What We Need to Do Now: For a Zero Carbon Future

By Chris Goodall

The UK has declared a 'climate emergency' and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. So how do we get there? Drawing on actions, policies and technologies already emerging around the world, Chris Goodall sets out the ways to achieve this. His proposals include:

-Building a huge over-capacity of wind and solar energy, storing the excess as hydrogen.
-Using hydrogen to fuel our trains, shipping, boilers and heavy industry, while electrifying buses, trucks and cars.
-Farming - and eating - differently, encouraging plant-based alternatives to meat
-paying farmers to plant and maintain woodlands.
-Making fashion sustainable and aviation pay its way, funding synthetic fuels and genuine offsets.
-Using technical solutions to capture CO2 from the air, and biochar to lock carbon in the soil.

What We Need To Do Now is an urgent, practical and inspiring book that signals a green new deal for Britain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Release date: Feb 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781782836667

Chris Goodall

Chris Goodall is a world-leading expert on new and renewable energy technologies. He is the author of multiple books on the climate and future technologies, including What We Need To Do Now, The Switch, and Ten Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate. As well as publishing Carbon Commentary, a website and newsletter on energy efficiency and renewables, he is an investor in new low-carbon technologies and a member of the Advisory Board for the Pictet Clean Energy fund in Geneva.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

GREEN ENERGY

Powering (almost) everything with wind, sun ... and hydrogen

Electricity generation represents about 15 per cent of the UK’s domestic emissions (65 million tonnes), a figure that has fallen sharply as coal power stations have been decommissioned. Only twenty years ago, UK greenhouse gas output was twice as much. Other uses of fossil fuels for energy – mainly gas for heating and oil for transport – push the total to around three quarters of the UK’s overall emissions; these areas are mostly covered in later chapters.

My proposal for our route to zero carbon emissions is for a twenty-fold expansion of renewable electricity. This will produce far more power than will be needed, even after we have electrified transport and some heating. But it is essential. If we massively overbuild cheap wind and solar farms we will have surplus electricity, almost all the time, and will be able to close all remaining gas power stations.

We will also need to convert as many activities as possible to using electricity, rather than fossil fuels. This means switching to electric cars and using advanced forms of electric heating for well-insulated homes. This will add substantially to electricity demand. However, we should still have huge amounts to spare, which will be available to turn into hydrogen. Hydrogen can be stored to make power when wind and sun aren’t available, and then used, with modified domestic boilers, for heating in homes unsuitable for electric heat, and for low carbon substitutes for chemicals and fuels.

Conversion to an energy system based on renewable electricity, plus the generation and use of hydrogen, is a challenging and expensive task. But, as many other countries are rapidly realising, there may well not be any alternative if we want to reach net zero within a few decades. And, as we will see later, renewables offer a cheaper and more easily installed solution than nuclear power, which just a few years ago seemed an essential option for the move to zero carbon. Nuclear power currently contributes around 15 per cent of the country’s electricity generation, but several power stations will need to be retired before 2050 and they seem unlikely to be