Dave Elliot, PhysicsWorld
Summary
Set up in 2007, the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) brings together researchers at Loughborough, Nottingham and Birmingham universities and elsewhere to look at system-level energy issues in a £400m UK industry–government partnership. That scheme finishes at the end of this year.
So, although we will no doubt hear more from the ETI in its last year, and from the various Catapult groups that have emerged, the Institute has brought together some of its conclusions into something of an early “goodbye” overview of the various options. The report is based on the ETI’s Clockwork and Patchwork scenarios, now revised since their original publication three years ago, for example taking account of the downward trends in energy service demand, which the ETI says “tend to make carbon targets easier to meet”.
The high-level conclusion is that “a balanced, multi-vector approach can deliver an affordable, low carbon UK energy transition, with costs rising to around 1% of GDP by 2050”. But it says “without certain key technologies, meeting carbon targets would be much harder, jeopardizing industry and severely limiting lifestyle choices”. Although it warns that, given the potential for innovation across a range of technologies, “we cannot be prescriptive about the precise mix over a 30-year period”, it does push some ideas forward, and adopts quite a challenging approach.
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