‘Will the UK decarbonise industry – or close it?’: sustainable energy professor Peter Taylor

The UK is reaching a “crunch point” for investment in ageing industrial infrastructure, according to Professor Peter Taylor – and for many companies, the choice will be between decarbonising or closing facilities.

Professional Engineering spoke to the chair of sustainable energy systems at the University of Leeds ahead of his keynote presentation on industrial decarbonisation at IMechE’s Heat Recovery Steam Generator event (4-5 November). 

What is the biggest challenge in industrial decarbonisation?

The biggest challenge is that none of the options for decarbonisation make commercial sense in many circumstances. If you look at what the Climate Change Committee says is the way forward on decarbonisation, they highlight electrification as being the primary route. The problem is that electricity prices in the UK are very high by international standards. They're among the highest in International Energy Agency countries, and that means that many electrification routes currently don’t make sense compared to the existing alternative, which is usually using gas.

There is also a physical barrier, which is the grid connection time. If, in electrifying, you need to upgrade a grid connection, that typically isn’t going to happen for several years. The government is trying to address that, but for many companies we speak to that perception hasn’t yet changed.

Other options, such as conversion to hydrogen, or carbon capture and storage, are quite expensive and lack supply chains and supporting infrastructure.

What are the most promising engineering solutions to those challenges?

Slightly more than half of energy used in industry is for heat of some kind, so the main challenge is decarbonising that heat. Depending on the sector, it can be many hundreds of degrees Celsius to less than 100ºC.

At the lower end, heat pumps are gaining attention. They are expensive, but they do have a sufficient efficiency gain, and in some cases they are cost effective.

For companies, integrating heat pumps into their wider heat system can be the challenge, and can double or maybe even triple the cost of the project. Can we come up with engineering approaches that are replicable across different sites? At the moment, each installation is bespoke.

Higher temperature heat pumps – above 150ºC and maybe in the low two-hundreds – are coming along, and could become more normal with further R&D.

Other opportunities could include direct electrical heating or potentially replacing natural gas with hydrogen.

How is AI changing the nature of work in the energy industry?

This isn’t a focus of my research, but one of the benefits that people often cite for electrification is that it can make processes more controllable and cleaner. I can't help feeling that embedding AI could be easier in electrified processes, rather than more mechanical processes, and that therefore there's an opportunity to embed AI within those electrified processes and really optimise them – to monitor in real-time and to make that control much finer, delivering productivity improvements and reducing costs.

What has the industry got right in recent years – and what has gone wrong?

The UK has a number of specialist chemical manufacturers that are genuinely world-leading. At the other end of the spectrum, bulk chemicals have suffered quite considerably as that sector is undercut by companies in other countries, notably in Asia, because of labour costs and electricity prices.

The systemic challenge that is coming home to roost is that there has been a lack of investment in the manufacturing industry in the UK that has gone back 40 or 50 years. A lot of the plants, particularly in intensive areas – blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, for example – are 70 or 80 years old. They have been patched up and relined, but we’re reaching a crunch point where new investment is needed – what will that investment be?

Assuming that these companies do want to make that investment, one of the challenges is that many are owned by multinationals. The question for them is if the return in the UK will be as good as it could be elsewhere.

There is no doubt that industrial emissions in the UK will fall in the future. The question is if that will be through closure or actually decarbonising the processes. For many sites, the next few years are a real crunch point. If we don’t get our act together in a relatively short order, the default option for many of the overseas owners will be that closure looks like the best bet.

How do you expect the energy industry to change in the next 10 years and beyond?

Decarbonisation does offer opportunities. Just to pick one, the market for sustainable aviation fuels is growing. It’s a bit of a niche area, but it’s something that we’re quite good at in the UK, and there is potential for growth.

There are some bright spots, but the issue is if we can sustain the industry in the UK long enough to decarbonise it. Most commentators would say we need quite a lot of government support. Where does it rank in the list of priorities?

Are there any skills that will become more important in low-carbon energy in the years to come?

Skills are one of the things that companies highlight as a barrier to expansion and decarbonisation. There is a concern that we don’t have the engineers and the technical skills that we need to support the low-carbon transition – not necessarily at degree level, but more people who are leaving school and getting professional training and apprenticeships. There seems to be a feeling in industry that they don’t exist in the ways that they did 40 or 50 years ago. It comes down to money to support it.

What would you say to students and young engineers considering a career in your industry?

This transition that we’re on is not something that will be done in 10 years. Many of the changes that we need will take longer, and there will be many new generations of technology that come in. Any part of engineering, the supply chain and supporting the manufacturing industry will hopefully provide a fulfilling, well-paid and long-term career.

Join the leaders shaping the future of lifecycle performance at IMechE’s Heat Recovery Steam Generator User Group, taking place at the Leonardo Hotel in Hinckley, East Midlands, from 4-5 November. Find out more and book your pass.