Full ‘Green’ ahead for HS1 train line

London Underground’s District Line won’t be the only green line running through the capital in the near future, according to a recent article in Business Traveller magazine.

The English section of HS1, the high-speed rail network connecting London and France via the channel tunnel, is set to become the first train line in the UK to run entirely on renewable energy.

Green Gateway

In an attempt to become the ‘green gateway of Europe, HS1 aims to reduce the carbon footprint of every passenger by 25 per cent and cut energy per train journey by 10 per cent.

Memories of steam locomotives billowing pollutants into the skies are long gone through the switch to diesel around half a century ago, followed by electrification. But this move promises to make HS1 the cleanest and greenest rail line yet as electricity will be generated purely from solar and wind sources.

Reducing the carbon footprint

“HS1 is the Green Gateway to Europe. The UK’s only high-speed railway already delivers phenomenal environmental benefits to the UK and beyond. We are helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint while still enjoying safe, fast and reliable travel at home and abroad,” commented Dyan Crowther, CEO of HS1 Ltd.

“As we recover from the Covid crisis, environmental challenges will move further up the political and public agenda, and HS1 can provide a lasting solution to sustainable travel.”

Going green

As Mr Crowther attests, green business energy is proving more popular than ever as businesses set out a procurement energy strategy that is aligned to sustainability as well as cost.

While not all businesses have the capacity to generate their own energy on site, and therefore place the national grid under less pressure, green energy contracts are widely available, although the percentage of energy sourced from renewables can vary.

Please get in touch if you would like to explore your green energy procurement options further, by calling us on 01225-867722

EM-Powered – an invaluable energy management portal

EM-Powered is designed to enable customers to accurately keep track of their own business energy consumption and ultimately have a better understanding of how this impacts on their business.

Now fully operational for nearly two years, the Energy Management-designed energy monitoring and reporting portal helps companies to accurately compile an instant overview of their organisation’s actual business energy consumption, predicted business energy consumption and peak loads in an easily downloadable report.

Especially useful for multi-site operators and energy-intensive industries, the portal can be adapted to suit individual company’s needs and is seen as an invaluable tool in energy procurement strategy by those who have enjoyed its many benefits.

These include:

  • Accurate financial reporting – Budget management tools, cost and consumption break downs. Management reports can also be downloaded for an overview of all activities. Ideal for board-level reporting.
  • Market Forward Pricing – We provide live forward and historic market trading prices. These prices can then be compared between specific dates or, alternatively, can be expanded to show a high-level overview. The portal provides the ability to set multiple price notification triggers and alerts. These alerts will then be either sent via SMS or email to the desired user. Invaluable for flex contract management.
  • Seasonal Comparison Tables – Market charges can then be compared in a table, giving the customer an accurate and concise format to measure market fluctuations. The system provides you with the current position, with a comparison to the previous day, week, month, quarter, six months and one-year prices. In addition, you have the ability to choose specific dates, forward or backward, to compare prices over any given time.
  • Market Intelligence Updates – Customers are provided with a daily market intelligence update. The portal will update three times a day providing them with the live day ahead, the month ahead and the two-month ahead prices. There will be a short commentary of why prices have fallen/risen, along with prices on Brent Crude and EU ETS Carbon, as both have an impact on UK wholesale electricity cost.
  • Daily Updates – Daily news updates are provided within the portal which gives an understanding of current geopolitical factors which may influence the market.

World Energy Outlook sets out a vision for the future

covid-19

World Energy Outlook 2020 has shown how the response to the Covid-19 crisis can reshape the future of energy.

Amid deep disruption and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the 464-page publication states a surge in well-designed energy policies is needed to put the world on track for a resilient energy system that can meet climate goals.

But whether this upheaval ultimately helps or hinders efforts to accelerate clean energy transitions and reach international energy and climate goals will depend on how governments respond to today’s challenges.

Pivotal period

The World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2020, the International Energy Agency’s flagship publication, focuses on the pivotal period of the next 10 years, exploring different pathways out of the crisis.

The new report provides the latest IEA analysis of the pandemic’s impact: global energy demand is set to drop by 5% in 2020, energy-related CO2 emissions by 7%, and energy investment by 18%.

The WEO’s established approach – comparing different scenarios that show how the energy sector could develop – is more valuable than ever in these uncertain times.

In the Stated Policies Scenario, which reflects today’s announced policy intentions and targets, global energy demand rebounds to its pre-crisis level in early 2023.

However, this does not happen until 2025 in the event of a prolonged pandemic and deeper slump, as shown in the Delayed Recovery Scenario at the bottom of this article.

Slower demand growth lowers the outlook for oil and gas prices compared with pre-crisis trends. But large falls in investment increase the risk of future market volatility.

Starring role for renewables

Renewables take starring roles in all our scenarios, with solar centre stage. Supportive policies and maturing technologies are enabling very cheap access to capital in leading markets.

Solar PV is now consistently cheaper than new coal- or gas-fired power plants in most countries, and solar projects now offer some of the lowest-cost electricity ever seen.

In the Stated Policies Scenario, renewables meet 80% of global electricity demand growth over the next decade. Hydropower remains the largest renewable source, but solar is the main source of growth, followed by onshore and offshore wind.

“I see solar becoming the new king of the world’s electricity markets. Based on today’s policy settings, it is on track to set new records for deployment every year after 2022,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director. “If governments and investors step up their clean energy efforts in line with our Sustainable Development Scenario, the growth of both solar and wind would be even more spectacular – and hugely encouraging for overcoming the world’s climate challenge.”

Weak linkThe WEO-2020 shows that the strong growth of renewables needs to be paired with robust investment in electricity grids. Without enough investment, grids will prove to be a weak link in the transformation of the power sector, with implications for the reliability and security of electricity supply.

Fossil fuels face varying challenges. Coal demand does not return to pre-crisis levels in the Stated Policies Scenario, with its share in the 2040 energy mix falling below 20% for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.

But demand for natural gas grows significantly, mainly in Asia, while oil remains vulnerable to the major economic uncertainties resulting from the pandemic.

“The era of global oil demand growth will come to an end in the next decade,” Dr Birol said. “But without a large shift in government policies, there is no sign of a rapid decline. Based on today’s policy settings, a global economic rebound would soon push oil demand back to pre-crisis levels.”

The worst effects of the crisis are felt among the most vulnerable. The pandemic has reversed several years of declines in the number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa without access to electricity. And a rise in poverty levels may have made basic electricity services unaffordable for more than 100 million people worldwide who had electricity connections.

Green shoots

Global emissions are set to bounce back more slowly than after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, but the world is still a long way from a sustainable recovery.

A step-change in clean energy investment offers a way to boost economic growth, create jobs and reduce emissions. This approach has not yet featured prominently in plans proposed to date, except in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Korea, New Zealand and a handful of other countries.

In the Sustainable Development Scenario, which shows how to put the world on track to achieving sustainable energy objectives in full, the complete implementation of the IEA Sustainable Recovery Plan moves the global energy economy onto a different post-crisis path.

Nuclear momentum

As well as the rapid growth of solar, wind and energy efficiency technologies, the next 10 years would see a major scaling up of hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage, and new momentum behind nuclear power.

“Despite a record drop in global emissions this year, the world is far from doing enough to put them into decisive decline. The economic downturn has temporarily suppressed emissions, but low economic growth is not a low-emissions strategy – it is a strategy that would only serve to further impoverish the world’s most vulnerable populations,” said Dr Birol.

“Only faster structural changes to the way we produce and consume energy can break the emissions trend for good. Governments have the capacity and the responsibility to take decisive actions to accelerate clean energy transitions and put the world on a path to reaching our climate goals, including net-zero emissions.”

A significant part of those efforts would have to focus on reducing emissions from existing energy infrastructure – such as coal plants, steel mills and cement factories. Otherwise, international climate goals will be pushed out of reach, regardless of actions in other areas.

Detailed new analysis in the WEO-2020 shows that if today’s energy infrastructure continues to operate in the same way as it has done so far, it would already lock in a temperature rise of 1.65 °C.

Despite such major challenges, the vision of a net-zero emissions world is increasingly coming into focus. The ambitious pathway mapped out in the Sustainable Development Scenario relies on countries and companies hitting their announced net-zero emissions targets on time and in full, bringing the entire world to net-zero by 2070.

Drastic action

Reaching that point two decades earlier, as in the new Net Zero Emissions by 2050 case, would demand a set of dramatic additional actions over the next 10 years.

Bringing about a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 requires, for example, that low-emissions sources provide nearly 75% of global electricity generation in 2030, up from less than 40% in 2019 – and that more than 50% of passenger cars sold worldwide in 2030 are electric, up from 2.5% in 2019.

Electrification, innovation, behaviour changes and massive efficiency gains would all play roles. No part of the energy economy could lag behind, as it is unlikely that another would be able to move fast enough to make up the difference.

The different pathways in the WEO-2020

  • The Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS), in which Covid-19 is gradually brought under control in 2021 and the global economy returns to pre-crisis levels the same year. This scenario reflects all of today’s announced policy intentions and targets, insofar as they are backed up by detailed measures for their realisation.
  • The Delayed Recovery Scenario (DRS) is designed with the same policy assumptions as in the STEPS, but a prolonged pandemic causes lasting damage to economic prospects. The global economy returns to its pre-crisis size only in 2023, and the pandemic ushers in a decade with the lowest rate of energy demand growth since the 1930s.
  • In the Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), a surge in clean energy policies and investment puts the energy system on track to achieve sustainable energy objectives in full, including the Paris Agreement, energy access and air quality goals. The assumptions on public health and the economy are the same as in the STEPS.
  • The new Net Zero Emissions by 2050 case (NZE2050) extends the SDS analysis. A rising number of countries and companies are targeting net-zero emissions, typically by mid-century. All of these are achieved in the SDS, putting global emissions on track for net-zero by 2070. The NZE2050 includes the first detailed IEA modelling of what would be needed in the next ten years to put global CO2 emissions on track for net-zero by 2050.

Source: iea.org

Climate Change Agreement deadline reminder

The deadline for applications for the Climate Change Agreement (CCA) is fast approaching and prospective or existing clients are advised to get in touch now.

After a two-month extension was granted by the UK government, companies eligible to apply for the scheme can now do so up until 30 November this year.

However, most trade associations require applications to arrive before the end of October to enable them to be vetted and processed in a timely fashion.

First established in 2001, the CCA incentivises energy and carbon savings through setting energy-efficiency targets whilst also helping to reduce energy costs in sectors with energy-intensive processes by providing a significant discount to Climate Change Levy (CCL)

The current targets provide the basis on which organisations can make improvements to the energy-efficiency of facilities included in agreements over an eight-year period, ensuring their contribution to UK-wide goals, in return for savings worth nearly £300m annually.

We are currently working on applications for existing customers and would welcome approaches from other companies who need guidance in this area or are interested in utilising our expertise in energy procurement, invoice validation and compliance and legislation.

PM’s green energy industrial revolution

During the Covid-19 nationwide lockdown, wind farms accounted for a larger percentage of the UK’s overall power generation than before.

And following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party address today, that seems to be an irreversible trend.

The PM pledged on Wednesday to spend £160m to upgrade ports and factories for building turbines to help the country “build back greener”, with the aim of creating 2,000 construction jobs and support 60,000 more.

He vowed that the UK would become “the world leader in clean wind energy” and that every home would be powered by wind alone within the next decade.

Mr Johnson said the government was raising its target for offshore wind power capacity by 2030 from 30 gigawatts to 40 gigawatts.

By placing his faith in wind energy and reducing coal-fired power, greenhouse gas emissions would be dramatically slashed.

“Far out in the deepest waters we will harvest the gusts, and by upgrading infrastructure in places like Teesside and Humber and Scotland and Wales, we will increase an offshore wind capacity that is already the biggest in the world,” he proclaimed.