Five technologies will form the backbone of the future clean energy system, according to a new book from the head of policy and strategy at energy think tank Ember.
The Future of Energy by Richard Black lays out a blueprint for what a future energy system will look like, as well as steps needed to reach it.
“The clean energy transition is real,” Black said. “It’s happening. It works, and it is going to be the future for a whole number of reasons.”
“Climate change struck me as something that was going to be pretty profound on a political and scientific level and in terms of the way that people’s lives were going to be affected,” he said.
“And I think we’re seeing that absolutely coming true now.”
Central to The Future of Energy are the five technologies that Black, a former BBC science and environment correspondent and ex-director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, has identified as being essential to driving the clean energy transformation.
The first of these is renewable electricity, driven by solar and wind power. These will power the second technology, large-scale battery storage facilities, the third, electric vehicles, and the fourth, heat pumps. The fifth technology is green hydrogen, which fills the gaps in the energy system.
“I was thinking about the services that we need from energy,” Black explained. “We don’t need gas, we don’t need coal, we don’t need nuclear reactors – we need the services that the energy powers.
“The way I thought about it was, what are the minimum number of things that you need to do that – and for pretty much everything, it is those five areas.”
Five technologies
According to Black, wind and solar will form the backbone of the energy system as costs come down and their versatility enables their deployment over a wider range of timescales than other technologies.
“The investment world is persuaded of that, because that’s where the vast bulk of money in electricity generation is going now,” Black said.
Similarly, prices are falling for battery storage, helping to deploy it at scale.
For transport, “it’s clear batteries are going to be the dominant technology,” Black added.
However, heat pumps, while “incredibly efficient,” will need some support to help push them into mass production, bringing down prices as economies of scale lower costs.
“Heat pumps are slightly more challenging, certainly in the UK, because the housing stock is so poorly insulated that often insulation needs to go along with having the heat pump.
Green hydrogen, Black continued, will fill the gaps in left by the other technologies, such as long-duration energy storage or for industrial processes that need high temperatures.
“It seems logical to think that hydrogen has a role to play,” he said.
Living in the clean energy world
In The Future of Energy, Black argues that the clean energy transformation will not only change the energy industry, but the way we all interact with energy.
“I found it very interesting putting myself into the position of living a life in the clean energy world,” he said.
“It’s a very different world from the one we have now, where I have my gas boiler and I have my car which I need to put petrol in. The new technology, where I have a battery, an electric car and a heat pump, they really work together synergistically.”
Black added: “It gives you more independence in your energy choices as well as bringing down prices, because often you’re able to consume the electricity that you’re producing yourself or sell it back to the grid at times of high price.
“From the perspective of the individual, this will change things quite a lot from how we are now, where we’re basically just passive consumers.”
Getting there in time
Despite the advantages that a clean energy system offers, and the maturity of the technology, Black noted that there is still work to be done.
“The question isn’t how do we get there,” he said. “It’s how do we get there quickly enough to keep climate change within meaningful bounds and to actually bring the benefits as quickly as possible to countries where those benefits are badly needed.”
Given the falling costs for renewable energy technologies and batteries, “it’s not really a question of governments having to provide financial support anymore, it’s really a question of policy – clearing out the blockages, such as planning processes or grid connections,” Black said.
Heat pumps, he added, will need some government support to ensure they are produced at sufficient volumes to bring down their costs. “That’s what really turbocharged the wind and solar revolution,” Black said.
“None of this is hard, in the sense that it involves something that doesn’t exist yet – or an amazing conceptual leap or quantities of raw materials that we don’t have. It’s just a question of governments doing what needs to be done to allow this to happen as quickly as possible.”
UK policy
With Labour looking to promote clean energy in the UK, Black had several recommendations for the new government.
“Don’t get distracted, don’t shrink back,” he said. “Investors and businesses and the public respond to leadership. One of the problems we’ve had for years in the UK is vacillation, and we know that vacillation over policy raises costs and brings in delays.
“Investors like certainty; they need to know which way things are going; they need to know what they need to invest in. Businesses need to know what the future policy landscape is so they know what to build.”
While the clean energy transformation will take time and work, the core message of The Future of Energy is that it will be worth the effort.
“The world will be a better place when this happens,” Black said. “The benefits will not just be in terms of reduced carbon emissions. There are benefits here for energy security, energy democracy, sovereignty, for air quality and for jobs.”
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