, indicated that, in future, such heat sources could potentially heat a small hospital, while, as highlighted in other, subsequent slides, Exeter City Council had undertaken a solar farm and battery project, Warrington Borough Council had concluded a deal to take power from a ‘massive’ 35 MW solar farm in York with 27 MWh of battery storage, and Cheshire West and Cheshire Council were using solar and battery to power to heat two social housing estates. Dame Sue said: “These projects highlight that there is already quite a lot of integration between councils and providers to try and address the overriding issues.”
A need for a ‘national roadmap’ Dame Sue’s last slide re-emphasised the ‘challenges we have at the national level’. She told the webinar audience: “The biggest thing we need is a national roadmap to outline the journey to 2050. So far the technologies – whether wind, solar, or nuclear – have been considered in isolation in silos, and the roadmap to 2050 is aspirational; it doesn’t tell us how we are going to hit these targets, or build the supply chains to deliver what is needed. Nor does it explain how they are going to translate to jobs on the ground in the UK. Within some of the plans,” she added, “there is an unrealistic view of the role of batteries – given issues with the source materials, the lack of battery recycling capacity, and some of the infrastructure needed to enable them to deliver effectively.”
Dame Sue said there was ‘a real need’ to accelerate ways to use hydrogen cleanly – the process was not going fast
24 Health Estate Journal June 2021
A variety of briefing papers from the Royal Academy of Engineering, one produced jointly with the Royal Society, on different aspects of climate change and energy.
or affordably enough – as well as to look at how the various energy vectors ‘meshed together’. She said: “We need to really look at how energy should be seen as a system issue, and to recognise that what may work on a small scale, becomes unrealistic, in fact almost impossible, at the industrial city scale. We also need recognition that the possibilities for deployment on new-build projects are great, and relatively easy, but that retrofitting urban inner-city Britain is an altogether different challenge. I am sure that all of you will appreciate that old, inner city hospital estates face completely different challenges from new-build, greenfield projects. So,” she said, as she neared her presentation’s conclusion, “lots of challenges, but I am an optimist, and I believe that with the right approach we will get there, but we need a lot more
engineers to look at the problem, and to put their hats into the ring with politicians, to look at how it’s all going to be achieved.”
Turning to the new IHEEM, HEFMA, and
CEF A Healthcare Engineering Roadmap for Delivering Net Zero document, Dame Sue said: “It is an engineer’s look at what is required, and outlines many ‘no regrets’ investments, and a real positive way forward for us to take things along. Would that this sort of initiative were prevalent elsewhere. We can but hope that your example will lead to something a lot better.”
With this, she thanked attendees for listening, and handed back to IHEEM CEO Pete Sellars, who then introduced the next speaker, Dr Nick Starkey of the Royal Academy of Engineering (see also pages 45-48 of this issue of HEJ).
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