Introducing Anne-Marie Trevelyan, energy minister and the UK international champion on adaptation and resilience for the COP26 presidency
uring the Industrial Revolution, the UK led the world in developing new technologies, as well as bringing jobs and prosperity to our shores.
Countries around the globe watched this progress and wanted to be part of it.
“A couple of hundred years later we are leading the world again, this time in a green industrial revolution.
“Thanks to UK government support, British businesses are ensuring we are a world leader in clean technologies like hydrogen and offshore wind. These technologies will not only change the way we power people’s homes but they will also give us new green energy sources that will in turn fuel new businesses and create jobs in our industrial heartlands.
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Cause for hope:
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Green giant: the UK’s approach to clean technologies will create new businesses and jobs
‘We are leading the world in a green
industrial revolution’
“And as the world moves towards net zero emissions, there will be opportunities for innovative UK industries to grow their knowledge and to export it.
“Through our recent landmark North Sea Transition Deal, we have become the first G7 country to launch an ambitious partnership that will help the oil and gas industry’s transition to green energy and support a myriad of high-quality jobs. Our Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy also sets out a bold new vision for building a competitive, greener future for the manufacturing and construction sector.
“This year we are hosting the UN climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow, where we will bring world leaders together to agree on action to tackle climate change.
“With a wish to support our friends in developing countries to build their growth on a green energy future, we will showcase all we have done and are doing now. We hope that we will inspire other countries in this new, green revolution – to build back greener, to become resilient to climate shocks and move away from fossil fuels to clean energy.
“Just as we led one revolution, we are at the forefront of another.”
Capturing the moment
“We are the first G7 country to launch an ambitious partnership that will help the oil and gas industry’s transition to green energy and support a myriad of
high-quality jobs”
Carbon capture and hydrogen technologies have huge potential to decarbonise flexible power generation and other hard to reach sectors
Renewable energy is at the centre of the UK’s transition to net zero, but with flexible power stations still required to ensure stability of the power grid, decarbonising our gas-fired power plants also has a big role to play in reducing emissions.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can remove at least 90 per cent of these plants’ carbon dioxide emissions by transporting and storing them safely underground. The UK government’s ten-point plan includes the target of capturing 10MT of carbon dioxide a year by 2030.
SSE is currently progressing projects at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Keadby in the Humber region, which could become the UK’s first CCS-equipped power stations before 2030, meeting a combined 30 per cent of the government’s target. The Humber and Scotland are ideally located for CCS technology, possessing extensive offshore storage potential in the North Sea in the form of depleted oil and gas fields and deep saline aquifers.
“We’re rightly seen as world leaders in offshore wind but we also know flexible, low-carbon thermal generation will be essential in continuing to facilitate the growth of renewables, and in ensuring security of supply through the net zero transition,” says Stephen Wheeler, managing director of SSE Thermal. “By 2030 our aim is to have 3GW of new low-carbon power stations in operation, replacing older, carbon-intensive generation on the grid.”
Balance of power: new power stations at Keadby and Peterhead could be among the first in the world to utilise carbon capture and hydrogen technologies
In North Lincolnshire, SSE Thermal is progressing the Keadby 3 project alongside Equinor, which would plug into the shared CCS infrastructure being proposed by the Zero Carbon Humber partnership to decarbonise the UK’s most carbon-intensive industrial region.
Meanwhile, the company is also proposing a new CCS-equipped power station at Peterhead in the northeast of Scotland, to ensure the historic site can continue to provide essential power generation in a way that’s consistent with SSE Thermal’s net zero commitments. Peterhead 2 would plug into the CCS transport and storage infrastructure that is being developed through the well-advanced Acorn project.
Another benefit of CCS is its role in creating low-carbon hydrogen. By removing the carbon dioxide emissions created in the production of “blue hydrogen”, CCS can enable the fuel to play a key part in the transition to net zero. In addition to Keadby 3, SSE Thermal is working with Equinor to advance the Keadby Hydrogen project, which could become the world’s first major 100 per cent hydrogen-fuelled power station, helping to create a hydrogen economy in the Humber region.
As well as power generation, CCS and hydrogen are seen as vital solutions for decarbonising heavy industry and other hard-to-reach sectors, helping to ensure a just transition for workers and communities.
“CCS and hydrogen present opportunities to decarbonise not just power generation but also industry in places like the Humber and the northeast of Scotland,” says Wheeler. “That’s really important when you think about protecting and creating jobs. You can use power generation as an anchor to stimulate investment in the necessary shared infrastructure, which enables other large industrial customers to tap into it and so also progress their own decarbonisation plans.”
He adds: “Net zero has changed everything. The targets that have been set by the UK government are ambitious – and, we believe, realistic – but there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done by industry and government to create the routes to market for these projects and the associated infrastructure.
“We need to work together to keep up the positive momentum and bring these projects to fruition as quickly as possible. As we approach COP26, we have a golden opportunity to show our leadership in these critical technologies.”
If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s the unreliability of our weather. One of the recognised challenges with some renewables, specifically wind and solar, is that they are reliant on the weather and therefore variable in their output, albeit predictably so.
“Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. At other times you can have too much,” says Jim Smith, managing director of SSE Renewables. “So it makes economic sense to maximise usage of the energy produced from renewables by storing it at scale.
“The obvious solution is storage that allows power to be stored and released on demand over a number of hours. But even the latest battery technology is not yet capable of storing it at the necessary scale. Pumped hydro is, which is why it’s sometimes referred to as a ‘water battery’.”
While hydropower was first employed more than 2,000 years ago, pumped hydro technology has existed for just over a century. The principle is simple: during periods of low demand or oversupply, electricity is used to pump the water from a lower reservoir to a higher one. When demand increases or generation is low, the water is released through turbines to generate electricity. Although the energy can be charged or discharged for many continuous hours, pumped storage can be brought online in a few minutes, meaning it can respond quickly to demand spikes or support grid stability in case of outages.
Last year, the Scottish government approved an updated planning consent to SSE Renewables to build a new pumped hydro plant at Coire Glas between Inverness and Fort William. At 1,500MW capacity and 30GWh storage, it could become the UK’s largest pumped hydro energy storage scheme and the first such scheme delivered in the UK for decades. A dam would be built across the entrance to an existing coire to create a large natural basin for the upper reservoir. This can then be released into the adjacent lower reservoir at Loch Lochy. Thanks to the difference in height it has an excellent natural head of pressure, thus offering greater storage capacity per cubic metre of water.
As the UK adds more renewable energy to meet its net zero target, the importance of pumped hydro storage is set to increase. The Coire Glas facility could more than double the UK’s pumped hydro storage. “It would also reduce the additional transmission capacity needed for new renewable projects that will generate the vast amounts of power needing to be transported south from Scotland,” says Smith.
Construction on Coire Glas could start from 2024, subject to the introduction of a policy mechanism by the UK government which supports investment in pumped storage and other long-duration storage technologies. The scheme would take around six years to build once fully financed and would employ construction and civil-engineering expertise, creating local jobs and using rock quarries in the basin to build the dam.
“Considering the scale of the development, its impact on the landscape would be minimal once built,” says Smith. “The Great Glen is a tourist attraction, so visual impact is really important. Other than a sensitively designed control building on the shore of Loch Lochy, anyone out walking around the loch would have little indication they are skirting one of the most significant energy projects to be constructed in the UK this century. And it is a long-term asset. The first major pumped storage scheme in the UK, at Ffestiniog, has been running for more than 50 years.
“It would reduce the need for investment in other expensive energy generation projects, such as nuclear, and help reduce peak wholesale prices of electricity.”
A study by researchers at Imperial College London showed that 4.5GW of new pumped storage capacity, equivalent to three projects on the scale of Coire Glas, would achieve savings of up to £690 million a year in 2050 for the electricity system.
“As we introduce more renewables to meet net zero targets, this is a technologically sound solution that will lead to a much more efficient and cost-effective operation of the grid.”
Pumped hydro storage technology allows the UK to make the most
of its unpredictable weather
Come rain, come shine
A new hydro plant could be built at Coire Glas, making use of Loch Lochy in the Great Glen
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