Simulating flexibility, variability and decentralisation with an integrated energy system model for Great Britain.

Energy system models allow the development and assessment of ambitious transition pathways towards a sustainable energy system. However, current models lack adequate spatial and temporal resolution to capture the implications of a shift to decentralised energy supply and storage across multiple local energy vectors to meet spatially variable energy demand. There is also a lack of representation of interactions with the transport sector as well as national and local energy system operation.

Thirty years of climate mitigation: lessons from the 1989 options appraisal for the UK.

In April 1989, the UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, convened a full cabinet meeting on climate change addressed by leading scientists. The presentation on mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions was made by the Head of the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU), Ken Currie, and identified the key potential options for mitigation by 2020. In this paper, we compare the mitigation potential identified for each proposed option with the 2019 outturn.

Quantifying the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of changing wastewater quality standards.

Regulations to ensure adequate wastewater treatment are becoming more stringent as the negative effects of different pollutants on human health and the environment are understood. However, treatment of wastewater to remove pollutants is energy intensive, so has added significantly to the operation costs of wastewater treatment plants. Analysis from six of the largest wastewater treatment works in South East England reveals that the energy consumption of these treatment works has doubled in the last five years due to expansions to meet increasingly stringent effluent standards and population growth.

Reaching a 1.5°C target: socio-technical challenges for a rapid transition to low-carbon electricity systems.

A 1.5°C global average target implies that we should no longer focus on merely incremental emissions reductions from the electricity system, but rather on fundamentally re-envisaging a system that, sooner rather than later, becomes carbon free. Many low-carbon technologies are surpassing mainstream predictions for both uptake and cost reduction.