The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), under the chairmanship of Lord Adair Turner, launched its first report last week, and while its sentiment must be appreciated by all, it would not have been welcome reading for those already struggling with fuel and heating costs. The report – Building a low-carbon economy – recommends a reduction in greenhouse gases of at least 34% by 2020 (relative to 1990 levels), and that this should be increased to 42% relative to 1990 levels once a global deal to reduce emissions is achieved.
Under the Climate Change Act, which was passed on 26 November 2008, the UK is legally obliged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 - with a series of five-year 'greenhouse gas budgets' to ensure that the target is kept on track. The UK is the first to introduce a legally-binding framework to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Though generally upbeat about the CCC’s announcement, Friends of the Earth did had some reservations. In particular, it felt that the 42% target (which it nonetheless welcomed) should not be conditional on reaching an international deal.
"The Committee clearly acknowledges the major threats that aviation and coal pose to our climate change targets - but it has fudged the question of what the Government must do,” says FoE executive director, Andy Atkins. "Ministers must scrap plans to allow UK airports to expand and not allow any coal-fired power stations to be built without carbon capture and storage. Lord Turner's strong backing for urgent investment in green energy and cutting energy waste hits the nail on the head. This will not only cut emissions - it will create exciting business opportunities, new jobs and a safe, clean and prosperous future for us all."
The issue here is what effect these targets are likely to have on fuel poverty. The government’s annual fuel poverty progress report was published in October; it clearly demonstrates a failure to tackle this problem. Organisations such as FoE and Help the Aged estimate that there are some five million households in Britain spending more than 10% of their income on fuel and electrical power (the threshold of fuel poverty).
Addressing climate change is clearly an essential task of government, but the associated costs must presumably be borne by all of us. Transport driven by hybrid power trains, carbon capture and storage, ‘clean coal’ technology, power from sustainable sources and the like, all cost a great deal of money. The question is: how fairly will these costs be shared? Fuel poverty is out of place in a highly developed 21st century society, but it is difficult to see how it can be avoided unless effort and money is poured into essential palliative measures such as energy conservation and energy efficiency.
About half of all the UK’s carbon emissions are of domestic origin and this is an obvious target when it comes to implementing energy efficiency and energy conservation measures. But it, too, will cost money – an estimated £500m per year from now until 2020 just to meet the government’s own targets for fuel poverty reduction. The CCC believes its suggested target could be met at a cost of less than one per cent of GDP between now and 2020. That’s still a lot of money, but then what would be the cost of not achieving significant carbon reductions?
Perhaps this is where the ingenuity of the engineering profession comes to our rescue.
Yes, there’s a place for insulation and energy meters that indicate instantaneous consumption in the home to make us more aware of our profligacy; on the other hand, there may be more subtle approaches that have a significant cumulative effect. An interesting technology called ‘Dynamic Demand’, which has been the subject of recent study, was one example that surfaced in the news last week.
Mains frequency is a variable that must be monitored and controlled, second by second. If demand on the National Grid is greater than the instantaneous generation capacity, the frequency falls, and if generation is greater than demand, the frequency rises. The balance between demand and generation is automatically maintained within tight operational limits and to do this, the National Grid needs to ensure that the system can withstand the largest credible generation loss (currently a maximum of 1,320MW) to avoid the system frequency being driven to the level at which staged automatic demand disconnection is initiated.
Automatic frequency response services are needed to manage frequency immediately after a sudden loss of generation. These services are provided by connected generating units, specially selected to operate in ‘frequency sensitive’ mode (running ‘part loaded’ below maximum rated output) and by load disconnection from some industrial customers through contractual agreement. Part loading generating units to provide this frequency response service reduces the efficiency of plant operation, leading to increased fuel consumption with corresponding cost and carbon emission implications. The estimates are that these inefficiencies cost at least £222m annually, and are responsible for some1.74 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
Dynamic Demand (DD) technology is essentially a piece of software that can be incorporated into the control unit of electrical appliances such as refrigerators, electrical heaters and air conditioning units. The DD control algorithm dynamically modifies the appliance duty cycle in response to changes in system frequency. Allowing the millions of electrical appliances in use in our homes to help keep the grid in balance could mean increased grid stability and improved efficiency at power stations, resulting in carbon savings and reduced energy costs.
The UK Centre for Sustainable Electricity and Distributed Generation, based at Imperial College, London, was commissioned to evaluate the potential of DD and its final report was submitted to the Department of Energy and Climate Change last week. At least one major electricity supplier has agreed to demonstrate the technology using refrigerators fitted with DD. The 18-month long project gets underway next year and will initially involve 300 refrigerators, moving to 3,000 if it proves successful.
Hopefully, this demonstration and other initiatives that are presumably in the pipeline will show some promise, because time is running out.
Les Hunt
Editor
PS - As I finished the foregoing, the EPSRC announced £250m of funding for post graduate research. Some 44 new multidisciplinary centres will train 2000 PhD students over the next five years, and will bring together many areas of expertise, building relationships between teams in universities and with industry. Students receive taught coursework to develop their technical knowledge and broaden their skills as well as carrying out challenging PhD-level research projects.
Professor Dave Delpy, chief executive of EPSRC, said: "People are the heart of our future strategy. EPSRC centres for doctoral training expand our existing training portfolio, focus on priority themes for the UK, emerging and multidisciplinary research, and greater collaboration with business."
The initiative is widely supported by business and industry, and 17 of the new centres will be industrial training centres working closely with businesses. Professor Jeremy Watson, global director of research at Arup, said: "Businesses like Arup need a good supply of highly-qualified scientists with the right skills to further innovation in the design of sustainable towns, cities and the wider environment. They need to understand how business works and also be able to turn their best ideas into a successful business proposition."
This new investment is in addition to to that earmarked for existing centres and will tackle some of the biggest challenges currently facing the UK, including climate change, energy, an ageing population and high-tech crime.