According to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the World needs to become Net Zero (aka Carbon neutral) by 2050 if we are to have a chance of preventing our planet from reaching more than 1.5 degrees of warming by the end of the Century.
1.5C is generally agreed to be a lot safer than the previous target of 2 degrees and, judging by amount of crazy weather we've been having recently, that view looks increasingly true.
But how do we get to Carbon Neutral in just 30 years? Is it possible? Is it affordable? What will it mean to you and me?
In this series, I'll be attempting to answer those questions.
In this first part, I'll be looking at energy.
If you take a look at the side-bar to this blog, you'll see a bunch of links under the title of 'Common Themes'. One of those links is called 'The Future of Energy'. This will take you to a series I did a few years ago about where energy needs to be headed in the coming years. Hopefully this'll persuade you that all the necessary tools we require to produce all the low carbon energy we need are already available.
The future of energy is basically clean, carbon neutral, renewable electricity, and plenty of it.
Carbon neutrality depends on de-carbonising and increasing energy production. This might seem an obvious thing to say but it's worth emphasising: A lot of the other steps on the way to net zero, like the electrification of transport and household heating, rely on this one.
Beyond helping prevent climate change, making energy carbon neutral has two major benefits: Firstly, it cleans up the air we breath when all those polluting coal fired stations are closed; and, when the gas-fired stations are also closed, it eliminates the price shocks for us homeowners that come from using a natural gas.
So, how does a country get a carbon neutral energy grid? Well, there is no one-size-fits-all solution because every country has it's own natural resources. Those in sunny latitudes, like Australia, Spain, Africa and India can make use of abundant solar energy; Others in windy regions like Northern Europe can use wind power; Countries with mountainous regions (like Norway) might use hydro; and countries with volcanic/hydrothermal activity, like Iceland and the Philippines, can use geothermal energy.
In Britain's case, we are using a lot of wind turbines, particularly offshore, and some solar. There may also be projects to use tidal energy in the future. We also use a lot of biofuel, with former coal fired stations switching to wood pellets. A sizeable chunk of our electric is from nuclear too (20%).
As a result, in 2018 the UK sourced 53% of our electric from low carbon sources and that will only increase as we close the last of the coal powered stations by 2025 and add even more wind turbines and nuclear stations to the mix. Hopefully these will phase out the remaining source of carbon on our grid, gas fired stations, by 2050.
Of course, when you rely so heavily on the weather for your energy needs, you can suffer shortages on cloudy, windless days. To get round this, the UK is building a flexible energy system based on: 'interconnectors' with other countries so that we can import electric to fill the shortfalls; energy storage for when we're producing more than we can use; demand-side management; and small gas powered stations on stand-by as a last resort.
Essentially the UK is well on way to de-carbonising it's energy, and the only uncertainty is getting enough new nuclear power stations up-and-running in time as the foundation.
There's no reason why any other country can't achieve this too with the right leadership. Britain has even dispelled the myth that decarbonising an economy can hit growth: Whilst the UK has cut it's total carbon emissions (not just energy) by 42%, the economy has continued to grow at a faster rate than most other developed countries.
So the UK government is to be congratulated on it's efforts to de-carbonise our energy over the last couple of decades. Adopting policies that effectively phase out coal stations, and incentivising the building of renewables (at least to begin with) has been the key, and there seems to be genuine commitment to seeing the job through.
Unfortunately, this is one of the few areas where our government have done well in cutting carbon. In other areas it is either dragging it's feet (e.g. Transport) or it's policies will lead to MORE carbon (e.g. Aviation).
UPDATE (21st Oct 2019): I recently discovered that the UK government has been getting planning permission for the building a number of NEW gas-fired turbines. This may just be a contingency in case things continue to go badly in getting new nuclear stations, or it could be the aforementioned stand-by stations, but I get the feeling the current PM (and cabinet) is less committed to net zero than previous ones.
Next time: Heating.
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