FEATURE: LIGHTING & ELECTRICAL
A
linear transition is not going to happen as it did in the industrial revolution. The first industrial
revolution lasted from the mid- 18th century to about 1830 and was mostly confined to Britain, and its successor started in the mid-19th century and ended in the early 20th century. The energy transition, however, requires several huge step-changes to happen at once. Unlike other major societal changes, the energy transition has a unique set of complications which requires us to be innovative and collaborative to work through. However, with continued focus and great innovation in this sector, this complexity is unleashing exciting new opportunities in how we use energy to underpin our economy.
Challenges A complex world economy has grown up on the back of a stable energy industry; there is the need and expectation that our entire way of life depends on energy of the right sort and the right quality on a 24-hour, seven days-per-week basis to ensure people have sufficient power when they need it. Energy systems are not only critical for powering factories and industries but also for transportation, communication and virtually every aspect of modern life. Changing energy sources or infrastructure requires a myriad of interconnected systems. Not only do we rely on this, but we also expect it to keep increasing too, nowhere more so than the electrical power grid. We need more generation to meet an expected huge rise in demand, as more electric vehicles hit the road, the large-scale rollout of heat pumps into homes continues, and the use of data centres to store vast quantities of information and facilitate AI innovation demands large amounts of power. Even conservative estimates of electricity use in the UK have peak demand rising from around 60GW now to over 100GW in 2050.
Making this switch and keeping up with rising demand would be hard enough, but this is not just a case of taking out the old technologies and replacing them with the new. Coal power was dirty and polluting and has been almost entirely eradicated from the UK energy mix, but it was stable, easy to turn up and down, and was perfect for keeping the electricity grid running smoothly. By contrast, the major new power source of offshore wind is intermittent, hard to control and unstable. This one major technology change is
20 DIY WEEK MAY 2024
THE ENERGY TRANSITION: MORE COMPLEX THAN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The global energy transition to a cleaner, greener future is one of the most complex challenges of the 21st century and the biggest step-change since the industrial revolution began in the mid- eighteenth century as Andy Normand, Business Development Director at Encora Energy explains…
only facilitated by a whole range of other changes to store energy and stabilise the grid, ensuring we can still guarantee that when you flip the switch day or night you will have power of voltage, frequency and quality exactly as you need. The global nature of the energy industry generally adds another layer of complexity in the modern energy transition. The energy landscape is deeply influenced by global trade, geopolitics and international agreements. Unlike the industrial revolution, where developments were more localised (at least initially), the energy revolution requires coordinated efforts and cooperation among nations to address thorny issues such as climate change, energy security and access to energy resources. As ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East suggest, this is not an easy task. There are vast differences in social and cultural norms across the world so gaining consensus on big ticket issues, such as energy consumption and production, is unsurprisingly fraught with difficulties. Transitioning to new
energy sources or technologies requires not only technological advancements but also changes in behaviour, lifestyle and societal structures.
Complexity
All this complexity can be daunting and a reason to shy away from the problem, to pretend it doesn’t exist or that it is not as complicated as it really is. There is a desire to properly understand it, by reducing it to simplicity that can be dealt with and a clear solution that we can all agree on so we can just get on with the business of rolling it out. With any new advance or suggestion there are a range of commentaries championing the advantages, countered by others giving a damning indictment of the flaws.
The truth, however, is that there
are some broad trends, but very few silver bullets and a wide range of effective but niche applications. Far from being a problem, this complexity provides opportunities to interact with the energy market to find innovative ways that industries,
companies and individuals can make best use of.
Opportunities
The complexity of the energy transition has uncovered new ways for individuals and organisations to interact with the energy industry and make the opportunities. This is happening across all areas and at a range of scale from the large, such as the creation of whole new industries centred around hydrogen, down to the small changes in homes, offices and local businesses such as solar panels on roofs, home batteries, smart connected Internet of Things (IOT) devices saving energy, demand- side response and combined heat and power (CHP) plants.
While the number of ways that changes are happening is varied, there are some broad categories. There are new opportunities to be found in optimising the interactions of power, heat and cooling. In the industrial revolution the limitations of generating power from heat was discovered, but now we are exploring ways to use this understanding to maximise energy use such as
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