Geraldine Newton-Cross shares her thoughts on Bioenergy in the UK
18 June 2015
18th June 2015
Strategy Manager Geraldine Newton-Cross
Bioenergy is important for the UK and deployed effectively it has the potential to help secure UK energy supplies, mitigate climate change, and create significant green growth opportunities.
It is also one of the most scalable, cost-effective and flexible energy conversion pathways around as it can be used to generate power, heat, gaseous or liquid fuels, and more often than not, use existing infrastructure.
It can deliver negative emissions when combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and our modelling suggests that it could cost the UK up to £90 billion a year more to deliver an energy system in 2050 that meets its emission reduction targets without using bioenergy.
Developing, commercialising and integrating technologies and solutions that are already known, but underdeveloped, can help the UK move to a cost effective low carbon energy system over the next 35 years.
Our analysis shows that although there is not one single technology answer - if we don’t include bioenergy or CCS in the energy mix it would at least double the cost of delivering our 2050 climate change targets and meeting our future energy demands, from around 1% of GDP to 2%.
Or put another way, if neither bioenergy or CCS are developed it is difficult to see how the UK would be able to meet its climate change targets cost effectively.
Bioenergy combined with CCS remains the only credible route to deliver “negative emissions” cost effectively and at the scale required.
Negative emissions refer to the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere across the full life-cycle: growing biomass actively removes carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in both plant matter and the soil as it grows. When the biomass is then harvested and converted into energy, the emitted carbon can be simultaneously captured at the conversion plant, and stored securely offshore in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers.
As well as delivering negative emissions, biomass and waste could provide a significant amount of low carbon energy in the future UK energy system delivering more than 50 million tonnes of carbon savings a year in 2050 – equivalent to 50% of our allowable emissions in that year.
To ensure only routes or pathways that deliver genuine carbon savings are supported, as highlighted in the UK Government’s Bioenergy Strategy in 2012, it is important to understand fully the end-to-end elements across the bioenergy value chain: from crops and land use to the conversion of biomass to useful energy vectors and finally the manner in which it is integrated into the rest of the UK energy system in transport, heat or electricity.
To understand these challenges we commissioned and funded the creation of a Bioenergy Value Chain Model (BVCM). This model, together with our internationally peer reviewed Energy System Modelling Environment (ESME) – a national energy system design and planning capability - means we are uniquely placed to assess the nature and potential scale of the contribution that bioenergy could make to the future low carbon UK energy system.
Our analysis has provided insights into the future UK Bioenergy sector – what biomass feedstocks would be best to produce, where, and which technologies are best deployed to convert them to different energy vectors.
When biomass resources are limited, and when the need to hit our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) targets becomes imperative, we believe the conversion of biomass to power and hydrogen with CCS would be the preferred utilisation pathways as they deliver the maximum amount of carbon savings.
Using biomass for heating also offers good carbon savings relative to fossil fuels, and should be pursued where there is demand, especially for off-grid buildings. Biomass to heat schemes are a particularly important enabler for the longer-term development of the UK bioenergy sector, by providing an early market stimulus to increase the production of sustainable biomass in the UK.
A ramp-up in domestic production is crucial if we are ever to realise the full potential of bioenergy and maximise the UK’s own green growth opportunities.
UK land is finite and valuable. With the right prioritisation, taking in to account other key uses such as food and feed production, conservation and wider ecosystem services, we believe it could deliver sufficient sustainably-produced biomass feedstock in later decades to make a hugely important contribution to the delivery of the UK’s overall GHG emission reduction targets, without the need for potentially unacceptable levels of land-use change having to be implemented.
For more information on this subject please click here.
Strategy Manager Geraldine Newton-Cross
Bioenergy is important for the UK and deployed effectively it has the potential to help secure UK energy supplies, mitigate climate change, and create significant green growth opportunities.
It is also one of the most scalable, cost-effective and flexible energy conversion pathways around as it can be used to generate power, heat, gaseous or liquid fuels, and more often than not, use existing infrastructure.
It can deliver negative emissions when combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and our modelling suggests that it could cost the UK up to £90 billion a year more to deliver an energy system in 2050 that meets its emission reduction targets without using bioenergy.
Developing, commercialising and integrating technologies and solutions that are already known, but underdeveloped, can help the UK move to a cost effective low carbon energy system over the next 35 years.
Our analysis shows that although there is not one single technology answer - if we don’t include bioenergy or CCS in the energy mix it would at least double the cost of delivering our 2050 climate change targets and meeting our future energy demands, from around 1% of GDP to 2%.
Or put another way, if neither bioenergy or CCS are developed it is difficult to see how the UK would be able to meet its climate change targets cost effectively.
Bioenergy combined with CCS remains the only credible route to deliver “negative emissions” cost effectively and at the scale required.
Negative emissions refer to the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere across the full life-cycle: growing biomass actively removes carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in both plant matter and the soil as it grows. When the biomass is then harvested and converted into energy, the emitted carbon can be simultaneously captured at the conversion plant, and stored securely offshore in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers.
As well as delivering negative emissions, biomass and waste could provide a significant amount of low carbon energy in the future UK energy system delivering more than 50 million tonnes of carbon savings a year in 2050 – equivalent to 50% of our allowable emissions in that year.
To ensure only routes or pathways that deliver genuine carbon savings are supported, as highlighted in the UK Government’s Bioenergy Strategy in 2012, it is important to understand fully the end-to-end elements across the bioenergy value chain: from crops and land use to the conversion of biomass to useful energy vectors and finally the manner in which it is integrated into the rest of the UK energy system in transport, heat or electricity.
To understand these challenges we commissioned and funded the creation of a Bioenergy Value Chain Model (BVCM). This model, together with our internationally peer reviewed Energy System Modelling Environment (ESME) – a national energy system design and planning capability - means we are uniquely placed to assess the nature and potential scale of the contribution that bioenergy could make to the future low carbon UK energy system.
Our analysis has provided insights into the future UK Bioenergy sector – what biomass feedstocks would be best to produce, where, and which technologies are best deployed to convert them to different energy vectors.
When biomass resources are limited, and when the need to hit our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) targets becomes imperative, we believe the conversion of biomass to power and hydrogen with CCS would be the preferred utilisation pathways as they deliver the maximum amount of carbon savings.
Using biomass for heating also offers good carbon savings relative to fossil fuels, and should be pursued where there is demand, especially for off-grid buildings. Biomass to heat schemes are a particularly important enabler for the longer-term development of the UK bioenergy sector, by providing an early market stimulus to increase the production of sustainable biomass in the UK.
A ramp-up in domestic production is crucial if we are ever to realise the full potential of bioenergy and maximise the UK’s own green growth opportunities.
UK land is finite and valuable. With the right prioritisation, taking in to account other key uses such as food and feed production, conservation and wider ecosystem services, we believe it could deliver sufficient sustainably-produced biomass feedstock in later decades to make a hugely important contribution to the delivery of the UK’s overall GHG emission reduction targets, without the need for potentially unacceptable levels of land-use change having to be implemented.
For more information on this subject please click here.