By Dr Beatriz Aguirre-Martínez
In this post-Covid period, we need new investments in jobs and skills after a significant economic contraction. As part of a webinar series for the CREDS project, a team of researchers led by the Sussex Energy Groups’s Tim Foxon, examined how Brighton and the North of Tyne Combined Authority could use Local Green New Deals to provide this investment, while also responding to the Net Zero Challenge. Here’s what they found.
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For many experts, Smart local energy systems (SLES) are crucial to the UK’s transition to a Net Zero energy system. Over the last two years, a research team led by Professor Adrian Smith at the Sussex Energy Group has analysed developments in smart local energy systems (SLES) in the UK, as part of an ESRC-funded research project called ROLES.
Smart local energy systems are connected systems made up of technologies that generate, store and manage renewable energy. For example, a smart local energy system might be a household with solar panels, battery storage, smart appliances and smart meters, that could be be integrated with the local energy network to feed back energy when it is needed elsewhere.
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The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced £15 million of funding for the next phase of energy demand research in the UK. A new Energy Demand Research Centre, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), will be led by Professor Mari Martiskainen at the university of Sussex and Professor Sara Walker at Newcastle University, with ten additional universities and several external stakeholder partners involved in the programme. Below, Prof Martiskainen outlines plans for the Centre and why the focus on energy demand is so critical.
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If there is ever a Hollywood film to be made about climate and energy legislation, the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will provide as good of a script as there will ever be. Typically mundane, the passing of the largest climate bill in U.S. history featured many twists and turns, ups and downs, and grand finale speeches about saving the world. The process features the transformation of a climate villain, Senator Joe Manchin, who infamously shot the text of a cap-and-trade bill in a political ad in 2010, into an unlikely climate hero who resurrected the legislation that he killed just a few weeks ago. The bill’s authors employed clever branding – the Inflation Reduction Act – to make the bill more palatable to not only climate activists but also fiscal hawks and the public concerned with rising prices. The drama had been omnipresent until the very end – just when all the hope of the Democratic Party to deliver on a President Biden’s signature campaign promise was lost; a compromise struck between the villain-turned-hero and the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer saved the day.
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One of the more challenging aspects of the net zero agenda is how to decarbonise heavy industry. Industries such as metals (including iron and steel), minerals, chemicals, food and drink, paper and pulp, ceramics, glass and oil refineries account for about 16% of UK territorial emissions, both from energy use and from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced directly from industrial processes, such as calcination in the production of cement. Industry is commonly seen as a ‘hard to abate’ sector of the economy. A lot of industry is also exposed to international competition, so unless there is support from government there is a risk that it will close down and relocate, rather than actually cut emissions.
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