Renew Extra Weekly

The new Energy System Catapult study of Net Zero energy technology options sees electrification as a critical part of UK energy system decarbonisation. It has final energy consumption across its scenarios ranging from 525TWh/yr to 619TWh/yr by 2050- double the size of UK power today. But it says low carbon technologies can meet demand by 2050- with their contribution being a significant increase on earlier iterations of its analysis, reflecting they say ‘greater confidence in clean power technologies’ . And it’s also seen as being affordable: the report puts the cost of the transition within 1% of GDP by 2050’.  However, it says that big changes have to be made, with it now being clearer which options to focus on. It says it will be essential to accelerate the deployment of key mature technologies such as offshore wind and solar, large-scale nuclear, heat nets and the electrification of home heating via heat pumps. In parallel it says the UK needs an accelerated programme of innov...

Wind and solar are doing very well around the world as costs fall , and look like doing even better, with, for example, a recent study suggesting that, even in the relatively highly populated UK, there are environmentally appropriate sites available for a very significant expansion of on shore wind and solar.   The study by Exeter University for Friends of the Earth says that 130 TWh could come from PV solar and 96 TWh from onshore wind, compared with 17 TWh at present- a 13 times increase. And it would only need 3% of UK land area.  Of course that’s in addition to large inputs from offshore wind, and also wave and tidal projects. So the overall potential is very large and siting constraints need not be a major issue. And as green energy technology economics continues to improve , the UK, along with most other countries, looks likely to continue to move in rapidly in that direction.    However, with technology advance and success there can also be problems, especial...

Until recently, the UK government has always said that civil and military nuclear technologies were separate things, for example in response to claims that expansion of civil nuclear power capacity could lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons making capacity. But, as researchers at the University of Sussex have relentlessly catalogued , there seems to have been a change of view underway, culminating formally in March in a new policy document from No. 10 Downing Street. Entitled ‘Building the Nuclear Workforce of Tomorrow’ it claims that ‘domestic [civil] nuclear capability is vital to our national defence and energy security, underpinning our nuclear deterrent and securing cheaper, more reliable energy for UK consumers’.  So they are intertwined and mutually beneficial- we need both! UK Prime Minister Sunak says that ‘in a more dangerous and contested world, the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is more vital than ever’ and that civil nuclear power is the ‘perfect antidot...

In his new book for the Institute of Physics, power engineer Paul Woods offers an ‘Introduction to District Heating and Cooling Low carbon energy for buildings’ . He says that, for the UK, ‘a number of studies have estimated the economic potential for heat networks to be between 18% and 43% of the total heat demand’ and adds ‘whichever figure proves to be correct this still represents a huge increase in capacity from the current market share of around 3%’.  District Heating (DH) is not a new idea. There are already many heat networks around the world, including large whole-city systems in Moscow, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm. While the earliest district heating schemes used steam as the heat distribution medium, for example those in Copenhagen and New York, Woods says ‘it is now universally preferred to use hot water’.  He notes that heat nets are not a power source as such, just a way of transmitting energy, and use can be made of many types of heat inputs, including he...