CARBON REDUCTION CO2 e
Stage 01 Immediate short term
Low impact technology available
Stage 02 Short to
medium term Likely overlap
Medium to high impact technology available – Currently higher costs
High impact some technology not currently commercially available
80% Net Zero Today Figure 4: Three stages to ‘Net Zero’ carbon. Hydrogen fuel
The potential exists for hydrogen fuel to replace natural gas used in heating boilers. Appropriately specified boilers can be installed today that can operate on natural gas now, and also on hydrogen in the future. The question here is should we invest now in upgradable plant, and how far into the future will we have to wait for a hydrogen supply to reach our site? Future hydrogen supplies will be either produced by sequestering the CO2
from
natural gas (so called blue hydrogen), or derived from electrolysis using renewable electricity generation (green hydrogen). It seems likely that hydrogen roll-out may be geographically limited, at least initially, and that investment in distribution infrastructure may be significant – due to limitations in compatibility that some existing gas infrastructure may have to
transport hydrogen, as opposed to natural gas. Meanwhile, it is very unlikely that it will be possible to simply move all existing hospital heat infrastructure capacity currently on natural gas over to low carbon grid-supplied electricity for large acute hospital sites, as this may not be practical or affordable.
‘Carrot and stick’
In the UK, the existing Climate Change Levy on natural gas and electricity continues to rise, with the levy on natural gas set to rise faster than electricity in the next few years. Even so, it remains the case that electricity is currently at least four times the cost of gas per kWh purchased. This means that although measures like natural gas combined heat and power (CHP) currently save less carbon than they did five years ago, they
are still very significant revenue generators. The graph in Figure 3 shows a hospital gas CHP scheme that was installed in 2017, and its progressive carbon savings set against a rapidly decarbonising electricity supply from the National Grid.
At present, around 30-40% of carbon emissions generated directly in the UK are taxed via by the UK’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). The UK ETS is tipped to expand its scope, which might mean that many consumers that were previously out of inclusion criteria will fall within its reach at some point in the future.
There is currently a government review as part of a strategy to deliver a so called ‘carbon price for the whole economy’, which may tackle wider aspects of carbon-intensive economic activity supposedly in time for the COP26 UN
2032 Year
Net Zero 2040
Stage 03 Medium to long term
info@pplengineeringservices.co.uk June 2021 Health Estate Journal 29
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