ENERGY AND CARBON-SAVING
The National Engineering Policy Centre’s ‘Net zero by 2050 explainer’.
COVID-19, in which IHEEM has been very prominent. We have taken ourselves miles out of our comfort zone doing work on sustainable living spaces – how you develop sustainable housing people want to live in, and here engineers are very much there as ‘systems thinkers’, not simply as technicians. We also have a lively Healthcare Topic Group, to which IHEEM contributes.”
A ‘large-scale systems challenge’ The National Engineering Policy Centre also has ‘a large programme’ running on Net Zero, which Dr Starkey encouraged attendees to ‘check out’ on the Academy’s website. He said: “This is a large-scale systems challenge par excellence – the need to replace multiple interconnected systems over a compressed timescale. We have an artificial target in place, so we have to move more quickly than ever, requiring us to undertake what Dame Sue was talking about – very much a 'systems' approach. A large part of our work on Net Zero has been based around this – the interconnectedness of the different mechanisms you need to take into account to get to Net Zero.” Dr Starkey said that he ‘really welcomed’ the ‘comprehensive approach’ in the ‘Healthcare Engineering Roadmap’ which
46 Health Estate Journal June 2021
IHEEM had recently delivered in conjunction with HEFMA and the CEF, and felt ‘the ability to come at these issues from all angles’ was ‘absolutely crucial’.
RAE’s ‘Net Zero’ programme He explained that the Academy's own Net Zero programme had been running for around a year, and had been influential, with the Academy working closely with the Prime Minister’s Council for Science & Technology, helping it with a paper it had written for the Prime Minister on ‘taking a systems approach, specifically’, to Net Zero. He elaborated: “We talked a lot about the governance needed for Net Zero if you are to take such an approach. The default mechanism of governance is that you let departments ‘get on with their bit’, but the interconnections between the elements of Net Zero are such that you need more sophisticated governance within government to achieve the targets. That was our thesis,” he continued, “and at the back of the document is a diagram showing the complexity of decarbonising homes.” To really get to grips with the best way to decarbonise the housing estates of the future now, it was, he said, necessary ‘to understand multiple things’. Dr Starkey said: “For example, ‘What is the future for different fuel sources?’; ‘What are our priorities for hydrogen?’,
and ‘Is its primary use going to be for high intensity industry, transport, or domestic heating?’ You also have to grapple with different ownership structures, which makes a difference to the practicalities of decarbonising housing estates. You need to consider the implications for retrofit, and new-build, and to understand how transportation is going to work for the housing estate. Are we going to electrify both transport and house, or to opt for mass or individualised transport?”
Considerable complexity
In attempting to ‘make the right strategic decision on the road to 2050’, the Academy speaker said policy-formers were ‘exposing a lot of complexity’. He said: “Working with policy-makers to help them through this is one of the key things we do at the National Engineering Policy Centre. We have run detailed workshops with civil servants in the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and the Department of Transport, helping them do things such as map the hydrogen economy, and the elements that are outside transport, but which they need to know about to understand the prospects for using hydrogen in transport, and helping MHCLG with its decarbonisation targets.” Dr Starkey explained that the National
©RAE NEPC’s Net zero Working Group
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