President at the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), and visiting Professor at Heriot-Watt University, John Ludden was a frequent panel expert across the Hutton Series events in 2020-2021.
One year on from the Hutton Series he gives us his reflections around ’ENERGY AND ENERGY STORAGE’ from our TEN KEY PRIORITIES, INNOVATIONS AND ACTIONS TO MITIGATE CLIMATE CRISIS
No-one considered a possible war and the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Rather, the solutions proposed were positive and assumed that there would not be a significant disruption in progress towards new energy solutions. Indeed, one can only hope that the need to move towards less dependency on single fuel options as is the case for Germany, will accelerate progress towards less consumption of fossil fuels. In the short term however, countries will need to ensure their gas and petroleum supplies are secure. The UK is opening licencing rounds and removing its moratorium on fracking [1], and the question has to be at what rate and volume gas can be produced [2] and will the UK encourage sequestration of waste in the production of energy and the possible reformation of methane to hydrogen?
Although nuclear is mentioned in the recommendation, it was rather hesitant and discussion on new nuclear was wheedled-out of the participants who might have been fearful of the consequences of strong endorsement. The series was set in Scotland, which intends to phase out nuclear energy and this might have influenced discussion [3]. However, there is now open support for new (small) nuclear reactors in Westminster [4]. The Netherlands will be building two reactors, the Germans have not turned off all their reactors as planned. Other nations are expanding their fleet and some European countries such as Hungary continue to discuss with Russia on nuclear technology, despite sanctions. Thus, I predict that nuclear will get a significant boost in support globally, but this needs to go hand in hand with close scrutiny of security and processes for waste disposal.
'...we can hope that the temporary gas shortage will be short-lived, and we will more rapidly move away from dependence on hydrocarbon gas provision, especially from unstable political entities.'
Hydrogen is being developed as a fuel and as an option in the aviation industry and shipping. The gas emergency will accelerate progress towards the use of hydrogen in home and factory heating with a focus on electrolysis. Indeed, ScottishPower plans to build the UK’s biggest plant in Glasgow which will be linked to windfarms and is looking to the port of Felixstowe to create green – H for transport. [5] Globally one can expect hydrogen to accelerate as a fuel alongside energy storage.
Thus, we can hope that the temporary gas shortage will be short-lived, and we will more rapidly move away from dependence on hydrocarbon gas provision, especially from unstable political entities. There will be a shift towards home-grown energy solutions globally and thus renewables will expand (especially offshore wind), nuclear will expand as a baseload and in some cases where it already represents near 50% of supply as in France, Belgium, Hungary and Slovakia it may become the main electricity source. Storage of the waste produced by all energy sources including CCS for methane reformation and from burning hydrocarbons needs rapid acceleration globally. [6]
This requires us to use financial tools as discussed in the Hutton series to oblige the fossil-fuel industry to make the transition to decarbonising fossil fuels.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62982332
[3] https://www.niauk.org/scotland-uses-most-nuclear-of-uk-nations/
[6] https://ukccsrc.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/UKCCSRC_2020_Allen-min.pdf