The global Covid-19 pandemic has changed so many things, including the UK’s plans to host the 2020 United Nations Climate Change Conference – also known as Cop26 – which has now been postponed until next year. However, Dr David Cole, director for power generation at Atkins, still has a stark warning for world leaders: “Let’s not kid ourselves, the climate crisis needs immediate action.”
As if to prove his point, the UK government, despite becoming the first major world economy to commit to a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, has provided little detail since as to how that might be achieved. For those who could make a difference, it’s a frustrating time. “If they don’t do anything, we’re going to miss the target by miles,” says Jo Bandle, principal process engineer at Atkins, a global design, engineering and project management consultancy. “Lots of people here are looking at what needs to be done, but we also need government policies.”
To get a better idea of what the UK’s net-zero carbon energy system might look like, and how it might be achieved, Atkins has produced a report: Engineering Net Zero. For Cole, who was involved in the report, it provides a much-needed injection of pragmatism to the debate: “An awful lot of modelling has been done of what a future energy system could look like, but not as much work on how you get from A to B. We now need to urgently engineer and build net-zero today, rather than just modelling possible future scenarios.”
There’s a long way to go, says Chris Ball, managing director of Atkins’ nuclear and power business for UK, Europe and the Middle East. He points out that the UK currently consumes about 300 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year: “By 2050, we’ll be using about 645 TWh per year – and all of that [will need to come from] low-carbon generation, which currently accounts for about 150 TWh.”
Wind power’s role in meeting this energy demand is massive, says Andy Thompson, director of offshore wind at Atkins, because it is a comparatively proven technology: “There are technologies we can rely on. When you look at the maturity of this technology and you look at the planning constraints on onshore wind, the size of the turbines, for example – or the amount of land we have for solar – you realise that if you need large-scale build of renewables, offshore wind is the most viable at the moment.”
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) report, which recommended that the UK should commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, suggested a scenario where wind could make up to 75GW of the UK’s power capacity. “Is it possible? Yes. If we maintain the current build rate [of about 200 turbines a year]. With larger turbines, we can achieve that,” says Thompson. Currently, the UK’s wind power capacity stands at about 20GW.
The UK has been the world leader in offshore wind power generation since 2008. Its rapid deployment and ongoing success is partly down to lessons learned in other sectors. “A lot of people who work on corrosion for offshore wind, for example, are bringing expertise they learned from the nuclear sector,” says Cerianne Cummings, principal project manager at Atkins, who works primarily on design and foundations for new wind farms.
Amy Dowdeswell, a project manager and strategic business development associate at Atkins, who has worked in both oil and gas and renewables markets, echoes that point: “Things we’ve learned from work on oil and gas platforms we’re able to apply to offshore wind-farm maintenance. There’s no need for a separate learning curve.”
Turbine capacity rates – which measure the proportion of time a turbine is generating power – have increased dramatically over the past 30 years. Where a 1990s model might be idle up to 70% of the time, newer models more than halve that downtime, thanks to taller units reaching stronger, more consistent wind sources. “This type of floating wind power, which will go further offshore and tap into higher wind speeds, is going to be key to hitting the 2050 target,” says Dowdeswell.
Observing wind’s success in the UK, other countries are following its lead and leveraging its knowledge, as they seek to reduce their own carbon footprints. “We’re seeing countries and governments looking at locations that haven’t historically had offshore wind and with that comes conditions that are challenging,” says Cummings. “We’re looking at deeper locations, bigger turbines, more environmental extremes – hurricanes and earthquakes. From an engineering perspective, it’s exciting.”
Nuclear is also considered to have a place in the proposed 2050 energy mix: three new plants (including Hinkley Point C, which is currently under construction) account for up to 11% of power generation in the CCC’s net-zero carbon scenario. Bandle, who works on Hinkley Point C, spells out why it’s difficult to foresee a net-zero carbon future without nuclear power: “A nuclear power station such as Hinkley will power about 6m homes for 60 years. No other technology today comes close to that – you’d need about 8,000 wind turbines to get a similar output.”
But the high upfront costs of commissioning a plant (despite being offset thereafter by low running costs) have forced the government to seek investment partners for its large-scale nuclear projects, leaving them vulnerable to delay and cancellation. If the chances of two more plants on the scale of Hinkley Point C seem slim, Bandle has a pragmatic solution alongside new build plants: “We’re starting to design what are called small modular reactors (SMRs) that will produce maybe 440MW [an eighth of Hinkley Point C], but would be much cheaper to get off the ground.”
The size of the challenge needs both large nuclear and SMRs working side by side, and with the government yet to make firm, clear announcements on how it plans to make the UK energy mix carbon neutral, SMRs could well have a place in the future energy-generating mix. Yet for all the discussion around the climate crisis, it is the lack of a ubiquitous, urgent understanding among the general public that most concerns Ball. “Every time I flick my light switch at home, the lights come on. That detracts from the message of understanding where our power comes from and where we’ll get it from in the future, and this is really important - we have to change that.”
This article was updated on 3 April 2020 to reflect the decision to postpone the 2020 United Nations Climate Change Conference due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.
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