Mr. Paul Allen:

I am putting up a PowerPoint presentation as it helps to have the graphs. It is an honour to be here. We are looking at how we can keep the lights on with 100% renewable energy. There is a yawning chasm between what is currently thinkable politically and what the physics actually demands we do. If we follow what is politically thinkable only, we will end up butting up against the laws of physics in terms of climate change. We are rooting ourselves on the other side of that yawning chasm and beginning to explore what it would be like to do what physics demands. We seek to open conversations, stimulate debate and get people thinking. In our 100% renewables scenario, we design it to minimise lifestyle disruption and make it as much like everyday life as possible. It would be 100% renewable energy with no new nuclear and no improving carbon capture and storage. Basically, it would be to use only existing technology which we know works. It also means recognising where we are today. A typical Tuesday morning in Dublin, New York or London is not actually normal on any sort of historical timeline. We have reached a point of energy extreme lifestyles where we use far more energy than we need to deliver what society wants. That means Britain gives off 650 million tonnes of CO2 every year, the vast majority of which comes from burning fossil fuels. The processes we are looking at include powering down the amount of energy we use and powering back from extreme energy lifestyles to deliver what society needs on a more rational and smart basis. We map out the sectors where we use energy in industry, transport and buildings and we show that we can make a 60% reduction over a period of approximately two decades in the amount of energy we use to deliver warm houses, personal mobility and active industry. At the same time, we are powering up indigenous renewables.

Fortunately, we are in an area of the world which is awash with renewable energy. It is one of the most energy rich areas in the world. That resource does not peak and decline in the way fossil fuel resources do. It is there in perpetuity for future generations. However, we have to work out how to harness it. We look at all of the different technologies which are available, their price, the rate of change of prices and how the cost of things are falling faster than many of us expected. The amount of land needed to generate the same amount of energy varies greatly, including whether it is PV or offshore wind, but across renewables we can begin to optimise the right mix.

When we think we have the right mix we then have to show how we can actually keep the lights on with 100% renewables. We began modelling in great detail. We took ten years of real world Met Office data and modelled energy from all sorts of different sources. It shows we can achieve a reliable and robust supply system. One example is offshore wind. Looking at the output from offshore winds, we can take two offshore wind farm sites, put in our data set of ten years of hourly modelling and come up with an hour by hour analysis of what those offshore wind farms would do. Then we take the same data set and we scale it up for the best available shallow near shore offshore wind sites and come up with a very detailed model. We can then take the same data set and add onshore wind, PV, and all the different renewables to come up with an hour by hour map of when the energy would be available.

We then take the same data set again and we look at national grid statistics and weather statistics and we come up with a model of energy demand. Bearing in mind that we are powering down by about by 60%, it still varies by the time of day and the season. We have two variable things, we map them together in a detailed model and it identifies large surpluses and shortfalls. At that point, we can begin tweaking the installed capacity in respect of the mix of different types of renewables or where they are located to try to optimise the minimum peaks and the minimum troughs. When we have that we then look at what is the best case scenario and what it is we have to do to keep the lights on.

The data says that roughly about 80% of the time supply can meet demand and about 18% of the time there is a shortfall that gets big at particular times of year. We can then begin to look at what we can do to deal with that, particularly the very big drops. The first thing is demand side management. Price incentives and smart grid can be offered to move electrical loads like charging of electric cars, doing the washing and industrial loads to particular times of the day and that can have an impact on the big peaks. We can also look at the short-term storage of energy. In the UK we have pumped storage hydro systems. We could also look at using the thermal mass of buildings, well insulated buildings heated by heat pumps and some major storage can be achieved there.

When we look at the scale of what that can deliver, it reduces the shortfall from about 18% to about 15%. It makes a difference of about 3%. We end up with a big 15% gap that we still have to fill, so we have to look at longer-term storage of terawatt hours of energy, huge amounts of energy. We looked at batteries, pumped storage, compressed air, huge flywheels underground but none of those has the capacity to deliver that amount of energy. What we really need is combined cycle gas turbines. They are flexible and they can start from cold within an hour but the problem is that if we continue to burn fossil fuels then we will not meet our Paris targets. We began looking at the idea of renewable gas. Power to gas involves taking those big peaks - something has to be done with them or else the grid will fail because the frequency and the voltage will not be met - and using them to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It is electrolysis and ordinary level physics.

We can then use that hydrogen as an energy store which seems good in principle but when we look at trying to deploy mass amounts of hydrogen we do not have the infrastructure to do it. We can, however, upgrade that hydrogen to synthetic methane by capturing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere with natural systems and then adding that to the hydrogen with a Sabatier reaction, which again is ordinary level physics, to give synthetic methane which can fill the gaps between the big renewables. When it is burned it gives back the carbon dioxide that was captured by the plants used in its manufacture so it is net carbon neutral.

We can also make some transport fuels because not all vehicles can be electrified as we move to a zero carbon future. Some large haulage vehicles will still need fuel and we might still need some fuel for aviation if we still keep some air flights. Basically, 82% odd of the time supply meets demand, the 18% shortfall can be reduced to 15% with short-term storage but that remaining 15% can be met with synthetic methane. The advantage of that is it means we really need the gas industry to do this.

It has massive potential for the gas industry because we need to store, dispatch and move a lot of gas. Instead of the gas industry being our opponents we can collaborate with the gas industry, in a zero carbon island scenario, because there are huge amounts that we need to do with them.

We have published all of the details on our website, which Members can peruse. They can download the information from zerocarbonbritain.org. We have published the results in a peer reviewed journal called The Management. Again, the results are free to download from the zerocarbonbritain.orgwebsite. We can shift from this to where we need to be and reach net zero, which is quite an exciting future, and think about the potential co-benefits.

We have pulled together rapid decarbonisation scenarios from around the world in a report called "Who's Getting Ready for Zero?" The report includes case studies on Chile, Costa Rica, Bhutan, etc. One can see from my presentation that an increasing amount of hourly modelling is being done for countries and regions have showed that 100% renewable is viable.

Power to gas is growing. It has been calculated that around the year 2020 power to gas will reach a tipping point. In terms of cost, it will become a big disruptive force because there is huge amounts of surplus with renewables. Renewables are getting cheaper and faster than anybody imagined so our grids will have a lot of renewables in them. Capturing that surplus and using power to gas is going to be an exciting opportunity for the gas industry. There is a huge collaboration around the store and go project across the EU. There are pretty large test bed projects that are exploring this option. That is about to kick off. I think it would be very exciting for Ireland to begin modelling what a zero carbon Ireland would be like and to learn the employment and investment potential for the gas and renewable industries.