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Keith Clarke: High electrification of transport, homes and industry
By: Keith Clarke

In Keith’s pathway, 58% of primary energy will be imported and emissions will be 77% below 1990 levels in 2050.

Keith selected Level 4 (maximum) effort in 6 sectors, mainly to reduce demand from transport, households and industry.

Highlights from Keith’s pathway

• All cars, vans and rail freight are electrified
• Household average thermal leakiness decreases by 50%
• All cooking is fully electric and 80-100% of heating in domestic and commercial properties is from electricity
• 5.4 m2 of photovoltaic panels per person in 2050
• See Keith’s pathway in the 2050 web tool

An engineering perspective on the pathway to 2050

The DECC 2050 Calculator illustrates that there are an almost infinite number of possible routes to a Low Carbon Economy. Irrespective of how we analyse the problem we can be sure that achieving an 80% reduction in GHG emissions will be a dramatically interwoven engineering and behavioural challenge. We hope that the pathway put forward by Atkins will begin to describe this new industrial revolution and provoke a lively debate.

Whilst it is impossible to provide a definitive model of what 2050 will look like (we cannot predict the impact of free enterprise, innovation and Government policy), it is very important that we have a desirable and realistic vision of 2050. This will help each of us understand what our role will be and what actions we need to take. As engineers, we recognise that we must use our skills to deliver secure low carbon sources of energy with electricity remaining as the primary delivery choice.  This is already leading to the development of new energy infrastructure and we believe this will continue and accelerate. We also believe we will also become more adept at managing the physical resources at our disposal and this in turn will cause a significant re-engineering of the built environment.

We accept that our pathway fell marginally short of an 80% reduction but we are optimistic that current levels of technical innovation indicate that we will achieve the step changes necessary to meet our target (the assumptions made behind the model are essentially based upon known technology). In addition, Government will continue to provide new policy leavers to bring about parallel changes in behaviours.

We began the development of our suggested pathway through the consideration of the technical aspects of demand reduction concurrent with the already emerging change in society’s values, resulting behaviours and expectations. We then moved to the practical consideration of low carbon energy supply.

In support of our pathway we make the following comments.

• Demand side reduction in the domestic housing stock will be slow (due to the complexity of the stock and the lack of willingness by homeowners to make the necessary levels of improvement). Emphasis must be placed on improvements in the commercial sector where there are fewer obstacles.
• Mass electrification of the transport network and the delivery of low-carbon mass transit schemes must be a priority. In parallel with improving battery capacity (range) we must provide the infrastructure to support the rapid take-up of electric vehicles.
• Make better use of ‘waste heat’ from the thermal generation of electricity. The opportunities for district heating are good. The use of waste heat is viable for a large portion of the UK population and is essentially carbon free. The technology is simple and readily available.
• Due to the variability of electricity supply from renewables and the lag in the development of CCS technology it is inevitable that a significant proportion of our electricity base-load will be provided by nuclear power.
• Variable load must be provided by coal and gas fired stations provided with high levels of CCS. The level of investment will be large and the delivery programme long.
• A wide variety of renewables technologies must be adopted and greater prominence must be given to solar PV, tidal, hydroelectric and geothermal schemes. We must push hard on the delivery of off-shore wind but the technical challenges are considerable and must not be underestimated.

Energy storage needs a higher profile.