Commercialisation & Deployment of Core Technologies - Westminster Energy Forum

Friday, 27 March 2009

Session 2 : Commercialisation & Deployment of Core Technologies

The speed in which the UK moved to meet its $100 billion energy challenge was now crucial, said Dr David Clarke, CEO of the Energy Technologies Institute as he kicked off the second session of the day.

He said that people all around the world were now looking at clean energy and that because it was going to have to be deployed on a massive scale this would be a challenge ‘for the big boys’.

Speed was of the essence in the deployment of the response to climate change and in the UK this would involve countrywide electrification of transport, a wide scale deployment of heat and CHP technology and a move towards a hydrogen economy.

New green electricity generation capacity would have to be incentivised by tariff structures, renewable energy credits and by carbon pricing.

He said that the Energy Technologies Institute was concentrating its work, with the 2020 targets in mind, on offshore-specific wind, tidal and wave power, distributed generation, networks, climate capture and storage, transport and buildings.

On offshore wind he said that wind turbines were so far designed to be sited onshore, not in the sea.

This meant that offshore wind had specific issues to be addressed, and new technologies included co-called ‘helm wind’ turbines, vertical axis turbines and deep-water floating turbines.

The transport sector’s switch to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids was the theme of the presentation from Steve Argent, Senior Consultant (Major Power Projects) at Arup.

Argent said that Arup had worked on the impacts of electric transport on the electricity grid and that the crucial issue was when the majority of vehicles were going to recharge.

There was scope for ‘smart charging’ to avoid peaks by automatically starting to charge vehicles at times of lower demand.

Incentives to flatten the demand profile could also adapt charging patters to wind conditions, for example. Incentive night-time and win-time charges were being considered.

The demand for electric cars was likely to be in London first, followed closely by other major cities as London already had a flatter demand profile because of its ‘24/7’ nature, and generally the impact on the grid from greater electric transport was likely to be positive, provided it was properly managed and targeted at peak periods.

Diversity through distributed power sources and the developing context of the fuel cell was explored by Peter Bance, CEO at Ceres Power.

He said that fuel cells, which for the uninitiated generated electricity and heat from fuel and air through a solid state reaction (rather than combustion), were electrochemical engines and when deployed as part of a distributed generation strategy reduced  generation, transmission and distribution losses, reduced grid strain and reduced carbon emissions.

Fuel cell micro-CHP would be effective and efficient for heating, hot water and power, but there was a need for scale and pace. Bance said that Ceres had established a partnership with British Gas which was an ideal market channel for UK CHP Another partnership had been established with Calor for rural customers not connected to the mains gas network.

He said that fuel cells could also be used in conjunction with biogas and hydrogen in the future.

Fuel cell based distributed generation had been successfully deployed in Japan, where it benefitted from subsidy, and was compelling environmentally friendly technology which demonstratively reduced demand.

In the final presentation, Chris Clarke, Visiting Fellow at the CCS Legal programme at University College London looked at the key regulatory issues affecting carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment in Europe.

He said that a complete replacement of carbon-emitting fossil fuels in Europe was simply not realistic, and that this fact along with massive expansion of fossil fuel-based electricity generation in China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and elsewhere means CCS had to be made to work.

IEA figures suggested that CCS could deliver 20 per cent of the world’s 2020 carbon cuts.

Clarke said that CCS was an interim technology to be deployed over the next few decades until alternatives to fossil fuels were established.

There was adequate storage capacity for this period of time. Some pilot projects now existed, notably in Norway, Algeria and Canada/US, although none yet was associated with coal plants.

Obstacles to deployment of CCS were limited experience of CO2 injection, the existence of the London protocol and OSPAR agreements, cost and economic risk (including legal accountability issues), the recession, the low carbon price, the construction of pipelines, terminals and other plant, safety and finally lack of public awareness and understanding.

The European Commission’s Directive on Geological Storage was going to be published in May and should be transposed by member States within two years and this would help on issues around storage of CO2, monitoring , liabilities and post-closure care. The EU planned 12 demonstration plants to be deployed by 2015 as part of the greater G8 target of 20 CCS plants operational by 2020.

Questions throughout the day covered issues including appropriate policy frameworks for clean energy technology, the merits of carbon trading versus carbon taxes, availability of skills to service a low carbon future, suitability of energy grids for new types of configuration, and whether, in the current financial climate, banks were willing to finance new energy projects, be they renewables, nuclear or other technologies.

 Session 1 - Policy Innovation and Funding