Mind the Gap: Making a successful transition to Low Carbon Economy whilst delivering the UK's Emissions Reduction Plan

Name: Mind the Gap: Making a successful transition to Low Carbon Economy whilst delivering the UK's Emissions Reduction Plan
Start: 2017-11-07T18:00:00
Location: Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London

07 November 2017

This lecture will identify the key challenges in ensuring the uptake of the technologies relied upon in the Emissions Reduction Plan.

This technical lecture is free to attend, book your place today!

Overview

The UK government's Clean Growth Strategy has set out how the UK intends to meet the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets, agreed in 2016. The two budgets require that emissions are reduced by an average of 10 MtCO2e (2-3%) per year across the economy from 2015 to 2032, achieving emission reductions of 57% below 1990 levels by 2032. This will keep the UK on the lowest cost path to the 2050 target (80% reductions compared to 1990 levels set out in the Climate Change Act, 2008). The Committee on Climate Change’s annual progress report on emissions reductions identified that there is currently a gap of 47% between the reductions required in the Fifth Carbon Budget period and the UK’s current trajectory. The gap could be even larger if existing plans fail to fully deliver.

The Clean Growth Strategy scenarios will rely on the complete replacement of coal-fired generation with low carbon generation plus greater energy and resource efficiency and greater electrification of transport and heat. Along with CCS and nuclear, renewable heat and electricity has a key role to play.

This lecture aims to identify the key challenges in ensuring the uptake of the technologies relied upon in the Strategy. This technical lecture is free to attend, book your place today and we look forward to welcoming you to our London HQ.

Day 1

17:30 - Lecture Programme

17.30 - Registration
18.00 - Lecture begins

Chair: Tony Quinn (Chair IMechE Renewable Power Committee)

Keynote: Technical Challenges posed by The Carbon Reduction Plan
John Loughhead, Chief Scientific Adviser, BEIS

The Policy Gap
Owen Bellamy, Senior Analyst, Committee on Climate Change Progress to date is behind 2030 targets. Existing policies seek c150TWh of low carbon generation. A review of progress to date and the innovation challenges that need to be met to add another 100TWh by 2030. Challenges in production and bringing down the cost of low carbon technologies (particularly off-shore wind and marine). May touch on storage.

The Network Gap
Grant Spence, Senior Principal Consultant, Mott MacDonald Successive U.K. Governments have made significant progress in setting and delivering targets which have helped to begin the process of decarbonising the electricity network connecting increasing volumes of renewable generation to the grid. However, engineering analysis performed and published by National Grid in late 2016 indicates that progress to fully decarbonise the electricity system will be harder to achieve compared with the progress to date and requiring that we address technical issues we have not had to consider so far.
The presentation will consider the technical issues identified by National Grid, as well as giving a technical perspective on the so far largely unidentified gaps in our present efforts to transform the grid network. Concluding with consideration of the potential pathways to deliver whole system decarbonisation of the network while maintaining system operability throughout.

The Transport Gap
Esther Dudek, Senior Consultant, EA Technology Ltd Decarbonising our energy consumption cannot ignore transport, and uptake of EVs is increasing rapidly, with increasing choice for customers and decreasing prices. As more drivers switch to electric vehicles there is a potential impact on the distribution network, particularly from home charging. This presentation will describe this potential impact and look at the work underway as part of the Electric Nation project to trial a potential smart solution

19.00 - Q&A session
19:30 - Lecture concludes

John Loughhead: Chief Scientific Adviser, BEIS

Professor John Loughhead is Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Prior to this, he was the Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). He has held several prominent roles in the UK and internationally including Executive Director at the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and Corporate Vice-President of Technology and Intellectual Property at Alstom. John’s professional career has been predominantly in industrial research and development for the electronics and electrical power industries, including advanced high power industrial gas turbines, new energy conversion systems, spacecraft thermal management, electrical and materials development for electricity generation and transmission equipment and electronic control systems. He is a Chartered Engineer, graduating in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Queen Mary University of London as well as both the UK and Australian national Academies of Engineering.

Owen Bellamy: Senior Analyst, Committee on Climate Change

Owen Bellamy is a Senior Analyst at the Committee on Climate Change (the UK government’s official independent advisory body on climate change issues established under the Climate Change Act). He leads the work for the Committee on economy-wide analysis and cross-cutting issues, as well as EU climate policy, aviation and shipping. He has an MSc in Environmental Economics from UCL, and a BSc in Economics from the University of Warwick.

Grant Spence: Senior Principal Consultant, Mott MacDonald

Grant is a Senior Principal Consultant in Mott MacDonald’s Generation team with over 25 years of experience in the energy sector. He has delivered projects covering all types of generation technology from tidal turbines, onshore and offshore wind, diesel, biomass, coal, CCGT, CCS and new nuclear projects. Delivery roles have ranged from due diligence and feasibility studies to managing FEED studies and provision of Owner’s Engineer services. Previously, Grant spent ten years working in the power systems sector on projects varying from upgrades to oil & gas platforms to LNG plant design and network planning for transmission and distribution grid systems in the UK and US. Grant holds a BEng degree in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde and is a Chartered Member of both the IMechE and IET. Grant is Chairman of the IMechE’s Power Industry Division board and acts as a non-executive Director on the board of the Scottish Energy Association

Esther Dudek: Senior Consultant, EA Technology Ltd

Esther Dudek is a Senior Consultant at the power engineering consultancy, EA Technology. She specialises in energy storage and electric vehicles and is currently the engineering task leader for Electric Nation, the world’s largest EV demand management trial. The project is evaluating the ability of smart charging to mitigate the need to reinforce distribution networks due to the increased loading caused by EVs, and customer acceptance of this type of demand management.

Tony Quinn: Chair, IMechE Renewable Power Committee

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