Future of Energy | Alternatives to help beat the price rises

The recent dramatic rise in the price of European gas, exacerbated by restrictions on supplies from Russia has created a perfect storm for the energy sector in the UK and beyond. Consumers and businesses face large increases in energy costs, with gas heavily relied on to generate electricity and heat our homes.

Arup energy lead for the UK, India, Middle East and Africa Mark Neller says: “We have been lucky over the last decade or so and have been able to focus on the long term decarbonisation pathway.

“But in the last six months we have been hit with a stark reminder that this is just one part of the ‘energy trilemma’; the other two parts being cost and security.”

Most of our power stations have gone beyond their end of life and we need to double our current build rate

In April the government published its Energy Security Strategy, setting out how it intends to accelerate the production of homegrown power for greater energy independence. Nuclear, offshore wind and hydrogen generation are highlighted for increased investment, with targets doubled in some cases.

The strategy also says that existing oil and gas fields should be given a second lease of life. 

Atkins market director for net zero energy David Cole emphasises the need for pace.

“We have a lot of infrastructure to replace – most of our power stations have gone beyond their end of life and we need to double our current build rate,” he says.

“We have to add 9GW to 12GW per annum if we are going to meet our needs in 2050 and, if we want to achieve our current commitment to decarbonise the power system by 2035, then some believe this build rate has to be even faster.”

He agrees the sensible approach is to continue building tried and tested technologies such as nuclear – to supply energy baseload – and offshore wind while working to create more pumped storage hydro capacity and researching new technologies, such as the production of hydrogen for power generation.

Nuclear

Although the strategy proposes an acceleration in the move away from fossil fuels, Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit senior analyst Jess Ralston fears it may be too ambitious. She is particularly concerned about the number of new nuclear power plants proposed.

“They haven’t managed to get any over the line in the last decade, so it’s a very big ask to propose eight in the next,” she says.

“I’m also surprised because the Energy Transmissions Commission and the National Infrastructure Commission have said we only really need one more big plant
after Sizewell C.”

But clarity about whether these new nuclear power stations will be big plants or small modular reactors (SMRs) is needed.

SMRs are touted as the answer to the delays and complexity associated with building larger plants. Rolls Royce hopes to build one at Wylfa in Anglesey and another at Trawsfynydd in Gwynedd.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out with communities as nuclear power plants are usually controversial. But as yet, no-one is sure how the public will feel about SMRs,” says Ralston.

Shearwater Energy and NuScale Power are also developing a scheme to build a hybrid SMR-wind and hydrogen production plant at Wylfa. Shearwater chief executive Simon Forster points out that SMR technology has clear benefits that set it aside from large scale reactors, including cheaper energy.

As yet, no-one is sure how the public will feel about SMRs

“They use standard components and modularisation to make them cheaper and quicker to order and build,” he says.

“Larger plants can be created by having a series of SMRs in one location – they don’t have to be
built at the same time, so the income from the first one can fund subsequent expansion.”

The Wylfa scheme also proposes construction of a data centre on the same site to take advantage of the availability and security of supply which a series of SMRs can offer.

Offshore wind

Few were surprised at targets for offshore wind power being significantly boosted in the Energy Security Strategy. It commits to increasing the pace of deployment by 25%, delivering up to 50GW of capacity by 2030. This will include 5GW from floating turbines similar to those in the world’s first floating offshore wind farm that was commissioned off the Aberdeenshire coast last year.

ICE low carbon energy community advisory board chair Ian Parke agrees this strategy is sensible. “The prospects for offshore wind are absolutely massive and, in my opinion, the future is in floating turbine projects such as EDF’s Blyth 2 scheme off the coast of Northumberland.”

This project proposes five floating turbines with a total generating capacity of almost 60MW.

The European Union is being bold on green hydrogen; if we made a stronger commitment, we could be leading that pack

Technology is not the most critical barrier to wind farm developments, notes Neller.

“It can take 10 years to progress from the leasing round where Crown Estates allocates wind farm sites to developers to the investment decision, never mind construction and commissioning.”

Some movement may come on this, with the strategy committing to cut consent time from four years to one. But even with a shorter cycle, Neller points out that the largely European-based supply chain could also undermine timelines.

“There is a big supply chain issue which needs addressing,” he says.

“We need to attract investment in this sector in the UK, to reduce our reliance on imports of things like cables, wind turbine blades and so on.”

He points to incentives that encourage bidders to support local suppliers and manufacturers in the latest ScotWind leasing round as a good example of what could be done.

But Forster believes that one of the biggest challenges is to improve the reliability of supply from wind farms. This can be done by building more floating wind farms along the Atlantic seaboard.

“High pressure systems in the North Sea are becoming more frequent and can cause the capacity of its wind farms to drop from 13GW to 1GW in just 12 hours – the equivalent of one large power station going offline every hour. This makes it very difficult to plan,” Forster says.

Floating turbines are the preferred choice due to the deep water [they can be located in without foundations] and because construction can be de-risked by building onshore and towing them into place during suitable weather windows.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen power was singled out for a major boost in the new Energy Security Strategy with a commitment to double its production to 10GW by 2030. At least half of this is expected to come from “green” hydrogen, which is hydrogen produced by electrolysis.

The previous target capacity of 5GW was expected to be an 80%/20% split between “blue” and green hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is made by separating carbon dioxide and hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture used to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions.

The production process for blue hydrogen is called steam methane reforming, which mixes natural gas with hot steam, in the presence of a catalyst. The chemical reaction creates hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

Blue hydrogen technology can be scaled up quickly and is a more effective way of capturing carbon than trying to remove it from the flue gas in a standard thermal generating process.

We need to review the delivery model for tidal so that risk is shared fairly between the private and public sector

Green hydrogen also has the advantage of being able to use wind power or other renewables for the electrolysis process. This produces hydrogren which can be stored to generate electricity.

Creating a successful hydrogen economy in the UK relies on infrastructure for its storage and transport, and carbon emissions from power generation or industrial processes must be captured and stored.

For this reason, the government has identified two geographical “clusters” – HyNet in the North West and the East Coast Cluster which includes Humberside and Teesside – for investment and support.

Within these hubs attention is focused on schemes to decarbonise existing industries, build plants to generate “low carbon” hydrogen, and pipelines to deliver sequestered carbon dioxide to undersea storage.

Thirty-six power carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS), hydrogen and industrial carbon capture projects were approved for potential government support in March and a decision on which will receive this support was expected as NCE went to press.

One scheme in the running is the Whitetail Clean Energy plant on Teesside. This is a proposed power plant using NET Power’s semi-closed loop technology, burning natural gas with pure oxygen rather than air. It will generate up to 350MW of power while capturing the CO₂ for sequestration.

Marco Clemente is market lead on energy storage for Atkins, the owners’ engineer for the Whitetail project. He agrees that the technology has novel aspects but says it has been successfully tested at demonstration level.

“Combusting with pure oxygen creates pure CO₂, which can easily be compressed and transported for storage,” he says. 

This eliminates the need to use even more energy to extract other waste gases.

But Ralston says that despite the increased emphasis on green hydrogen, the government could still do more. “The European Union is being bold on green hydrogen; if we made a stronger commitment, we could be leading that pack,” she says.

She points to ITM Power’s new Gigafactory in Sheffield, which opened last year. It is the world’s largest electrolyser production factory.

ITM’s electrolysers produce green hydrogen based on proton exchange membrane technology. It uses renewable energy and water, oxygen and water vapour are the only byproducts. Increased automation and economies of scale at the plant will cut the cost of this technology.

Batteries

Battery storage is another potential solution to the unreliability of renewable sources, Parke suggests.

“Battery technology is improving and I think we will see more of this,” he says.

Ralston agrees, linking it to the increased emphasis on offshore wind.

“It does provide flexible power but we need to find ways to store it – this is one of the parts that the strategy misses,” she says.

Last year construction of a huge Gigaplant battery factory in Blythe, Northumberland began – a welcome move in this direction, Ralston adds. 

Tidal

While the new energy strategy gave no explicit support for tidal power, other than making a passing reference to it, last year’s commitment to ring fence £20M of the Contracts for Difference funding for tidal stream projects could provide a boost to that part of the sector.

The announcement coincided with Morlais Energy gaining planning permission and funding for its scheme off the coast of Anglesey – although the project will only create the infrastructure for technology providers to plug into.

The MeyGen demonstrator project which has been operating since 2018 off the north east coast of Scotland has planning permission for almost 400MW of capacity, although its first phase currently only has four 1.5MW turbines in place.

Neller argues that it is time to look again at tidal energy, given its significant and reliable generating capacity and the relatively short timescale for getting a scheme up and running.

He points out that tidal range projects such as the lagoons proposed for the Mersey estuary and Swansea Bay could feed in anything from around 700MW to more than 1GW of power and could be deployed quite quickly.

They are considered more likely to gain planning consent than barrages because their potential impact on the environment is lower.

“I think we need to review the delivery model for tidal so that risk is shared fairly between the private and public sector – in a similar way to how it is applied to the nuclear sector,” Neller says.

He also suggests there is a role for modular construction to bring the price down through repeatability.

A huge range of schemes is being talked about, especially on the west coast of Britain, which has the second highest tidal range in the world. But many schemes are still only in the early stages of development, while others have fallen in and out of favour over the last decade.

According to British Hydropower Association working group the Tidal Range Alliance, these schemes offer an achievable 10GW of installed capacity, which would deliver around 5% of UK energy use and there is scope to expand this capacity significantly.

Pumped storage

Among proposals to expand hydropower capacity are two schemes in Scotland. At Cruachan Dam in Argyll, Drax Group is seeking a £500M investment to build a new cavern at the 440MW power station.

A second cavern and generation equipment would more than double this, potentially adding 600MW of capacity. A planning application is due this year but it will be at least 12 months before a decision is made.

Meanwhile SSE Renewables is proposing a pumped storage scheme for Coire Glas above Loch Lochy in the Great Glen. It will be first large scale pumped storage scheme to be built in the UK for more than 30 years.

The facility has a potential capacity of up to 1,500MW and initial bids from the four shortlisted firms tendering for the main civil engineering contract were due to be submitted in April. A final decision by SSE Renewables on whether to go ahead with the project is expected next year.

It is clear that there are plenty of options to move the UK away from reliance on fossil fuels but industry leaders agree that decisions must be made soon if security is to be delivered and carbon net zero targets are to be met. 

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