Energy news in general

Martyn1981

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82068993#Comment_82068993

That's really great news. Shows what can be achieved with a bit of effort. At the start of the last decade leccy was ~70% FF's, hopefully this year it'll be ~25% and still falling fast. So step one nearly achieved.

Then step two, already in progress, is to electrify everything. That's a huge task, but now, it's no longer a huge problem as the economic solutions are now available, such as EV's and heat pumps.

We see transport and buildings now accounting ~50% of emissions, so those can be, dare I say easily, addressed. And that task isn't nearly as bad as it looks, due to the 'primary energy fallacy'. That's where we look at replacing the energy currently being consumed, when in reality we only need to replace the useful energy.

For transport, vehicles are only about 20% to 25% efficient, rising to ~40% for heavy freight, trains etc. To electrify the UK's road fleet will require about 20% to 25% more leccy. And that will be spread across 20-25yrs (approx 10yrs to reach 100% electric, then approx 15yrs to transition the fleet). As we are transitioning around 4% of the leccy fleet pa, then just maintaining RE growth will manage this. A huge success is the UK's city bus fleet, where about one third of new sales are now BEV, and rising fast.

The same applies to buildings, they are getting cleaner as we improve leccy, but more importantly, the main energy consumption is gas (cooking, DHW and space heating). Heatpumps are about 3.5x more efficient than a modern high efficiency gas boiler (~90% efficient). So again, we don't need to replace all of the primary gas energy, only a fraction of it.

Industry needs to electrify as much as possible. Agriculture is a problem, but the electrification of transport helps here as tractors and other heavy plant are now available in BEV form, and this sector is expanding fast. But, the elephant in the room, so to speak, will remain emissions from cattle and sheep, again easily solved by reducing consumption, but I suspect a huge task to convince everyone.

Ironically, fuel supply kinda resolves itself, as we use less and less FF's, which consume a lot of energy in their production, refining and distribution. This also leans into the marine sector, where ferries, near shore transport etc is already electrifying fast. And ~40% of the transportation (by mass) of ocean going ships is actually FF's.

I think long haul flights will remain a problem (short haul will electrify, very short haul already is, such as the Canadian puddle jumpers), and it may be that SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) is the best solution, though not a great solution.

The UK may be behind in terms of heat pump deployment, but we are holding our own in Europe regarding decarbonization of leccy, and BEV rollout (now ~6% of the car fleet, with new sales ~25%).

I think the big bonus we are now seeing is the rapidly falling cost of battery storage. Prices are starting to get a little silly, and the development/deployment of sodium batts is now scaling fast, with the potential of halving battery cell costs. The learning curve (Wright's Law) for batteries is an incredible 20-25%. That's the reduction in costs for every subsequent doubling in production.