Net Zero Technology Outlook

The Government Office for Science has produced an updated report on the technology mix needed in key emitting sectors to reach net zero by 2050 - Runners and Riders: the tech race to 2050 – Futures, Foresight and Horizon Scanning.

The report covers five major emitting sectors:

• Industry: steel, cement, chemicals, glass and ceramics, and food and drink

• Transport: surface transport, maritime and aviation

• Heat and buildings: heating and cooling, energy efficiency and building design

• Agriculture, land use and waste: agriculture, land use and nature-based solutions, and waste

• Power: variable renewables, clean firm power, clean dispatchable power, energy storage and system flexibility, and transmission and distribution.

For each sector, the report identifies the main areas of sources and drivers of emissions, and then the technologies that are the main solutions to emissions reduction, with Technology and Market Readiness Levels and Technology Certainty Levels. It is encouraging that they find viable solutions in each of the sectors.

The report also looks at three cross-cutting technologies - greenhouse gas removals and Carbon Capture and Storage (GGR & CCS), hydrogen, and biomass. These are potentially more contentious as they are often seen as detracting from the main thrust of renewable energy development.

In an interesting approach the report also identifies “wildcards” in each sector.  These are innovations outside the mainstream, so this post focusses on these as they represent potentially more fundamental change.

TRANSPORT

The biggest emission sector at 29% of the UK total, domestic transport has however decreased emissions by 12% over the past 30 years. Wildcards in this area are:

-       EV battery swapping

-       Electric road systems such as inductive charging

-       Biofuel from algae as a drop-in replacement for bunker fuel in shipping

-       Hydrogen fuelled aircraft

HEAT AND BUILDINGS

Representing 19% of UK carbon emissions, reducing heating, lighting, aircon and embedded carbon emissions is critical. Innovative approaches include:

-       Deep geothermal solutions

-       Solid state heat pumps

-       Recycled and bio-based composite construction materials (such as mycelium)

-       Solar windows

AGRICULTURE, LAND USE, WASTE

Despite including carbon sinks such as forestry, this sector remains a net GHG emitter, mainly of methane – 17% of the UK total. Wildcard options include:

-       Nature-based carbon sequestration (such as enhanced rock weathering, marine carbon solutions including seaweed farming and saltmarshes)

-       Other Biomass with Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS) solutions (such as bio-oil injection, biomass burying, sinking and slurry fracture injection)

-       Mycelium-based farming

-       Electrochemical fertiliser technology

-       Methane capture from cattle sheds

-       Advanced thermo-chemical and biological processes  to convert waste into hydrogen, biofuels and biochar

INDUSTRY

Covering steel, cement, chemicals, glass and ceramics, and the food and drink industry this is an area contributing nearly 14% of GHG emissions. Well-established technology can address many of the GHG sources, but wildcards include:

Cement

-       Advanced modular reactors (AMR): these relatively small nuclear reactors have the potential to produce green hydrogen and direct heat for industrial processes

-       Electrochemical cement production: replacing the heating of crushed limestone and clay with calcium carbonate made by an electrochemical process that captures CO₂ from the air and binds it with abundant minerals or recycled concrete. 

-       Electric arc calciners: replacing fossil-driven heating with renewable electricity and capture the CO2 emissions released during the heating process

Chemicals, food and drink manufacturing

-       Engineering biology solutions: using biological processes instead of heat

-       Other heat sources: deep geothermal

POWER

The primary solutions to decarbonising power supply – which surprisingly is just 11% of total emissions, though demand for electricity is expected to double by 2050 -  is of course wind and solar power.

Other approaches are:

-       Novel photovoltaics

-       Novel wind turbine designs

-       Enhanced deep geothermal

-       Biomass gasification

-       Allam cycle for bio-energy carbon capture

-       Space-based solar power

-       Ammonia-to-power

-       Virtual power plants – aggregating distributed energy resources into a commercially viable volume

-       Second-generation transmission cables (such as use of ultra-high voltage or high-temperature superconducting cables on main transmission lines)

-       Wireless power transmission technologies

-       Quantum encryption technologies

As in many futures studies, the focus of this report has been on technology advances. This is a common problem, though perhaps more understandable in this case.  However, the report does make some attempt at identifying other non-technology enablers.

Infrastructure:  networks for EV charging and for green fuels in aviation and shipping; a re-structured National Grid to manage distributed power sources.

Public Engagement: to increase adoption rates and support policy changes – clearly this remains a major challenge with increasing resistance to paying for energy transition.

Policy change: market mechanisms and regulation to de-risk investment

Global market forces and supply chains: working with US, EU, China on global economies of scale and securing access to critical minerals for battery technologies

Skilled workforce: upskilling the workforce to support the installation and maintenance of new technologies.

SAMI would argue that these factors are the most fundamental in a successful Net Zero strategy – the technology largely takes care of itself, with many options, as the above discussion shows. We had begun to celebrate an increased consensus on the urgency of Net Zero policies, with climate change denial almost ceasing to exist. However, it seems that in today’s political reality agreement on net zero is facing many headwinds, and technology advances are unlikely to be the only solution.

Written by Huw Williams, SAMI Principal

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay