Tag: energy

Powering the economy through the engine of Smart Local Energy Systems

Posted on by janet.crompton

How can the Government best retain key skills and re-skill and up-skill the UK workforce to support the recovery and sustainable growth?

This summer the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) requested submission of inputs on Post-Pandemic Economic Growth. The below thoughts were submitted to the BEIS inquiry as part of input under the EnergyREV project.

However, there are points raised here that, in the editing and summing up process of the submission, were cut out, hence, this blog on how the UK could power economic recovery through Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES).

1. Introduction: Factors, principles, and implications

In order to transition to a sustainable and flourishing economy from our (post-)COVID reality, we must acknowledge and address the factors that shape the current economic conditions. I suggest to state the impact of such factors through a set of driving principles for the UK’s post-COVID strategy. These factors are briefly explained below along with suggested principles that acknowledge and account for these factors:

1. Zero-carbon economy targets: Given the zero-carbon economy targets for 2050, one could clearly see that any investment other than that in carbon-neutral or carbon-reducing assets will either jeopardise the set targets, or lead to stranding these assets within the next 30 years. As a result, we suggest Principle 1: focus the UK’s investments on green and renewables-based initiatives.

2. Energy is the engine of the economy: It is therefore essential to both grow and expand the clean energy system so that the economy, as a whole, flourishes. This leads us to Principle 2: special focus on supporting greening of the energy system is of prime importance.

3. Localisation trend: Evidently, localisation is emerging as a strong trend due to a number of diverse reasons, such as:

  • Health: continuous threat of the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The restricted mobility between variously affected localities is likely to be expected, at least, within the medium term, as local outbreaks occur and are contained [1];
  • Technology: most renewable energy technologies are dependent on the availability of locally distributed renewable sources. For instance, tidal energy can only be harvested on the shore side, while sufficient solar generation can be expected from localities with sunny weather, etc.
  • Local governance: local communities have a stronger sense of their identity and many prefer to work together (locally) in order to address the challenges they face.
  • Resilient architectures: distributed, decentralised organisations (be it for critical and non-critical infrastructure, businesses, community, etc.) are much more resilient when faced by threats (e.g., from floods to disease outbreaks).

Thus, we suggest Principle 3: the UK should aim for a locally distributed systems architecture across all areas of infrastructure, business, and society.

4. Smart, globally inter-connected ecosystem: While distributed and decentralised assets are most resilient to systemic failures, they also must be monitored, coordinated and interconnected if they are to act as a single economic and social ecosystem and not just as a set of disjointed assets. Thus, we suggest Principle 4: Smart technology must underpin the distributed, de-centralised economy and ecosystems for monitoring, access, coordination, control and communication.

The UK has already taken the first steps towards smart local energy systems (SLES) through a programme of research and development embodied in 4 large-scale demonstrators (The Energy Superhub Oxford, ReFLEX Orkney, Project Leo, Smart Hub SLES), several design projects  and numerous pilots [19]. And, more than that, many innovative businesses (such as Verv and Electron) and non-for profit organisations (such as Community Energy England, Centre for Sustainable Energy) and local/regional authorities (such as Bristol and Manchester City Councils) are well underway in implementing much of the above in practice. Yet, these activities must be systematically replicated while contextually adapted to each locality, and radically scaled up.

As stated by P. Devine-Wright [2], “Local Energy involves professional organisations, primarily partnerships between public and private sectors, with a focus upon public authorities taking a coordinating role to leverage private sector investment in local energy provision.” Here, the local energy landscape is defined to include a range of energy related activities [3]: generating energy; reducing energy use through energy efficiency and behaviour change; managing energy by balancing supply and demand; and purchasing energy.

All of this draws on a range of skills: organisation, communication, management, governance, regulation, technical and technological, business innovation and so on.

The smart aspect of energy system often implies digitally supported coordination of decision-making for a system to optimise its resource use and waste reduction (both generation and consumption), fault tolerance and recovery from failures, support for human decision-making for efficiency and comfort. All of this draws on the skills of software, hardware, and power system engineers [4]. Thus, a particular attention needs to be paid to the “smart” technology occupations and skills training.

On the other hand, the smart energy system will not fulfil its potential without smart users, thus the household and business users also need to acquire skills in the functioning and use of digital energy systems [5–8].

The above noted principles have many implications, a few of which we note below:

1. If clean and renewables-based economy is to take off (as driven by principles 1 and 2) there is a need for a long-term cross-party commitment to investment into and development of such energy systems. There is ample evidence that uncertain, unpredictable, and changeable policy on renewable energy leads to dis-investment and skills loss in these sectors.

2. If distributed architectures are to be successful across the UK’s economy, local authorities would require more financial independence and regulatory support, as well as more accountability for fostering grass-root innovation and participation in the energy sector and economic transition.

3. If smart technology is to underpin the transition, a wide variety of training and educational programmes need to be delivered (from on-the-job training to mass educational programmes through media and specialised university degrees) to enable country-wide participation and contribution. The various areas of skills development are discussed further in section 2.

1.1. On Green Jobs

It is also worth noting that the first two suggested principles necessitate both transition to renewables-based technologies and to green jobs. Currently there are a number of definitions of what a ‘green job’ is [9–11]. To state briefly, it appears that any job has the potential of becoming a green or greener job by changing the practices of the company or service/product lifecycle, as long as it will reduce the environmental impact of enterprises and economic sectors, ultimately to levels that are sustainable [11].

However, this does not offer any means to statistically distinguish between green and non-green jobs [11]. Should a green job be defined by the level of emissions involved or the purpose of the job [12]? Moreover, the standard data concerning employment and the labour market structure does not account for any definition of green jobs either.

Nevertheless, some work has focused on defining profiles of ‘green jobs’ and observing if such jobs differ from non-green ones in terms of skill content and of human capital. For instance, [13] notes that green jobs require more interpersonal skills and require more formal education, work experience and on-the-job training.

Yet other research notes that many of the green jobs that will be in demand as a result of a transition to a low carbon economy are not new jobs as such. Rather, the transition will see a shift of workers in conventional energy industries such as engineers and installers, to apply their expertise in the low-carbon sector [14].

Thus, on green jobs, we observe that:

1. Transition to SLES with green jobs not only has the potential to support the economy to  flourish, but will also lead to a more skilled and better qualified workforce within the UK overall.

2. In order to support this transition (and to monitor and coordinate the job market, as per principle 4) clear definition of and operationalisation for statistical data collection on green jobs is needed.

2. Areas of Skills Development

The transition to smart local energy systems has the capacity to create jobs across a number of areas within the UK economy:

2.1 Energy System

With respect to job creation, the renewables-based smart local energy systems are a workforce intensive. They require workforce for the manufacture, distribution, sale, installation, operation, and maintenance of the wide variety of locally distributed generation resources. For instance, to outfit a dwelling with PV panels, panel manufacturers and retailers must be present, installers must be available, as well as maintenance operators for the post-installation period. Additionally, various energy service providers (such as demand-side management, peer to peer trading and storage service operations) can create new businesses, working with the installed distributed generation resources. A similar set of activities is required for integration of all other renewable energy sources, from wind, bio-gas, tidal, wave, anaerobic digestion, to hydrogen. Finally, a set of aggregation and grid regulation service providers must step in to ensure that the renewables-powered localities remain reliably supplied by electricity, irrespective of the generation intermittency and are seamlessly integrated with the UK electricity grid at large and comply with the grid regulations.

Furthermore, we underline that the transition to smart local energy systems is not limited to the electricity generation and use, but must integrate heating and cooling and transportation areas.

2.2 Transportation

To support transition of transportation, the vehicle stock within the country must be re-fitted to either electric sources (electric vehicles: EVs) or to bio-gas or hydrogen fuels. This, in turn, will require new charging and re-fuelling infrastructure installation across the UK’s motorways and cities, as well as workforce to operate these. While the current workforce in refuelling stations can be re-trained to operate the new charging/re-fuelling stations through on-the-job training, the vehicle maintenance workforce will require substantial re-training as EV maintenance is dramatically different from that of present conventional fossil-powered vehicles.

2.3 Heating and Cooling

Similar to renewables-based generation sources for electricity, the transition of heating and cooling systems requires installation of new technology (such as air and ground heat pumps, bore holes, sun-powered hot water tanks, waste heat recycling). This, too, has to be supported by manufacturing, installation and maintenance professionals. Many, such as gas boiler installers, must be re-trained to new skills, e.g., heat pump installation. Some will be attracted from other domains, e.g., builders to carry out the bore hole construction. Yet others will be required to train as engineers.

2.4 Building and Retrofit

Transition to the new energy sources will require integration of such sources into the fabric of the UK’s built environment. This implies both training and regulation for the new built, and retrofit of the existing building stock. This too is a large and labour-intensive transition area, as the workforce must be trained to work in accordance with zero-carbon construction practices.

Similarly, a large-scale retrofit activity is required, e.g., to undertake energy audits, draft proofing advice provision, external and internal wall insulation. Recent experience with provision of funding for retrofit with no skilled parties to deliver it has demonstrated that poor quality workmanship and poor reputation of the scheme can cause more damage than help to further the causes of energy efficiency. Thus, measures (such as register of qualified retrofit providers, contract award only upon qualification confirmation, post-installation quality assurance/audit) must be taken to ensure that retrofit work is undertaken by qualified professionals, for which quality assurance processes and monitoring bodies need to be put in place as well.

2.5 Regulation and Governance

The energy sector is highly regulated and will remain so in the future due to both technical requirements (e.g., maintaining grid frequency) and critically of its continuous availability (e.g., for operation of other businesses and welfare of population). Yet, transition to SLES will require substantial regulatory review and adaptation. For instance, to enable small-scale generation and trading across household and non-energy businesses, the consumers should be able to change suppliers (as they will be often buying from their peers) very frequently (e.g., every 30 minutes) [15].

In addition, new governance structures will be necessary, e.g., a governing body to ensure consistent data collection and standard formats of data sharing across industries.

2.6 Teaching and Training

As noted before, the green jobs will require more interpersonal skills, as well as formal education, particularly in all areas of engineering as well as professionals able to work across disciplines [16]. On-the-job training [13], and re-skilling for the workforce that shifts from the conventional to the low-carbon sector [14] will also be needed alongside mass education of the population at large for using smart energy systems and services. Thus, new education and re-training programmes will be required.

Moreover, many of those currently employed in the energy or related sectors (e.g., building and transport) cannot afford to take time off for additional education and training (e.g., due to financial pressures) [17] and so on-the-job, or paid-for training delivery modes are necessary.

2.7 Impact on Supply Chains

We must also note that the supply chains of the noted areas will, in turn, be changed and re-invigorated: from manufacturing and delivery of new hardware for renewable technology, to research and development investments across the affected sectors and their suppliers.

3. Skills Needed

As discussed above, the transition to SLES requires a wide ranging workforce, with many requiring re-skilling or up-skilling. Below we provide an overview of the preliminary set of skills which are expected to be in short supply in the near future. These skills have been noted as particularly relevant by a set of current energy system practitioners [16, 17], which, though are not definitive for the UK, can be considered sufficiently representative and indicative:

1. Soft Skills, i.e., skills that are necessary for engaging with stakeholders, such as negotiating, building partnerships, organisational skills, listening and communication, time management, etc.

2. Technical Skills, i.e., sills required to install, set up, operate, and maintain the hardware and software necessary (e.g., installation and operation of heat pumps, or EV charging stations, maintenance of wind turbines and data analysis for optimisation of distributed generation and consumption, etc.).

3. Project Management Skills, such as carrying out feasibility studies, handling procurement, identification and coordination of multiple stakeholders, risk management, etc.

4. Financial Skills relate to the skills to finance or obtain funding for projects, such as accounting, fundraising, financial modelling, putting new business models together.

5. Legal skills, such as navigating the regulatory framework, assessing planning permission, managing contracts, challenging smart energy system policy.

6. Skills for Building and Retrofit, such as building carbon neutral dwellings, draft-proofing and laying insulation, inside and outside wall insulation, etc.

7. Policy Making Skills, i.e., setting out policies with insight into their short- and long-term impact, and possible ramifications on other directly and indirectly related activities within the energy sector. This requires understanding of the current state, processes and trajectories within the energy systems, as well as continuous engagement with the sector.

8. Skills for Population at Large which include, to name a few, confidence to engage with smart technology for automaton, control and optimisation of own appliances, understanding of own behavioural impact on energy system and the wider eco-system and so ability to choose the best considered behaviour in a given situation (e.g., with whom to share data or allow access to devices, etc.), ability to engage with energy efficiency measures and benefit from local renewable generation programmes and businesses, etc.

4. Avenues for Skills Acquisition

How can the Government best retain key skills and re-skill and up-skill the UK workforce to support the recovery and sustainable

4.1 Skills Retention

The recent Global Talent Index Report (GETI) [18] carried out by 17,000 respondents from 162 countries has shown that although there is an obvious skills shortage, the most worrying issue for the renewable energy sector is, in fact, the political landscape. A lack of subsidies is of huge concern to the renewable industry, significantly more so than to the conventional and better established non-renewable sectors.

However, the skills shortage is a looming crisis that many are also worried about: 60% of respondents believe there is only 5 years to act before it hits. So what talent is lacking? The discipline of Engineering was reported to be in highest need (50%) and project leadership following with 25%. The latter reinforced by the lack of understanding of the system as a whole: how multiple energy generation methods can work together and complement each other, the role of legal experts and policy makers in steering the path to change, the implementation of effective and relevant training and education programmes and how all of these factors come together.

The key risks to the sector, as a result of talent shortages, include decreased efficiency, loss of business and reduced productivity. These consequences will trigger a negative feedback loop since it is likely that there will be less incentive to work in the renewable energy industry if it is a failing one.

The top three methods to attract the right talent, agreed amongst hiring managers and professionals, include:

  • Better training: Currently training provided at the universities is often considered too theoretical, and new graduates seem to lack practical experience [17], thus more practical, hands-on training is desirable.
  • Clearer career progression will help the employees envision their long-term placement with this sector. Yet, clear pathways for progression are still missing.
  • Increased remuneration and benefits packages are expected to make the jobs more attractive.

However, remuneration was one of the least common reasons for choosing to work in this sector. A possible explanation could be that the majority of the workforce in the renewable industry are between the ages of 25-34. The concern for the climate is more apparent among the younger employees who may enter the sector as they wish to take action against global warming rather than for gaining “job perks” [16].

4.2 Re-Skilling: cross-sector mobility

As noted in section 3 above, many of the skills necessary for enabling transition to SLES are generic, e.g., available within project managers or other workers across other domains. This is an indicator that the workforce currently employed (or recently made redundant) in other areas of economic activity could move to respective positions within the SLES domain. In order to enable such cross-sector mobility (which is relevant for retaining the skilled workforce in employment in the post-COVID environment and throughout the rapid transition to SLES), it is necessary to:

1. make information about the job profiles in SLES widely available across other sectors where adequately qualified staff may be in access of the current sectoral needs (e.g., air travel, retail, hospitality). This will ensure that those outside of SLES sector who may not have looked at SLES as a viable area of work, become aware of the open opportunities;

2. provide demonstrative cases of career transition. The cases of transition should be publicised for each sector specifically, e.g., a case whereby a manager working in airline industry has transitioned to SLES for the airline industry; a case where a store manager from retail industry is transitioning to SLES project management can be publicised within retail industry, etc. This will ensure that each sector worker can envision that those like her can transition to the SLES area. To reinforce the message that the given person has the right skill set for a particular area of SLES, the employers of those who are made redundant could be encouraged to provide this information directly to them;

3. provide opportunities for engagement, e.g., through “open days” whereby all potentially interested parties could visit a SLES workplace and/or have a (video/phone) chat with someone in a similar position of responsibility. This will help the potential applicants to envision the new sector and job to which they would be suited.

Opportunities for re-skilling and career progression/review are already available within many trade unions as part of mid-career review. We suggest that the trade unions could also be drawn upon in supporting the transition to new careers within the SLES sector.

4.3 Up-Skilling the Workforce

The need for training and up-skilling the workforce is clear, both currently in the energy sector and that newly transitioning into it (e.g., due to rapid evolution and change within the technologies, standards, and customer expectations).

However, much of the workforce will be unable to re-enter full time education or training with no income to sustain themselves and their families. As a result, those currently employed in the energy sector (as per our ongoing study) have strong preferences for:

  • Shorter training courses which can be undertaken e.g., on a one or two leave day basis;
  • Locally available training that is accessible in close proximity to the home/workplace;
  • Paid training opportunities which will not lead to loss of earnings, as this dis-incentivises those in need of training (e.g., the builders are reluctant to take time off to qualify for zero-carbon construction if they have sufficient work in the current building industry);
  • Recognition of ‘learning by doing’ or workplace training;
  • Training through apprenticeships which provides the necessary practical experience along with theory content. This method of training is particularly well regarded by much of the industry.

4.4 Skills for the New Normal

We must also consider the skills necessary for the new normal work. Given that the impact of COVID will continue to unfold for, at least, the medium time, and that the UK economy must be prepared for potential other future pandemics, we suggest that particular attention should be paid to providing training for the workforce to be able to work remotely/from home, focusing on such skills as, for instance:

  • digital technology literacy;
  • self-organisation and time management;
  • self-care and mental health;
  • use of online collaboration tools and techniques.

References

[1]  LeicestershireLive. Live updates: Pressure on government over lockdown release, door-to-door testing. https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/lockdown-data-map-latest-updates- 4297621, 2020.

[2]  P. Devine-Wright. Community versus local energy in a context of climate emergency. Nat Energy, 4:894–896, 2019.

[3]  DECC. Community energy strategy. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community- energy-strategy, 2015.

[4]  West of England joint committee. https://westofengland-ca.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s891/ 13, 2019.

[5]  Christopher J Brown and Nils Markusson. The responses of older adults to smart energy monitors. Energy policy, 130:218–226, 2019.

[6]  Denise J. Wilkins, Ruzanna Chitchyan, and Mark Levine. Peer-to-peer energy markets: Understanding the values of collective and community trading. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Hu- man Factors in Computing Systems, CHI ’20, page 1–14, New York, NY, USA, 2020. Association for Computing Machinery.

[7]  Caroline Bird and Ruzanna Chitchyan. Towards requirements for a demand side response energy management system for households. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.02617, 2019.

[8]  Ruzanna Chitchyan and Caroline Bird. Theory as a source of software requirements. In Proceedings of the 28th International Requirements Engineering Conference, RE’2020. IEEE, 2020.

[9]  Gabriela Miranda, Hyoung-Woo Chung, David Gibbs, Richard Howard, and Lisa Rustico. Climate Change, Employment and Local Development in Extremadura, Spain. OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Working Papers 2011/04, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2011.

[10]  Construction Industry Training Board. Skills Needs Analysis of the Construction and Built Environment Sector in Wales Theme : Onsite and offsite construction in Wales. Technical report, CITB, 2013.

[11]  Con Gregg, Olga Strietska-Ilina, and Christoph Büdke. Anticipating skill needs for green jobs: A practical guide. ILO, Geneva, 2015.

[12]  Joshua Wright. Green Jobs, Part 3: Green Pathways: A data-driven approach to defining, quantifying, and harnessing the green economy, 2009.

[13]  Davide Consoli, Giovanni Marin, Alberto Marzucchi, and Francesco Vona. Do green jobs differ from non-green jobs in terms of skills and human capital? Research Policy, 45(5):1046–1060, 2016.

[14]  Olga Striestska-Ilina, Christine Hofmann, Durán Haro Mercedes, and Jeon Shinyoung. Skills for Green Jobs: A Global View: Synthesis Report Based on 21 Country Studies. International Labour Office, Skills and Employability Department, Job Creation and Enterprise Development Department, Geneva, 2011.

[15]  Jordan Murkin, Ruzanna Chitchyan, and David Ferguson. Goal-based automation of peer-to-peer electricity trading. In From Science to Society, pages 139–151. Springer, 2018.

[16]  Yael Zekaria and Ruzanna Chitchyan. Exploring future skills shortage in the transition to localised and low-carbon energy systems. 2019.

[17]  Yael Zekaria and Ruzanna Chitchyan. Qualitative study of skills needs for community energy projects. In Conference on Energy Communities for Collective Self-Consumption, 2020.

[18]  Airswift and Energy Job line. The Global Energy Talent Index Report 2019, 2019.

[19] Prospering from energy revolution, url: https://www.ukri.org/innovation/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund/prospering-from-the-energy-revolution/#pagecontentid-8, Accessed 20 Sept. 2020.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Ruzanna Chitchyan, at the University of Bristol. Ruzanna is a senior lecturer in Software Engineering and an EPSRC fellow on Living with Environmental Change. She works on software and requirements engineering for sustainability.

Dr Ruzanna Chitchyan

 

 

Capturing the value of community energy

Posted on by janet.crompton

Energise Sussex Coast and South East London Community Energy are set to benefit from a new business collaboration led by Colin Nolden and supported by PhD students Peter Thomas and Daniela Rossade. This is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council with match funding provided by Community Energy South from SGN. In total, £80,000 has been made available from the Economic and Social Research Council Impact Accelerator Account to launch six new Accelerating Business Collaborations involving the Universities of Bath, Exeter and Bristol. This funding aims to increase capacity and capability of early career researchers and PhD students to collaborate with the private sector. Match funding from SGN (formerly Scotia Gas Network) provided by Community Energy South for this particular project will free up time and allow Energise Sussex Coast and South East London Community Energy to provide the necessary company data and co-develop appropriate data analysis and management methodologies.

The Capturing the value of community energy project evolved out of the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) interdisciplinary webinar on Energy and Fuel Poverty and Sustainable Solutions on 14 May 2020. At this event Colin highlighted the difficulty of establishing self-sustaining fuel-poverty alleviation business models, despite huge savings on energy bills and invaluable support for some of the most marginalised segments of society. Peter also presented his PhD project, which investigates the energy needs and priorities of refugee communities. With the help of Ruth Welters from Research and Enterprise Development and Lauren Winch from BPI, Colin built up his team and concretised his project for this successful grant application.

The two business collaborators Energise Sussex Coast (ESC) and South East London Community Energy (SELCE) are non-profit social enterprises that seek to act co-operatively to tackle the climate crisis and energy injustice through community owned renewable energy and energy savings schemes. Both have won multiple awards for their approach to energy generation, energy saving and fuel poverty alleviation.

However, both are also highly dependent on grants from energy companies such as SGN with complicated and highly variable reporting procedures. This business collaboration will involve the analysis of their company data (eight years for ESC, ten years for SELCE) to take stock of what fuel poverty advice and energy saving action works and what does not, and to grasp any multiplier effects associated with engaging in renewable energy trading activities alongside more charitable fuel poverty alleviation work.

Benefits for ESC and SELCE include the co-production of a database to help them establish what has and has not worked in the past, and where to target their efforts moving forward. This is particularly relevant in the context of future fuel-poverty alleviation funding bids. With a better understanding of what works, they will be able to write better bids and target their advice more effectively, thus improving the efficiency of the sector more broadly.

 

It will also help identify new value streams, such as those resulting from lower energy bills. Rather than creating dependents, this provides the foundation for business model innovation through consortium building and economies of scale where possible, while improving targeted face-to-face advice where necessary. It will also explore socially distant approaches where face-to-face advice and engagement is no longer possible.

With a better understanding how and where value is created, ESC and SLECE, together with other non-profit enterprises, can establish a platform cooperative while creating self-renewing databases which enable more targeted energy saving and fuel poverty advice in future. Such data also facilitates application for larger pots of money such as Horizon2020, and the establishment of a fuel poverty ecosystem in partnership with local authorities and other organisations capable of empowering people instead of creating dependents. This additional reporting will capture a wider range of value and codify it to be submitted as written evidence to the Cabinet Office and Treasury at national level, while also acting as a dynamic database for inclusive economy institutions and community energy organisations at regional and local level.

People

Dr Colin Nolden is a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow based on the Law School, University of Bristol, researching sustainable energy governance at the intersection of demand, mobility, communities, and climate change. Alongside his appointment at the University of Bristol, Colin works as a Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. He is also a non-executive director of Community Energy South and a member of the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Peter Thomas is a University of Bristol Engineering PhD student and member of the Cabot Institute for the Environment investigating access to energy in humanitarian relief by combining insights from engineering, social sciences, and anthropology.

Daniela Rossade is a University of Bristol Engineering PhD student investigating the transition to renewable energy on the remote island of Saint Helena and the influence of renewable microgrids on electricity access and energy poverty.

Partner Companies

Energise Sussex Coast Ltd

South East London Community Energy Ltd

Community Energy South

Contact

For more information on the project contact: Dr Colin Nolden colin.nolden@bristol.ac.uk

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This blog is written by Dr Colin Nolden, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Bristol Law School and Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Colin Nolden

For humanity to thrive, we need engineers who can lead with a conscience

Posted on by janet.crompton

Dr Hadi Abulrub argues the key to facing environmental challenges lies in intelligent manufacturing, smart infrastructure, sustainable energy and engineering modelling.

Creativity and innovation have been the drivers of social, economic and cultural progress for millennia. The Industrial Revolution accelerated our capacities and there has been exponential growth ever since – in the products and services we use to enhance our lives as much as the number of people across the world for whom these tools have become indispensable.

But have the costs been worth it?

Judging by the state of the world, the answer is no. We live in turbulent times, resulting in large part from our over-reliance on the Earth’s resources. And the stakes are high, especially in the context of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a mere ten years remain to meet the ambitious task of setting the world on a more viable path for the sake of our collective prosperity.

How can we fulfil the complex needs of a growing population in a way that can both extend the lifespan of the finite resources that remain, and ensure the prosperity of future generations?

Conscience over convenience

Responsible consumption and production is the focus of the UN’s 9th SDG which highlights the scale and urgency of the challenge: the acceleration of worldwide material consumption has led to the over-extraction and degradation of environmental resources. According to the UN, in 1990 some 8.1 tons of natural resources were used to satisfy a person’s need, while in 2015, almost 12 tons of resources were extracted per person.

As the SDGs emphasise, the only way through is via inclusive industrialisation and innovation, sustainable economic growth, affordable energy and sustainable management of the Earth’s resources.

Recent years have seen an exceptional rise in our environmental consciousness, with consumers making more discerning choices about what and how much they buy and who they buy from. The growth of the sharing economy is further evidence of this shift in mindset towards a value-based economy, where people are increasingly looking to rent, recycle and reuse.

Corporations are responding in a similar vein. Whereas once the linear model of extraction, manufacture, distribution, consumption and disposal reigned supreme, more companies now realise that the resulting material waste and environmental damage is neither justifiable nor sustainable.

The circular economy

There is hope in the emerging model of closed-loop manufacturing and production, where there is a longer-term view focused on ensuring lasting quality and performance. Waste is being designed out of the process, with a greater focus on resource. For instance, the Belfast-based lighting manufacturer Lumenstream is using service-based business models to disrupt the industry with a servitised approach.

Servitisation means that goods are lent to customers in such a way that the company maintains full ownership of its products, from manufacture through to repair, to recycling. The company, the customer and the product are part of one interdependent ecosystem. The customer receives all the benefit without the need to worry about the physical product itself.

Liberation and leadership

One of the effects of the digitised world has been the accelerated march towards automation. According to research carried out by the McKinsey Global Institute, about half the activities people are paid for, which equates to almost $15 trillion in wages in the global economy, could be automated by around 2055.

Some argue this signals the redundancy of the human workforce. Is that really true? Are we not capable and intelligent enough to see things differently?

After all, how we respond, and whether the economy, the planet and people suffer or thrive will depend on a radical shift in our thinking. Building a more sustainable economy will require us to reimagine the world, while applying some creative problem-solving, logical thinking, and socio-cultural and emotional intelligence – qualities that are the sole preserve of human ingenuity.

As researchers, educators and scientists, engineering a brighter future has to be our focus.

This is why at the University of Bristol, we’re committed to supporting the future leaders in the engineering sector who will take the helm in intelligent manufacturing, smart infrastructure, sustainable energy and engineering modelling.

Redefining our humanity

This shift in awareness is something that I see on a daily basis, in the perspectives of the students who join us and in the way they view the challenges we face – in an educational setting and in a global context.

The so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution is already underway, which is concerned with maximising human health and wellbeing, facilitating interconnectivity and safeguarding our shared planet. These are the concerns of students who are seeking to make a difference in the world by developing the skills they need to become active agents for progressive change.

It’s this conscientious spirit, combined with entrepreneurial drive that has the potential to come up with a solution to the complex needs of a global society.

The next generation will effectively be responsible for redefining our humanity in a digitised world. It’s an immense challenge – and a tremendous opportunity to influence our collective future.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Hadi Abulrub, from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol. Hadi is also the Programme Director of the new MSc in Engineering with Management, designed for graduates who wish to lead in the new era of engineering and technology.  This blog was reposted from the Faculty of Engineering blog. View the original post.

Hadi Abulrub

 

Energy use and demand in a (post) COVID-19 world

Posted on by janet.crompton
Keeping tabs on energy use is crucial for any individual, organisation or energy network. Energy usage affects our bills, what we choose to power (or not) and how we think about saving energy for a more sustainable future for our planet. We no longer want to rely on polluting fossil fuels for energy, we need cleaner and more sustainable solutions, and both technologies and behaviours need to be in the mix.

It seems the COVID-19 crisis may be a good time to evaluate our energy usage, especially since we assume that we are using less energy because we’re not all doing/consuming as much. We brought together a bunch of our researchers from different disciplines across the University of Bristol to have a group think about how we might change our energy usage and demand during and post COVID-19. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.

Has COVID-19 reduced our energy supply and demand?

You may have noticed in the previous paragraph that I mentioned that we assume that we are using less energy during this COVID-19 crisis. We’re not travelling or commuting as much; we’re not in our work buildings using lots of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, making cups of coffee; and for those of us who work in offices, we’re not all sat around computers all day, especially those that have been furloughed. So what actually is the collective impact of our reduced transport, cessation of business and working from home, doing to our energy supply and demand?

John Brenton, the University of Bristol’s Sustainability Manager spoke on the University’s experience during lockdown. During this COVID-19 crisis so far, UK electricity consumption has fallen by 19% and this percentage reduction has also been seen at the University of Bristol too. Thing is, when there is reduced demand for electricity, fossil fuels become cheaper. It makes us ask the question, could this be a disincentive to investing in renewables? John also pointed out that COVID-19 has shrunk further an already shrinking energy market (which was already shrinking due to energy saving).

Even though electricity consumption has gone down by almost 20%, we are still emitting greenhouse gases, though not so much from our commute to school and work, but with the data we are using, now that a lot of us are home all day. Professor Chris Preist, Professor of Sustainability & Computer Systems, Department of Computer Science, said if we continue to embrace these new ways of working, we are going to replace the traffic jam with the data centre. Of global emissions today, 2% to 3% are made up through input of digital technology. Though the direct emissions of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are an issue and need to be addressed, they have a different impact than aviation. Digital tech is more egalitarian and a little technology is used by more people, than the much fewer privileged people who fly for example.

The systemic changes in society to homeworking can also increase our emissions far more than the digital tech itself, for example, people tend to live further away from work if they are allowed to work from home. Who needs to live in the city when you don’t have an office any more or you don’t have to come in to work very often? You may as well live where you want. You could even live abroad, but those few times you may need to come into the office, you would be travelling further and if abroad you may still have to fly in which would mean that your emissions would be huge, even though you are no longer commuting all year.

Are there positive changes and how might these be continued post-COVID-19?

Chris shared that most people and companies are now considering remote working as standard post-lockdown, which will reduce commuting and potentially improve emissions. Two thirds of UK adults will work from home more often and the benefits of this are that when people do go into work, they will likely be hot desking, this means companies will require less space and can reduce carbon emissions. Working from home will lead to a reduction of traffic on the roads.

We are video conferencing so much more, in fact Netflix agreed to reduce the resolution of their programmes in order to provide more capacity for home working and the ensuing video calls. But how does videoconferencing compare to our cars? One hour of video conferencing is equivalent to driving 500 metres in your car.

COVID-19 has also shown that a dramatic change in policy can be rapidly put in place, so this can be relevant in replicating for rolling out sustainability and energy initiatives.

What are the implications for social justice?

Dr Ed Atkins, who works on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance in the School of Geographical Sciences, spoke on the politics of a just transition. Changes to energy grids have been driven by collapsing demand and a lack of profitability in fossil fuels. Any investment post-COVID-19 will shape the infrastructure of the future, whether it will be clean or fossil intensive. Unfortunately many economic actors are using the COVID-19 crisis to roll back environmental regulations and stimulate investment by the taxpayer into fossil-intensive industry and economic policies.

Although many politicians are calling for a green recovery, which is positive, none of the current policies incorporate a just transition. A just transition would include job guarantee schemes and a rapid investment into green infrastructure as well as social justice and equity. A just transition would also account for the fact that not everyone can work from home, not everyone has a comfortable home to work in or the technology required to do so.

So what do we need to consider? Caroline Bird, who studies the cross-sectoral issues of environmental sustainability and energy in the Department of Computer Science, said that homeworking doesn’t work for everyone and often doesn’t work for the poorly paid. It doesn’t work well for the most vulnerable or least resilient in our society and community support is often needed here. We need to consider how we will educate everyone for a low carbon future. The government needs to take up the mantle and lead and pay for this. Policy change is possible, but we need to consider loss of interest and changing messages from the government that can lead to confusion.

We also need to consider rapid action to reduce the impact of COVID-19 and rapid action to reduce economic harm. But this is where the justice side of things is not well considered.

Can we imagine radical transformations as we emerge from lockdown?

Professor Dale Southerton, Professor in Sociology of Consumption and Organisation, in the Department of Management, initially raised some provocative questions: what has changed and what has remained and/or endured during COVID-19? And respectively, what will endure post-COVID-19? What has become the ‘new normal’ with regards to energy usage and consumption? Our routines and habits underpin our new normality and these routines and habits constitute demand – which is in opposition to how economists define demand. But how do the norms/normality come to be?

For example, how did the fridge freezer in our kitchen become normal? Because of the fridge freezer, it changed the design of our kitchens, we changed how we shopped, moving from small and regular local shopping trips to big weekly shops at supermarkets, all because we could store more fresh food. This drove us to embrace cars much more, as we needed the boot space to transport our fresh goods home and supermarkets were placed outside of local shopping areas so cars were needed to access them. All this together moves to the ‘normality’.

So then, what radical transformations have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic? We’ve seen more of us move to homeworking, with face to face interactions taking place via video call. Our food distribution systems have changed somewhat away from going regularly to the supermarket or dining out to buying produce online and receiving deliveries, and embracing takeaway culture much more. In a relatively short period of time we have re-imagined how to work and made it happen. However, the material infrastructure and cultural and social elements still need to evolve and change (which includes how the changes might affect our mental health, how we discipline our time at home, etc).

Caroline said that there are lots of other things we could be doing to decarbonise our energy use during and post-COVID-19, such as:

  • Creating good staff with good knowledge. To do that we need to support their mental health, give them education and development opportunities, and strengthen the fragility of the supply chain they might work in.
  • Educating everyone about low carbon and energy efficiency. To do this we need to consider what skills are needed, which of those are transferable, which skills will take more time to develop and what training programmes are needed for individuals.
  • Developing policies which don’t allow resistance from developers, or poor workmanship of properties, which can have co-benefits to health and social justice. A better planned housing estate, home and national infrastructure will improve social justice and energy savings enormously.
The only thing stopping us is bureaucracy and policy. It’s up to us to challenge the pre-COVID-19 status quo and demand fairer and cleaner energy. You can do this by writing to your local MP, share information on social media and with your friends and take part in activism. We could have a positive new future if we get it right.


Follow the speakers on Twitter:
Dr Ed Atkins @edatkins_ 
Caroline Bird @CarolineB293
Professor Chris Preist @ChrisPreist
John Brenton @UoBris_Sust
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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Cabot Institute Coordinator @Enviro_Mand. With thanks to Ruzanna Chitchyan for chairing the discussion panel and taking the notes.
Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Cooking with electricity in Nepal

Posted on by janet.crompton

PhD student Will Clements tells us how switching from cooking with biomass to cooking with electricity is saving time and saving lives in Nepal.

Sustainable Development Goal 7 calls for affordable reliable access to modern energy. However, around 3 billion people still use biomass for cooking. Smoky kitchens – indoor air pollution due to biomass cooking emissions – account for the premature deaths of around 4 million people every year. The burden of firewood collection almost always falls on women and girls, who must often travel long distances exposed to the risk of physical and sexual violence. The gravity of the problem is clear.

Wood stove in a household in Simli, a remote rural community in western Nepal. Credit: KAPEG/PEEDA

Electric cooking is a safe, clean alternative which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and frees up time so that women and girls can work, study and spend more time doing what they want.

In Nepal, many off-grid rural communities are powered by micro-hydropower (MHP) mini-grids, which are capable of providing electricity to hundreds or thousands of households, but often operate close to full capacity at peak times and are subject to brownouts and blackouts.

A project to investigate electric cooking in Nepali mini-grids was implemented in the summer of 2018 by a collaboration between Kathmandu Alternative Power and Energy Group (KAPEG), People Energy and Environment Development Association (PEEDA) and the University of Bristol in a rural village called Simli in Western Nepal. Data on what, when and how ten families cooked was recorded for a month, at first with their wood-burning stoves, and then with electric hobs after they had received training on how to use them.

A typical MHP plant in the remote village of Ektappa, Ilam in Nepal. Credit: Sam Williamson

When cooked with firewood, a typical meal of dal and rice required an average of 12 kWh of energy for five people, which is around the energy consumption of a typical kettle if used continuously for six hours! On the other hand, when cooked on the induction hobs this figure was just 0.5 kWh, around a third of the energy consumed when you have a hot shower for 10 minutes.

However, even at this high efficiency, there was insufficient spare power in the mini-grid for all the participants to cook at the same time, so they experienced power cuts which led to undercooked food and hungry families.

Many participants reverted to their wood stoves when the electricity supply failed them, and this with only ten of 450 households in the village trying to cook with electricity. The project highlighted the key challenge – how can hundreds of families cook with electricity on mini-grids with limited power?

In April 2019, the £39.8 million DFID funded Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme launched. The MECS Challenge Fund supported the Nepal and Bristol collaboration to investigate off-grid MHP cooking in Nepal further.

A study participant using a pressure cooker on an induction hob. Credit: KAPEG/PEEDA

A study participant using a pressure cooker on an induction hob. Credit: KAPEG/PEEDA
The project expands on the previous project by refining data collection methods to obtain high quality data on both Nepali cooking practices and MHP behaviour, understanding and assessing the potential and effect of electric cooking on Nepali MHP mini-grids, and using the collected data to investigate how batteries could be used to enable the cooking load to be averaged throughout the day so that many more families can cook with electricity on limited power grids.

MHP differs greatly from solar PV and wind power in that it produces constant power throughout the day and night, providing an unexplored prospect for electric cooking. Furthermore, this 24/7 nature of MHP means that there is a lot of unused energy generated during the night and off-peak periods which could be used for cooking, if it could be stored. Therefore, battery-powered cooking is at the forefront of this project.

Testing induction hobs in the MHP powerhouse. Credit: KAPEG/PEEDA

Collected data will be used to facilitate a design methodology for a battery electric cooking system for future projects, evaluating size, location and distribution of storage, as well as required changes to the mini-grid infrastructure.

Furthermore, a battery cooking laboratory is being set up in the PEEDA office in Kathmandu to investigate the technical challenges of cooking Nepali meals from batteries.

The baseline phase – where participants’ usual cooking is recorded for two weeks – is already complete and preparations for the transition phase are underway where electric stoves are given to participants and they are trained on how to cook with them.

We will be heading to Kathmandu to help with the preparations, and the team will shortly begin the next phase in Tari, Solukhumbu, Eastern Nepal.

The project will continue the journey towards enabling widespread adoption of electric cooking in Nepali MHP mini-grids, the wider Nepali national grid and grids of all sizes across the world.

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This blog is written by Will Clements and has been republished from the Faculty of Engineering blog. View the original blog. Will studied Engineering Design at Bristol University and, after volunteering with Balloon Ventures as part of the International Citizen Service, returned for a PhD with the Electrical Energy Management Research Group supervised by Caboteer Dr Sam Williamson. Will is working to enable widespread adoption of electric cooking in developing communities, focusing on mini-grids in Nepal.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of UKAid.

Will Clements

 

Uncomfortable home truths: Why Britain urgently needs a low carbon heat strategy

Posted on by janet.crompton



A new report backed by MPs and launched by Minister for Climate Change Lord Duncan on 15 October 2019, calls for an urgent Green Heat Roadmap by 2020 to scale low carbon heating technologies and help Britain’s homeowners access the advice they need to take smarter greener choices on heating their homes.  The year-long study by UK think-tank Policy Connect warns that the UK will miss its 2050 net-zero climate target “unless radical changes in housing policy, energy policy and climate policy are prioritised”. Dr Colin Nolden was at the launch on behalf of the Cabot Institute for the Environment and blogs here on the most interesting highlights of the report and questions raised.

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Policy Connect had invited a range of industry, policy, academic and civil society representatives to the launch of their Uncomfortable Home Truths report. The keynote, no less than Lord Duncan of Springbank, Minister for Climate Change, and the high-level panel consisting of Maxine Frerk, Grid Edge Policy (Chair), Alan Brown MP, House of Commons (SNP), Dr Alan Whitehead MP, House of Commons (Labour), Dhara Vyas, Citizens Advice, Adam Turk, BAXI Heating (sponsor) and Mike Foster, EUA (Energy & Utilities Alliance), (sponsor), had been briefed to answer tough questions from the crowd given the UK’s poor track record in the area of heat and home decarbonisation.

The event started with an introduction by Jonathan Shaw, Chief Executive of Policy Connect, who introduced the panel and officially launched the report. Uncomfortable Home Truths is the third report of the Future Gas Series, the first two of which focused on low-carbon gas options. This last report of the series shifts the focus from particular technologies and vectors towards heating, households and consumers. Jonathan subsequently introduced the keynote speaker Lord Duncan of Springbank, Minister for Climate Change.

Lord Duncan supported the publication of this report as timely and relevant especially in relation to the heat policy roadmap that government intends to publish in 2020. He stressed the importance of a cultural shift which needs to take place to start addressing the issue of heat at household and consumer level. He was adamant that the government was aligning its policies and strategies with its zero-carbon target according to the Committee on Climate Change and guided by science and policy. In this context he bemoaned the drive by some country representatives to put into question the targets of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which he had witnessed as the UK’s key representative at the run-up to COP25 in Chile. The 2020 roadmap will report on the decisions which will need to be taken in homes and in technology networks, ranging from heat pumps to hydrogen and low-carbon electricity to support their decarbonisation. It requires cross-party support while depending on more research and learning from successful examples in other European countries.

Although Lord Duncan suggested that ‘it’s easier to decarbonise a power plant than a terraced house’, he told the audience to take encouragement from the fuel shift from coal towards gas starting half a century ago. But in this context he once again stressed the cultural shift which needs to go hand-in-hand with government commitment and technological progression, using the example of TV-chefs shunning electric hobs as an indication of our cultural affinity for gas. As long as heating and cooking are framed around fossil fuels, there is little space in the cultural imagination to encourage a shift towards more sustainable energy sources.

“The example of TV-chefs shunning electric hobs is an indication of our cultural affinity for gas”. Image source.

Among the questions following the keynote, one quizzed Lord Duncan about the process and politics of outsourcing carbon emissions. Lord Duncan stressed his support of Border Carbon Adjustments compliant with EU and global carbon policy ‘in lock-step with our partners’ to ensure that carbon emissions are not simply exported, which appears to support the carbon club concept. Another question targeted the UK’s favourable regulatory environment that has been created around gas, which has resulted in the EU’s lowest gas prices, while electricity prices are highest in Europe, due, among other things, to Climate Change Levies, which do not apply to gas, increasing by 46% on 1 April 2019. Lord Duncan pointed towards the ongoing review of policies ahead of the publication of the 2020 heat roadmap which will hopefully take a more vector- and technology-neutral approach. A subsequent rebuttal by a Committee on Climate Change (CCC) representative stressed the CCCs recommendation to balance policy cost between gas and electricity as on average only 20,000 heat pumps are sold in the UK every year (compared to 7 times as many in Sweden) yet the Renewable Heat Incentive is about to be terminated without an adequate replacement to support the diffusion of low-carbon electric heating technologies.

Lord Duncan stressed the need to create a simple ‘road’ which does not fall with changes in policy and once again emphasized the need for a cross-party road to support the creation of a low-carbon heating pathway. A UKERC representative asked about the government approach to real-world data as opposed to modelling exercises and their support for collaborative research projects as both modelling and competitive approaches have failed, especially in relation to Carbon Capture and Storage. Lord Duncan responded that the UK is already collaborating with Denmark and Norway on CCS and that more money is being invested into scalable and replicable demonstrators.

Following an admission wrapped in metaphors that a change in government might be around the corner and that roadmaps need to outlast such changes, Lord Duncan departed to make way for Joanna Furtado, lead author of the Policy Connect report. She gave a very concise overview of the main findings and recommendations in the report:

  • The 80% 2050 carbon emission reduction target relative to 1990 already required over 20,000 households to switch to low-carbon heating every week between 2025 and 2050. The zero-carbon target requires even more rapid decarbonisation yet the most successful policy constellations to date have only succeeded in encouraging 2,000 households to switch to low-carbon heating every week.
  • This emphasizes the importance of households and citizens but many barriers to their engagement persist such as privacy issues, disruption associated with implementation, uncertainly, low priority, lack of awareness and confusion around best approaches, opportunities, regulations and support.
  • Despite the focus on households, large-scale rollout also requires the development of supply chains so at-scale demonstrations need to go hand-in-hand with protection and engagement of households by increasing the visibility of successful approaches. Community-led and local approaches have an important role to play but better monitoring is required to differentiate between more and less successful approaches.
  • Protection needs to be changed to facilitate the inclusion of innovative technologies which are rarely covered while installers need to be trained to build confidence in their installations.
  • Regional intermediaries, such as those in Scotland and Wales, need to be established to coordinate these efforts locally while at national level a central delivery body such as the one established for the 2020 Olympics in London needs to coordinate the actions of the regional intermediaries.
  • Ultimately, social aspects are critical to the delivery of low-carbon heat, ranging from the central delivery body through regional intermediaries down to households and citizens.

 

Image source.

Chaired by Maxine Frerk of Grid Edge Policy, the panel discussion kicked off with Alan Brown who stressed the urgency of the heating decarbonisation issue as encapsulated by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion and the need to operationalize the climate emergency into actions. He called for innovation in the gas grid in line with cautions Health and Safety Regulation alterations. Costs also need to be socialised to ensure that the low-carbon transition does not increase fuel poverty. His final point stressed the need reorganize government to make climate change and decarbonisation a number 1 priority.

Dr Alan Whitehead, who has been involved with the APPCCG from the beginning, emphasized how discussions around heat decarbonisation have progressed significantly in recent years and especially since the publication of the first report of this series. He suggested that the newest report writes the government roadmap for them. In relation to the wider context of decarbonising heat, Alan Whitehead encouraged a mainstreaming of heating literacy similar to the growing awareness of plastic. He also stressed how far the UK is lagging behind compared to other countries and this will be reflected in upcoming policies and roadmaps. As his final point Alan Whitehead cautioned that the low-intrusion option of gas-boiler upgrades from biomethane to hydrogen ignores the fact that greater change is necessary for the achievement of the zero-carbon target although he conceded that customer acceptance of gas engineer intervention appears to be high.

Dhara Vyas presented Citizens Advice perspective by stressing the importance of the citizen-consumer focus. Their research has revealed a lack of understanding among landlords and tenants of the rules and regulations that govern heat. She suggested that engagement with the public from the outset is essential to protect consumers as people are not sufficiently engaged with heating and energy in general. Even for experts it is very difficult to navigate all aspects of energy due to the high transaction costs associated with engagement to enable a transition on the scale required by government targets.

Finally, representatives of the two sponsors BAXI and the Energy & Utility Alliance made a rallying call for the transition of the gas grid towards hydrogen. Adam Turk emphasized the need to legislate and innovate appropriately to ensure that the 84% of households that are connected to the gas grid can receive upgrades to their boilers to make them hydrogen ready. Similarly, Mike Foster suggested that such an upgrade now takes less than 1 hour and that the gas industry already engages around 2 million consumers a year. Both suggested that the gas industry is well placed to put consumers at the heart of action. They were supported by several members of the audience who pointed towards the 150,000 trained gas service engineers and the ongoing distribution infrastructure upgrades towards plastic piping which facilitate a transition towards hydrogen. Other members of the audience, on the other hand, placed more emphasis on energy efficiency and the question of trust.

Sponsorship of the Institution of Gas Engineers & Managers, EUC (Energy & Utility Alliance) and BAXI Heating was evident in the title Future Gas Series and support for hydrogen and ‘minimal homeowner disruption’ boiler conversion to support this vector shift among members of the audience was evident. Nevertheless, several panel members, members of the audience and, above all, Lord Duncan of Springbank, stressed the need to consider a wider range of options to achieve the zero-carbon target. Electrification and heat pumps in particular were the most prominent among these options. Energy efficiency and reductions in energy demand, as is usual at such events, barely received a mention. I guess it’s difficult to cut a ribbon when there’s less of something as opposed to something new and shiny?

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This blog is written by Dr Colin Nolden, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Bristol Law School and Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Colin Nolden

Indoor air pollution: The ‘killer in the kitchen’

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit Clean Cooking Alliance.

Approximately 3 billion people around the world rely on biomass fuels such as wood, charcoal and animal dung which they burn on open fires and using inefficient stoves to meet their daily cooking needs.

Relying on these types of fuels and cooking technologies is a major contributor to indoor air pollution and has serious negative health impacts, including acute respiratory illnesses, pneumonia, strokes, cataracts, heart disease and cancer.

The World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution causes nearly 4 million premature deaths annually worldwide – more than the deaths caused by malaria and tuberculosis combined. This led the World Health Organization to label household air pollution “The Killer in the Kitchen”.

As illustrated on the map below, most deaths from indoor air pollution occur in low- and middle-income countries across Africa and Asia. Women and children are disproportionately exposed to the risks of indoor air pollution as they typically spend the most time cooking.

Number of deaths attributable to indoor air pollution in 2017. Image credit Our World in Data.
Replacing open fires and inefficient stoves with modern, cleaner solutions is essential to reduce indoor air pollution and personal exposure to emissions. However, research suggests that only significant reductions in exposure can tangibly reduce negative health impacts.
The Clean Cooking Alliance, established in 2010, has focused mainly on the dissemination of improved cookstoves (ICS) – wood-burning or charcoal stoves designed to be much more efficient than more traditional models – with some success.
Randomised control trials of sole use of ICS have shown reductions in pneumonia and the duration of respiratory infections in children. However, other studies, including some funded by the Alliance, have shown that ICS have not performed well enough in the field to sufficiently reduce indoor air pollution to lessen health risks such as pneumonia and heart disease.
Alternative fuels such as liquid petroleum gas (LPG), biogas and ethanol present other options for cooking with LPG already prevalent in many countries across the world.
LPG is clean-burning and produces much less carbon dioxide than burning biomass but is still a fossil fuel.
Biogas is a clean, renewable fuel made from organic waste, and ethanol is a clean biofuel made from a variety of feedstocks.
Image credit PEEDA

Electric cooking, once seen as a pipe dream for developing countries, is becoming more feasible and affordable due to improvements and reductions in costs of technologies like solar panels and batteries.

Improved cookstoves, alternative fuels and electric cooking have been gaining traction but there is still a long way to go to solving the deadly problem of indoor air pollution.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Peter Thomas, Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol. Peter’s research focusses on access to energy in humanitarian relief. This blog is co-written by Will Clements, Faculty of Engineering.

Collecting silences

Posted on by janet.crompton

‘Noise’ is the Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which have resulted from fossil-fuel-powered economic growth which is measured as GDP for particular territories. In Figure 1, ‘noise’ is the area below the green line to the left of the vertical dotted line (historical) and below the blue line to the right of the vertical dotted line (projected). ‘Silence’ is the reduction of fossil-fuel use and the mitigation of carbon emissions. In Figure 1, ‘silence’ is the green shaded area above the blue line and below the dotted blue line to the right of the vertical dotted line.

Figure 1

To ensure that we maintain atmospheric GHG emission concentrations conducive to human habitation and the ecosystems that support us, we need to assign less value to ‘noise’ (burning fossil fuels) and more value to ‘silence’ (GHG emission mitigations). Creating a system which assigns value to ‘silences’ by turning them into investable resources requires an effort sharing mechanism to establish demand and organizational capacity alongside accurate measuring, reporting and verification for supply.

Organizational capacity for supplying ‘silences’ depends on the ability of organizations to create, trade and accumulate GHG emission mitigations. Due to the intangible nature of such ‘silences’, turning GHG emissions mitigations into investable sources requires their assetization as quasi-private goods with well-defined and delineated quasi-property rights. As preservations of the intangible commodity of stable atmospheric GHG concentrations through the reduction of pollution, such rights need to protect investment by ensuring that these private goods are definable, identifiable and capable of assumption by third parties. Such rights also require enforcement and protection against political and regulatory risk.

Commodifying GHG emission mitigations as quasi-private goods by assetizing them with well-defined and delineated quasi-property rights therefore provides the basis for the supply of ‘silences’. Rather than ‘internalising’ the cost of stabilising or reducing atmospheric GHG concentrations, this approach assigns value to GHG emission mitigations. Yet, if we want to avoid climate catastrophe according to the most recent IPCC 1.5C report and the UNDP Emissions Gap Report, GHG emission mitigations also require concretization on the demand-side. There are several examples of GHG emission mitigation and energy demand reduction assetization that can help illustrate how such systems of demand and supply can function.

Similar to GHG emission mitigations, energy demand reductions also represent the reduction of an intangible commodity vis-à-vis a baseline. While stable atmospheric GHG emission levels are the intangible commodity in the case of the former, in the case of the latter the intangible commodity is energy supply which fuels economic growth. Both require the assetization of mitgations/reduction to create ‘tangibility’, which provides the basis for assigning value. To illustrate, energy demand reductions are absent on domestic and corporate accounts and subsequently undervalued vis-à-vis increases in revenues.

Market-based instruments that succeed in setting and enforcing targets and creating systems of demand, however, can create ‘tangibility’. Energy demand reductions, for example, are assetized as white certificates representing equal units of energy savings (negawatts) in white certificate markets. Similarly, demand-side response enables the assetization of short-term shifts in energy (non-)use (flexiwatts) to benefit from flexibility and balancing markets. Carbon emission mitigations are assetized under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs).

Crucially, these examples shift the emphasis from the cost of pollution and the need to ‘internalise’ this cost or from turning pollution into a quasi-private good through Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) towards the positive pricing of energy demand reductions and carbon emission mitigations. Positive pricing turns their respective reduction and mitigation itself into a quasi-private good by turning ‘silences’ into investable resources.

The main technical difficulty of establishing such systems lies in the definition of baselines and measuring, reporting and verification vis-à-vis these baselines. The difficulties inherent in this approach are well documented but improved sensing technology, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), and distributed ledgers promise greatly improved granularity and automated time-stamping of all aspects of energy (non-)use at sub-second intervals. If structures of demand are clearly identified through target-driven market-based instruments and supply is facilitated through the assetization of ‘silences’ as quasi-private goods with clearly defined and enforced quasi-property rights, a clear incentive also exists to ensure that MRV structures are improved accordingly.

Key to the implementation of such target-driven market-based instruments are mechanisms to ensure that efforts are shared among organisations, sectors or countries, depending on the scale of implementation. Arguably, one of the reasons why the CDM failed in many aspects was because of the difficulty of proving additionality. This concept was supposed to ensure that only projects that could prove their viability based on the availability of funds derived from the supply, trade and accumulation of CERs would be eligible for CDM registration.

The difficulty of proving additionally increases cost and complexity. To ensure that new mechanisms no longer require this distinction, a dynamic attribution of efforts is required. A mechanism to dynamically share efforts can also help address rebound effects inherent in energy efficiency and energy demand reduction efforts. Key is the target-driven nature of associated market-based instruments and the equitable distribution of the rebound through a dynamic mechanism which shares any rebounds (i.e. increases in carbon emissions) equitably among organisations, sectors or countries. With an appropriate effort-sharing mechanism in place, the demand and supply of ‘silences’ can be aligned with targets aiming to maintain atmospheric GHG emission concentrations in line with levels conducive to human habitation and the ecosystems that support us.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Colin Nolden, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in sustainable city business models. The blog has been reposted with kind permission of World Sustainable Energy Days. If you would like to read more on this topic, you can read Colin’s research paper here.

Colin Nolden

 

Digital future of renewable energy

Posted on by janet.crompton

As part of Green Great Britain Week, supported by BEIS, we are posting a series of blogs throughout the week highlighting what work is going on at the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute for the Environment to help provide up to date climate science, technology and solutions for government and industry.  We will also be highlighting some of the big sustainability actions happening across the University and local community in order to do our part to mitigate the negative effects of global warming. Today our blog will look at ‘Technologies of the future: clean growth and innovation’.

1. Background

Today over 94% of the energy market in the UK is dominated by the Major Power Producers (MPP) who generate electricity and feed it to households and businesses over the grid [1].

Historically, to cut down on the fuel transportation costs, the major generation plants had to be located close to the fuel sources, i.e., where coal and oil were mined. The generated electricity would then be transmitted through power lines and distribution stations down to the households and businesses who would use the electricity up.

This structure of the industry was based on several constraints:

  • Electricity generation locations are constrained by the location of fossil sources (as it is cheaper and easier to transmit the generated electricity than to move fuel around);
  • Electricity generation requires large investments into large plants (due to economies of scale of the generation technology);
  • Electricity end users are only interested in consumption, and do not want to know much else about electricity itself.

Yet, technological advances as well as the societal understanding of the implications of the fossil fuel use have dramatically changed the framework within which the energy system operates:

  • Renewable generation technologies (such as solar panels, wind turbines, small hydro turbines) are now widely available for individual household and small community use.
  • As (most) renewable generation resources (e.g., solar or wind) are available where consumers are, it is technologically possible and economically affordable to generate and consume electricity locally, without centralised generation and transmission;
  • End users are increasingly interested in the environmental and social impact of the generated electricity, not only in consumption.

All the above, combined with the governmental subsidies for renewables installations (e.g., feed-in-tariffs) have led to a recent growth of micro-generation in the UK (i.e., individuals or organisations with small-scale energy generation, such as domestic wind or solar PV units). Such micro-generators consume their own generated energy and sell any excess back to the grid. Such generation offers the potential for a distributed model of energy generation and consumption that is not reliant on MPPs.

Challenge

Though presently, there is a successful renewables-based ecosystem in the UK, it has been largely driven by governmental subsidies. However, these subsides are now set to be withdrawn. As of March 2019 no new installations will be eligible to feed-in-tariffs. Will this result in fall of the renewables sector, as already experienced by solar PV sector in Spain [2] when their solar PV subsidies were removed? Or can UK micro-generators find another way of ensuring viability of renewable installations?

Opportunities

Research at the University of Bristol suggests that a subsidy-free localised renewables-based energy sector is not only possible but is also the best solution to the energy security and affordability dilemma. Our proposed model for the new, modernised UK energy sector is based around localised, but globally interconnected peer-to-peer energy markets underpinned by digital technology. This is illustrated in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1: Peninsula peer-to-peer energy market (from [6])

 

2. Peer-to-Peer energy market underpinned by digital platform

In a peer-to-peer energy market any two individuals/households can directly buy  from and sell to each other, without intermediating third parties. These households can be both prosumers (i.e., producing and consuming own renewables-based electricity, as well as selling the excess to others), on simply consumers (if they have not own generation). Yet, unlike most microgrids, this is not an islanded model – which would require complete internal balance of supply and demand –  but rather a “peninsula”. Where the locality experiences shortage or excess generation, the demand/supply are imbalance is resolved through trade with the other localities or the grid at large. The key advantages here are in providing avenues for:

  • Additional income streams to households with microgeneration – where the feed in tariff is no longer pays for the extra generation, the peers who use the energy do. Moreover, the price of the locally generated/consumed energy is more competitive than that of the grid supply as it does not need to pay the same full transmission, distribution, and utilities services charges. (Though I must underline that, as each locality remains interconnected with the gird, the energy costs will still include grid connection and maintenance changes. This is because the intermittency of the renewables generation must be insured against, and grid provides such an insurance and balancing services.)
  • Increasing value proposition of microgeneration and energy storage – the microgenerators are not only getting return to their generation investment, but are also supporting local communities’ energy needs, contributing to the decarbonisation and energy security efforts.
  • Increased control over source of supply – consumers are now able to express their preferences on energy purchase: do they wish to buy solar or wind, from the closest geographically located producer or from the cheapest supplier; do producers wish to donate their excess generation to the local school or to their extended family members, or to sell it to the highest bidder? All these options become viable when peers directly buy and sell from each other.

Such an energy system, however, cannot exist without a reliable and trusted digital platform which will both remove the 3rd party intermediation, and advertise the sale and purchase orders between the trading parties, undertake the users’ preferences-based matching of these orders, ensure security of the transitions, transparency of the trades, and accountability of the transaction participants.

To operate in such market:

  1. the consumers and prosumers would join the platform and publish their preferences (e.g., sell to the highest bidder, or buy solar energy only, etc.);
  2. the participants will they use their smart meter data to periodically (e.g., for every 15 min or half an hour) publish their sale and purchase orders on a digital platform;
  3. for each trading period (e.g., 15 min.) the platform will match best fitting sale and purchase orders, and settle transaction accounts.

Note, (as illustrated in Fig 2) while in the current intermediated market the utilities act as  the contracting parties between the prosumers, consumers and the energy market (see Fig. 2.a), in this peer-to-peer market each prosumer/consumer is the immediate contracting party itself (see Fig. 2.b).

Figure 2: Energy Market Dis-intermediation (from [6])

To realise these demanding requirements, we advocate use of  distributed ledger technology for the energy trading platform [3, 4, 7]. Distributed ledgers (which incorporate blockchain and block-free technologies) are decentralised, distributed databases in which all transactions are immutably recorded. In other words, these are databases which are not controlled by any single company or individual, but are run and maintained by their participating membership. Data in these ledgers is redundantly stored in many locations, and cryptographically secured. As a result, once recorded, the data in the ledger cannot be changed and falsified [1].

The details on how to engineer this platform in such a way that engenders trust and participation is a topic of the HoSEM research project [5] and will be detailed in another blog post. For now, let’s assume that this platform is in successful operation. What are the implication of it on the UK energy market?

3. Implications on energy market

Move to a peer-to-peer energy trading over a distributed ledger will lead to several major changes in the UK’s energy system, to name a few:

  1. First and foremost, it changes the structure of the energy system itself – from centralised fossil-based generation to decentralised, distributed, local renewables–based generation and consumption set up;
  2. The digital technology-based market disintermediation (see section 2) deprecates the role of a trusted 3rd party (utilities in this case), reducing both the cost of transactions (i.e., energy) to the end users and allowing for the best possible preferences match to each participant. Now the suppliers are switched every trading period (e.g., every 15 min.), without any effort or cost to the market participants.
  3. This structure also radically changes the role of the energy user – from the passive consumer to an active prosumer. The end user now matters, as every unit of produced and consumed energy is different. It is different because it is produced in the users’ local area, or is originated from solar/wined/gas sources, or is bought from a friend… Then the price of each energy unit is also different and that difference is decided on basis of the participants preferences.

Clearly, many issues remain to be resolved before this shift to a digitally enabled peer to peer market becomes a reality. These include issues of regulation and licensing (presently households are not allowed to act as suppliers in the UK), grid safety (e.g., current frequency assurance), geographical and population density (e.g., rural areas have more renewable per-person than cities), fairness and pricing (more affluent individuals can afford more generation installations), to name a few. Yet, it is encouraging to see that technologically and economically this future can be here already today.

Footnote

[1] Theoretically it is possible, but practically it is improbable, as record falsification is designed to be prohibitively costly [3].

References

[1] Dep. of Energy and Climate Change Updated energy and emissions projections 2015 Tech. Rep., URL: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/updated-energy-and-emissions-projections-2015

[2] The rise and fall of solar energy in Spain, URL: http://www.abacoadvisers.com/spain-explained/life-in-spain/news/rise-and-fall-solar-energy-in-spain

[3] R. Chitchyan, J. Murkin, Review of Blockchain Technology and its Expectations: Case of the Energy Sector, URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03567

[4] J. Murkin, R. Chitchyan, D. Ferguson, Goal-Based Automation of Peer-to-Peer Electricity Trading, URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-65687-8_13

[5] Household-Supplier Energy Market, URL: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FP031838%2F1

[6] Used from J. Murkin, R. Chitchyan, D. Ferguson, Towards peer-to-peer electricity trading in the UK, Presented at All Energy 2018, URL: https://reedexpo.app.box.com/s/plwhcfaqp6pnhxc8mcjznh7jtkevg9h1/file/292636529562

[7] J.Murkin, Automation of peer-to-peer electricity trading, blog post at https://www.edfenergy.com/about/energy-innovation/innovation-blog/research-development-peer-to-peer-trading

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Ruzanna Chitchyan from the University of Bristol Faculty of Engineering and has been reposted from Refactoring Energy Systems blog.

Ruzanna Chitchyan

Read other blogs in this Green Great Britain Week series:
1. Just the tip of the iceberg: Climate research at the Bristol Glaciology Centre
2. Monitoring greenhouse gas emissions: Now more important than ever?
3. Digital future of renewable energy
4. The new carbon economy – transforming waste into a resource
5. Systems thinking: 5 ways to be a more sustainable university
6. Local students + local communities = action on the local environment

The new carbon economy – transforming waste into a resource

Posted on by janet.crompton

As part of Green Great Britain Week, supported by BEIS, we are posting a series of blogs throughout the week highlighting what work is going on at the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute for the Environment to help provide up to date climate science, technology and solutions for government and industry.  We will also be highlighting some of the big sustainability actions happening across the University and local community in order to do our part to mitigate the negative effects of global warming. Today our blog will look at ‘Technologies of the future: clean growth and innovation’.

On Monday 8 October 2018, the IPCC released a special report which calls upon world governments to enact policies which will limit global warming to 1.5°C compared with pre-industrial levels, failure to do so will drastically increase the probability of ecosystem collapses, extreme weather events and complete melting of Arctic sea ice. Success will require “rapid and far-reaching” actions in the way we live, move, produce and consume.

So, what comes to mind when you hear carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas? A waste product? You’re not wrong to think that given the predicament that our planet faces, but this article is going to tell the other side of the story which you already know but is often forgotten.

For over a billion years, carbon dioxide has been trapped and transformed, almost miraculously, into an innumerable, rich and complex family of organic molecules and materials by photosynthetic organisms. Without this process, life as we know simply would not have evolved. Look around you, – I dare say that the story of carbon dioxide is weaved, one way or another into all the objects you see around you in this moment. Whether it’s the carbon atoms within the material itself – or that old fossilised sourced of carbon was used to smelt, melt or fabricate it.

The great growth and development of the last two centuries has been defined by humanity’s use of fossilised carbon which drove the first and second industrial revolutions. But now – the limitations of those very revolutions are staring us in the face and a new revolution is already underway, albeit it quietly.

An industrial revolution is said to occur when there is a step change in three forms of technology, Information, Transport and Energy. The step change that I will discuss here is the use of carbon dioxide coupled with renewable energy systems to deliver a circular carbon economy that aims to be sustainable, carbon neutral at worst and carbon negative at best. This burgeoning field comes under the name carbon capture and utilisation (CCU). CCU, represents a broad range of chemical processes that will most directly impact energy storage and generation and the production of chemical commodities including plastics and building aggregates such as limestone.

In our research we are developing catalysts made of metal nanoparticles to activate and react CO2 to form chemicals such as carbon monoxide (CO), formic acid, methanol and acetate. They be simple molecules – but they have significant industrial relevance, are made on vast scales, are energy intensive to produce, and all originate in some way from coal. The methods that we are investigating while being more technically challenging, consume just three inputs – CO2, water and an electrical current. We use a device called an electrolyser, it uses electricity to break chemical bonds and form new ones. The catalyst sits on the electrodes. At the anode, water is broken into positively charged hydrogen ions called protons and oxygen, while at the opposite electrode, the cathode, CO2 reacts with the protons, H+, to form new molecules. It sounds simple but encouraging CO2 to react is not easy, compared to most molecules, CO2 is a stubborn reactant. It needs the right environment and some energy such as heat, electricity or light to activate it to form products of higher energy content. The chemicals that can be produced by this process are industrially significant, they are used in chemical synthesis, as solvents, reactants and many other things. CO for example can be built up to form cleaner burning petroleum/diesel-like fuels, oils, lubricants and other products derived by the petrochemical industry.

Formic acid and methanol may be used to generate energy, they can be oxidised back to CO2 and H2O using a device called a fuel cell to deliver electricity efficiently without combustion. One day we could see electrically driven cars not powered by batteries or compressed hydrogen but by methanol which has a higher volumetric energy density than both batteries and hydrogen. Batteries are heavy, too short-lived and use high quantities of low abundance metals such as lithium and cobalt – meaning their supply chains could suffer critical issues in the future. While the compression of hydrogen is an energy intensive process which poses greater safety challenges.

However, there are still many hurdles to overcome. I recently went to the Joint European Summer School on Fuel Cell, Electrolyser and Battery Technologies. There I learned about the technical and economic challenges from an academic and industrial perspective. In an introductory lecture, Jens Oluf Jensen was asked “When will we run out of fossil fuels?”, his answer “Not soon enough!”. An obvious answer but there is something I wish to unpick. The task for scientists is not just to make technologies like CO2 capture, CO2 conversion and fuel cells practical – which I would argue is already the case for some renewable technological processes. The greatest challenge is to make them cost competitive with their oil-based equivalents. A gamechanger in this field will be the day that politicians enact policies which incorporate the cost to the environment in the price of energy and materials derived from fossil fuels, and even go so far as to subsidise the cost of energy and materials-based on their ability to avoid or trap carbon dioxide.

Even without such political input there is still hope as we’ve seen the cost of solar and wind drop dramatically, lower than some fossil fuel-based power sources and only with limited government support. Already there are companies springing up in the CCU sector. Companies like Climeworks and Carbon Engineering are demonstrating technology that can trap CO2 using a process known as Direct Air Capture (DAC). Carbon Engineering is going even further and developing a technology they call Air to Fuels™. They use CO2 from the air, hydrogen split from water and clean electricity to generate synthetic transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. You may question why we should need these fuels given the rise of battery powered vehicles but a better solution for fuelling heavy goods vehicles, cargo ships and long-haul flights is at the very least a decade way.

In 1975, Primo Levi wrote a story about a carbon dioxide molecule and he said in relation to photosynthesis “dear colleagues, when we learn to do likewise we will be sicut Deus [like God], and we will have also solved the problem of hunger in the world.”. The circular carbon economy may still be in its infancy, but the seeds have sprouted. Unlike the first and second industrial revolution, the 3rd industrial revolution will not be dependent on one single energy source but will be a highly interdependent network of technologies that support and complement each other in the aim of sustainability, just like nature itself.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Gaël Gobaille-Shaw, University of Bristol School of Chemistry. He is currently designing new electrocatalysts for the conversion of CO2 to liquid fuels.
For updates on this work, follow @CatalysisCDT @Gael_Gobaille and @UoB_Electrochem on Twitter.  Follow #GreenGB for updates on the Green Great Britain Week.

Gael Gobaille-Shaw

Read other blogs in this Green Great Britain Week series:
1. Just the tip of the iceberg: Climate research at the Bristol Glaciology Centre
2. Monitoring greenhouse gas emissions: Now more important than ever?
3. Digital future of renewable energy
4. The new carbon economy – transforming waste into a resource
5. Systems thinking: 5 ways to be a more sustainable university
6. Local students + local communities = action on the local environment

 

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