A couple of interesting interactions this week led me to assess how I was feeling about our progress towards Net Zero. On Wednesday I attended a very informative lunch where the complexity of the task ahead was very clear. Also, this week the National Infrastructure Commission presented its report, clearly a lot of work to do.
Do we have the right structures, organisations, and people in place to achieve Net Zero? My honest assessment is that we don’t. DESNZ, Ofgem, and the new FSO are all well intentioned, but none have the remit or power to drive change at the pace that is needed.
Do we have people on the side of Net Zero. The answer here is ‘not enough’, it’s clear that people are not willing to pay the price or suffer the inconvenience that Net Zero requires.
Do we have the technologies that we need? I think so, and where they are not mature there is a pathway for them (Industrial Hydrogen, SMRs). But, we haven’t yet proven that we can run an industrial economy on renewable electricity (solar and wind) as we have not got storage capacity at scale and the right cost (will it ever be?). The only technology that can fill the gap is nuclear and we are too slow on this.
There are some tough fights still to be had on what we need for NZ. The NIC said no role for domestic hydrogen, National Gas immediately countered this and questioned the research. There is also the wide topic of energy market reform.
We are addicted to oil and gas, with extraction costs of $10 a barrel in Saudi and $20 in the US, this is all so cheap that we are likely to continue using it until the planet runs out and we’re all living in a sauna.
Finally, we don’t have a plan. This is perhaps the most shocking omission in the whole picture. No one has drawn up the chart that shows what we need to do and when. If we can do one thing as an industry then coming together to draw up this plan should be a good start.
