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charge of the
light brigade
Continuing 250 years of innovation, the energy industry is increasingly using smart technology – ensuring sustainability
is central to our future
Fuel for Thought
Fuel for Thought
A Timeline of Energy
In November, the future of the world might be agreed on the banks of the River Clyde in the atriums of Glasgow’s SEC. At the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) climate scientists and world leaders will consider the next steps in tackling the climate emergency. A key element of any plan will be smart technology. A smart meter in every home helps to upgrade our outdated energy system: a game changer in storing, redistributing and exporting renewable energy. But to look forward you sometimes need to look back. And the history of technological change and energy innovation is an inspiring starting point. Time and time again, humanity has found a way…
Water had turned wheels to grind flour and saw wood for centuries. But English inventor Sir Richard Arkwright created a machine that used the water wheel to power cotton looms. The water frame (left) spun not just one thread, but 96 at a time, giving birth to the factory process. Cotton mills sprung up by rivers all over Britain. But with the invention of steam power, the use of water declined, until turbines and generators led to new ways of harnessing H20. French engineer Benoit Fourneyron developed the hydropower turbine and the first hydroelectric power station was built at Niagara Falls. These days, using dams and tidal estuaries, water provides 16 per cent of global energy.
1768 – Water Frame Invented
Thomas Edison (right) had his lightbulb moment in the same year as English physicist Joseph Swan. Both men, either side of the Atlantic, independently demonstrated incandescent lightbulb designs in 1879. Swan bedecked the Savoy Theatre in London in his invention two years later, the first public building in the world to be lit by electricity. Hunger for electricity hasn’t dimmed a watt since, and it now powers almost everything in our homes from fridges to iPhones. In 1950 each person in the US consumed, on average, 2,000 kilowatt hours of electricity – by the turn of the 21st century it was 32,700 kilowatts.
1879 – Electric Lighting
At the beginning of the 20th century, Britain’s electricity supply was fragmented: in the 1910s, Tyne and Wear had the largest power system in Europe, but blackouts were still common over the Pennines. The task of uniting the country’s power stations fell to Lord William Weir (left), who proposed a national energy grid. The infrastructure needed was daunting – 4,000 miles of cables alone. But in 1933 the power was turned on and five years later the UK had the world’s first fully integrated national power system. And just in time: during the Second World War, power from South Wales helped to keep London’s lights on when some of the capital’s power stations were bombed.
1933 – National Grid Turned On
The atomic age began with a discovery made by a team led by German chemist Otto Hahn in 1938. He found that a single neutron can cause a uranium nucleus to split. The energy released was 200 million times that of the original, and the fissure released further neutrons leading to a chain reaction. The discovery led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Hahn. Another Nobel winner, Enrico Fermi, designed the first reactor and in 1954 the Soviet Union began operating the world’s first nuclear power plant. The promise of cheap, limitless energy outweighed the horrors of the atomic bomb, but enthusiasm cooled after Chernobyl. Today, nuclear energy meets 10 per cent of global needs.
1938 – Nuclear Fission Discovered
The internal combustion engine was hugely influential, driving our love of cars through the 20th century. Many oil-stained hands in Europe and America tinkered for decades in the late 1800s perfecting the engine. Notably, English engineer Edward Butler devised the first petrol version in 1884 (pictured left), two years before the father of the automobile, Karl Benz, introduced his to the world. Butler’s prototype failed to generate enough interest and was scrapped for metal. By the turn of this century, the now compact and powerful internal combustion engine was driving the world’s half a billion cars, at a time when we were guzzling 70 million barrels of oil a day.
1884 – Internal Combustion Engine Designed
A house was powered by wind-generated electricity for the first time in 1887. Professor James Blyth, a Scottish electrical engineer, achieved the feat with two wind turbines which lit up his holiday home in Marykirk. But living on a blustery island like Britain didn’t make wind power any more economical – it was seen as too expensive to pursue, particularly when coal was so readily available. Not now though. Today the UK has the ninth and tenth largest wind farms on the planet, in the Irish Sea and the Thames Estuary.
1887 – First House Powered by a Wind Turbine
Harnessing the sun’s power has had humans scratching their heads for millennia. It wasn’t until 1839 that French physicist Edmond Becquerel (left) made the first rudimentary photovoltaic cell. Light particles, or photons, could knock silver chloride electrons into an electricity-generating circuit, returning them to their original place, creating a clean, replenishing loop of energy. It took a century and dwindling stocks of fossil fuels for governments to finally invest in the industrial use of solar power. Using silicon instead of silver, the first 1 MWp solar farm was built in 1982 in California. Solar farms have grown in size and output since, but still only generate 2 per cent of the world’s energy.
1982 – First 1 MWp Solar Farm
Countries had been discussing the heating planet since
the 1970s, but the 1992 Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, enshrined in UN law the need to combat climate change, with John Major signing on behalf of the United Kingdom. It also committed nations to regular meetings, which led to the Conference of the Parties – or COP – meetings. Glasgow’s is the 26th conference, so it’s
known as COP26. The Kyoto Protocol was agreed at COP3 in 1997 to reduce seven greenhouse gases, while the Paris Agreement at COP21 bound 195 countries to a global temperature rise of no more than 2C above
pre-industrial levels.
1992 – rio earth summit
A bright future
A bright future
hero to net zero
The future of energy innovation is as wondrous as its history. To Sir Richard Arkwright in the 18th century, the idea of splitting atoms for energy would have been as fantastical as that of humans exploring the rings of Saturn is to us today.
But science fiction can sometimes become science fact.
Humanity might one day create a mini sun on Earth in the shape of a nuclear fusion reactor, generating unlimited clean energy by fusing atoms at enormous temperatures.
In September, American researchers took a step closer to such a feat by testing the world’s strongest superconducting magnet, crucial to the process.
Perhaps hydrogen pumps will be as common as unleaded ones are today at petrol stations. It’s a clean way to power cars if the energy needed to create hydrogen through electrolysis is clean – one of its substantial hurdles. Or maybe we’ll be driving cars fuelled by biomass instead, utilising the methane produced by human and animal waste and decaying plants. A BioUltra railcar, intended for turn-up-and-go use on existing rail lines, is in development in the UK and a fleet of bio-buses in Bristol has been running off food waste since 2014.
There’s talk of floating wind farms moving around the world’s oceans, and vast fields of mirrors directing sunlight to a power generator, and many more futuristic ideas besides.
But one thing we know for certain is that coal and oil will be consigned to history.
The UK has pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2050, a commitment that will lean as heavily on smart technology as it does on renewable energy sources. The framework for storing and distributing new wind, solar and hydropower around the country will be key to the success.
By having a smart meter installed, households can not only monitor their energy use and its cost but also help enable future green technology and reduce energy waste via a more advanced and efficient energy system. In addition, the flexibility to divert energy where and when it’s needed is predicted to save £10 billion a year by 2050.
It is hoped that electric car owners will contribute to a more efficient system through innovative smart technologies too, such as by selling electricity from their car battery back to the grid or even homes during higher demand.
Such a national network will generate up to 10,000 jobs by 2050 for system installers, electricians, data scientists and engineers, with the UK able to sell its expertise as well as its excess energy around the world.
Households account for 15 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions and this autumn’s surge in global gas prices has highlighted the need for all of us to be smart with our energy use – to keep our bills down and our planet clean.
Energy minister Lord Callanan said: “Taking advantage of these smart technologies in our homes and businesses will not only help us tackle climate change, but will create thousands of jobs, unleash investment opportunities and cut costs as we build back greener from the pandemic.”
The energy regulator Ofgem will be working closely with the government to develop new systems that could allow electricity generated by clean renewable sources to be stored at large scale and for longer.
The Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan will utilise technologies such as pumped hydro storage, compressed air energy storage and the conversion of power to hydrogen so it can be used to generate electricity.
Chief executive officer of Ofgem, Jonathan Brearley, said: “This plan is essential to hitting the UK’s net zero climate goal while keeping energy bills affordable for everyone. It requires a revolution in how and when we use electricity and will allow millions of electric cars, smart appliances and other new green technologies to digitally connect to the energy system.”
The next couple of decades will see a change to our energy use on a scale not seen since Sir Richard Arkwright was tinkering in his workshop.
