6 minute read
Emissions targets
It’s a fair COP
World leaders will meet in Glasgow in November for UN climate change summit COP26. The UK has set tough targets for reducing carbon emissions and otherwise ‘greening’ its energy sector. So, how’s it doing?
The UK’s commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 is going to require a mammoth effort. Front and centre will be the project managers taking green energy initiatives from concept to delivery, often with complex and innovative engineering at play, and factoring in a range of external challenges, from regulation and financing to at-scale coordination of generation, distribution and consumption of energy.
But we have come a long way since 1990, when the International Panel on Climate Change issued its first report on the impact of humans on the greenhouse effect. The UK’s GHG emissions in 2020 were 51 per cent below 1990 levels.
Wind at their back
In electricity generation, the biggest change since 1990 has been the virtual collapse of coal as a source of power – from about 65 per cent in 1990 to less than three per cent in 2020. That represents about 40 per cent of the reduction in the UK’s CO emissions 2 over the past 30 years. While that period has also seen a massive rise in the use of gas-fired power plants, gas is less carbon intensive than coal.
But the big win has been the emergence of renewables, from negligible levels in 1990 – around two per cent of electricity – to more than 40 per cent in 2020. Virtually every class of renewable electricity generation has seen rapid growth over the past 15 years.
Wind is a perfect example. The UK government required power distributors to source more renewable energy as early as 1989, with its NonFossil Fuel Obligation, leading directly to investment in the first proper wind farms. But even in 2008, the UK’s wind-generating capacity was just 3MW – for a total contribution of about 1.5 per cent of national electricity use.
Yet by 2019, nearly 23,950MW was available to feed the grid – and wind alone accounted for 21 per cent of electricity use. The UK government has used both subsidy and regulation to encourage wind-farm development, both onshore and offshore.
With wind, the biggest challenges are often not in engineering (although modern offshore turbines are titanic in scale – see box), but environmental and regulatory considerations. UK offshore is a great example. It was only in 1999 that the Crown Estate (which effectively owns near-shore sea areas) agreed to guidelines for facility development, and the first round of experimental offshore wind farms didn’t feel the breeze until 2003.
Slow progress in this first phase, coupled with growing concern about climate change, pushed the government to take a more structured approach to the industrialisation of offshore wind, creating blocks of shallow water with minimal impact on wildlife and shipping for projects to bid on. This succeeded in propelling bigger and more intensive installations funded by the private sector.
Skills and finance
But smarter legislation is only half the battle. “Laws don’t deliver projects; people do,” said APM president Sue Kershaw in April. “For every goal and commitment, there will be countless projects and professionals needed to deliver across many different industries. Only with significant investment and focus on project skill sets will we be able to support the proper inception, delivery and completion of these projects that will help deliver these ambitious goals and timelines for the environment.”
Building on the success of existing projects is critical. Retained project expertise will make faster roll-out of scaled-up wind farms much easier. But it’s also crucial we don’t fall into the trap of over-specialisation. Because, while solar arrays are less effective in the UK than in Spain, for example, other forms of renewable power need to be part of the picture. Anaerobic digesters, for example, will never be a significant share of generating capacity – but they are local (reducing transmission costs) and help manage other forms of waste.
And whether it’s new nuclear to provide baseload provision, fresh takes on tidal power or experimental technologies such as hydrogen or fusion
reactors, we’ll need more, and more knowledgeable, project managers.
Brush up your networking
More efficient management of energy sources is a relatively small contributor to falling CO emissions. But having a 2 smaller and cleaner fossil fuel industry has delivered about 10 per cent of the UK’s decline in CO emissions. 2
This could be bumped up by projects to improve distribution efficiency. At the moment, around seven per cent of electricity is lost in transmission, and projects to build smarter grids and more local generating and storage capacity could be a boon in reducing these losses. The National Grid has set itself a target to be carbon neutral by 2033 – meaning all electricity generation and transmission will account for zero emissions, an aggressive and optimistic objective.
Consumption
The other big contributor to falling carbon emissions is energy consumption. Cleaner industry, controls on landfill GHG emissions, more efficient industrial processes and general household energy efficiency are all driving down the UK’s impact on climate change, despite a growing economy and population. Energy-efficient homes, greater use of electric vehicles and changing social behaviours (less commuting post-pandemic, for instance) will play a role. It’s a reminder for project managers that coordination of programmes is critical – dovetailing onsite project sustainability, contribution to wider climate goals and aligning with wider societal changes.
“The Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero Report includes a portfolio of projects and programmes to deliver on the [climate] commitment, a combination of known technologies and step-change projects,” said Arup’s Rob Leslie-Carter in an APM presentation. “And as well as energy generation, distribution and use, it’s also about managing people and societal change.
“Project managers enable the conditions to deliver net-zero projects,” he continued. “We’re integrators – not just rolling out low-carbon technologies, but also helping tackle systemic challenges.” Leslie-Carter picks up many different roles for project managers to influence net zero – from funding and approvals to strategic priorities, choice of projects you seek out and monitoring project sustainability. That applies as much to green energy projects as to the broad slate of programme sustainability.
Energy transition is now an unstoppable force. The targets remain tough, but the tools and technologies to achieve them seem within our grasp. Translating vision, technology and investment into action and tangible change is precisely what project managers exist to do. And there’s no more important change than a sustainable future.
