Hydrogen and the transition to a carbon neutral society
2022-04-27 12:30 - 13:30 (Europe/London)
Zero fossil carbon options for long distance transport
Prof Robert Steinberger-Wilckens (University of Birmingham)
Hydrogen is certainly the choice for decarbonising transport without having to make compromises about vehicle range. Nevertheless, for many vehicles, vessels and aircraft travelling long distances, hydrogen takes up too much volume on board. The talk will explore how hydrogen can be converted into other compounds that can be more bunkered in less volume and still do not contain any fossil carbon.
Blue hydrogen production by Sorption Enhanced Reforming (The HyPER Project)
Dr Peter Clough (Senior Lecturer in Energy Engineering, Cranfield University)
Low carbon hydrogen could play an important role for decarbonising industry, power, heat and transport. The Royal Society concluded that natural gas reforming with carbon capture and utilisation/storage (CCUS) was one of the most likely technologies to be deployed at scale in the near to mid-term. The HyPER project, funded by the UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, proposes to answer the call for technology development leading to a low carbon, cost effective, bulk H2 supply through pilot scale demonstration of the sorption enhanced steam reforming process, based on existing GTI technology. With our existing expertise of the process and collaborative industrial support we are aiming to demonstrate the process as an integrated system. This project is designing, constructing and operating a 1 MWth sorption enhanced steam reforming pilot plant reactor capable of producing a pressurised H2 stream and demonstrate the ability to achieve CO2 capture rates of >96%. The technology demonstrated in this project is expected to show the potential for reducing CAPEX by 50% relative to SMR/ATR+CCS.

Integrating Energy Storage with Renewable Energy Generation
2022-05-18 12:30 - 13:30
Dispatchable power from wind: Fantasy or engineering trivium?
Prof. Seamus Garvey
The UK’s best energy resource is wind. We have sufficient offshore wind resources to power all present energy consumption in the UK several times over and the costs-per-MWh of output energy are becoming very acceptable relative to coal-fired and gas-fired generation. Moreover, wind has the very attractive feature that the resource is generally much higher in winter than in summer (the energy harvested in an average mid-winter day exceeds that collected in an average mid-summer day by a factor exceeding 2). Demand for energy also increases in winter but not by a factor of 2. Hence, using a suitable blend of wind power and solar power (~80:20) in the UK can produce a net demand profile that does not have any strong seasonal (winter-summer) imbalance. Providing some small degree of over-capacity is very useful but there would still be many times when the wind resource is low but demand is high. The phenomenon of having a few days without much wind during a deep cold spell in mid winter is not unusual and so several days worth of energy would have to come from somewhere during such times. Conceptually, the most simple solution to that is to have very large energy stores to shore-up the requirement. However, that is not be best solution. This talk will explain why.
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Integrating Battolysers (combined battery/electrolyser) with Renewable Energy Generation
Prof. Dani Strickland
In addressing net-zero targets, it is recognized that green electricity alone is very unlikely to meet the requirements of the complete energy system, for example in areas such as heavy transport. Therefore, alternative energy sources will be required if ambitious decarbonization targets are to be achieved. Green hydrogen has been identified as a low carbon solution that can be used to meet these requirements. One approach to producing low carbon hydrogen is through the electrolysis of water using renewable electricity generation (for example wind or solar). However, the cost of electrolyser technology is currently high and are not designed for intermittent operation. A novel alternative which is currently being explored to address these challenges is a battolyser. The battolyser acts like a battery until it is fully charged and then produces hydrogen gas. A single device which can produce both electricity and hydrogen has the potential to be more economically viable. This presentation explains what a battolyser is and how it can be integrated within the electricity grid.

ECR Special
2022-07-20 12:30 - 13:30
Find out about the fantastic research post-doctoral and doctoral researchers are doing to help drive forward the Net Zero Agenda. Confirmed speakers include Loughborough University and C-DICE Fellow Ben Roberts and the winner of the ERA Net Zero Doctoral Summer Showcase student talks Carmen Hierro Iglesias from Aston University.
Dr Ben Roberts is a Research Fellow in the Building Energy Research Group at Loughborough University. Ben has expertise in measuring thermal comfort and indoor air quality, and is researching how buildings can provide optimal health and wellbeing in tropical climates he will speak about: “Monitoring indoor air quality in two hospitals in tropical climates to reduce transmission of airborne infectious disease”.
Carmen Hierro Iglesias is a Bioprocess Engineering PhD student at Aston University. Her background is in industrial biotechnology and she is currently working on the sustainable production of biopolymers. She is interested in the use of microorganisms to transform biomass waste into bio-based products. This talk will be about the role of bioplastics in achieving a Net-Zero future. Carmen recently won first place in the ERA Net Zero Doctoral Summer Showcase student presentations.
Siqi Wang is a PhD student in the Energy and Power department at Cranfield University with a background in Chemical and Process Engineering. Her current research is focused on developing catalysts and combined sorbent catalyst materials for blue hydrogen production. The title of her presentation is “Developing novel bi/polymetallic catalysts for (sorption enhanced) steam reforming of methane”.
Dr Tom Dolan is C-DICE Postdoctoral Research Fellow and UKCRIC Senior Research Fellow in the Infrastructure Systems Institute at UCL. Through his C-DICE Fellowship, Tom is undertaking systemic research into the role National Infrastructure can play in addressing the Climate Emergen(t)cy. Tom will share systemic perspectives on the Climate Emergen(t)cy, addressing the Climate Emergen(t)cy, the role of National infrastructure as a systemic leverage point; and propose a set of Climate Emergency Success Factors (Systemic principles) that can be used to inform a systemically fit for purpose response to the Climate Emergen(t)cy.

Circular Economy
2022-10-19 12:30 - 13:30
Systems thinking towards net zero chemicals
Professor Jin Xuan (University of Surrey)
According to a United Nations report, chemicals production and consumption are to be doubled in the next 10 years to fulfil our essential needs. It’s simply not going to happen unless we adopt a circular economy approach to enable net zero chemicals. The UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy was established in January 2021 to kick start the timely transition of the UK’s £32bn chemical industry into a circular system. In this talk, I will discuss why we need a whole system approach and an interdisciplinary team to address the challenge. I will give some examples of the on-going research in our Centre to tackle the challenges in the development of the circular economy and net zero chemicals.

Decarbonising heat
2022-11-16 12:30 - 13:30
During this Net Zero Heroes webinar we bring together experts from academia. industry and government to discuss decarbonising heat and homes.
Ellie Horwitch-Smith (Assistant Director – Route to Net Zero, Birmingham City Council.)
Ellie is an Assistant Director at Birmingham City Council. She is the strategic lead on net zero for and oversees a wide portfolio of projects and initiatives to deliver upon the councils Climate Emergency commitments and optimise the co-benefits that net zero presents. With a long-standing consultancy background in global and UK businesses, she has led the development and delivery of a wide variety of projects with local authority and other public and private sector clients, with particular expertise in heat and energy infrastructure and housing retrofit. Ellie is also Chair of the Sustainable Housing Action Partnership (SHAP), a not-for-profit member-led network supporting organisations and the supply chain to understand problems and develop solutions for large scale housing retrofit.
Professor Mahroo Eftekhari (Professor, Loughborough University)
Mahroo has a long-term interest in developing control systems, fuzzy logic, Model Predictive Controller MPC, developing software for airport and strategies for buildings in order to reduce energy consumption while providing thermal comfort and improving occupant’s well-being. Her expertise lie in indoor air quality and thermal comfort, HVAC and pipe network performance, control systems and strategies for zero energy buildings, Digital twin.
Jeff House (External Affairs and Policy Director, Baxi)
Jeff is the External Affairs and Policy Director at Baxi where he champions their vision to lead the UK and Irish markets in smart, low carbon heating solutions. He is the chair of the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council (HHIC) Policy Group and has over two decades of industry experience with a strong background in legislation and policy for the residential and commercial heating sector. He regularly represents both Baxi and the wider industry at Government and trade body meetings, offering in-depth advice and analysis.

Christmas Special
2022-12-14 12:30 - 13:30
In our Christmas special we give a whistle stop tour of the fantastic research that has been taking place across the ERA partnership in 2022.
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Hydrogen use in decarbonisation of transport
2023-01-18 12:30 - 13:30
Professor Robert Steinberger-Wilckens from the Centre for Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Research at the University of Birmingham discussed some of the latest research in hydrogen and the role of hydrogen based fuels in the future decarbonisation of road, rail, air and marine transport.
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Biofuels
2023-02-15 12:30 - 13:30
Dr. Alfred Fernández-Castané (Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) and Aston Institute of Materials Research (AIMR), Aston University) and Dr Vinod Kumar (VK) is a Senior Lecturer in Microbial Technology and Biorefining at Cranfield University discussed how biotechnology can be harnessed to accelerate biofuels production.
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Energy Storage Policy Masterclass
2023-03-21 | Vaillant Live, Derby, DE1 1LA, United Kingdom
Event ReportThe Energy Storage Policy Masterclass brought together leading experts in energy storage in March 2023.
The need for Net Zero is clear to most. The “Energy Sector” is not the only contributor to man-made greenhouse gas emissions but ultimately it is the way that we use energy that dominates these emissions.
Low/zero carbon generation such as wind turbines, PV panels, nuclear power, natural hydro and related renewable-energy generators are clearly essential to our transition to net zero emissions. This was recognised early and put incentives in place that have been hugely successful in driving down generation costs, shortening project timescales and eliciting private investment. The UK’s CfD has been a particularly noteworthy success.
As the penetration of low-carbon generation rises in the electricity system, a different challenge is revealed – how to ensure that the energy consumer receives the energy when and where it is wanted. Coal, oil and gas gave us flexibility at very low cost and that flexibility is not easy to replace. Energy storage is one of the main solutions to the problem of reconciling supply and demand. The state of policy development around energy storage is very far behind where it should be to meet political commitments, including UK’s net zero grid target of 2035.
This event, which took place at IMECHE in London on 21st March, set out to expose some of the main issues behind why the policies around energy storage and the other flexibility technologies are less developed than they might be. The key objective was to unearth and to share what possible directions exist and what good practice is already established that can be adopted more broadly.
Event Chair – Michael LiebreichMichael Liebreich is an acknowledged thought leader on clean energy, mobility, technology, climate, sustainability and finance. He is the founder and senior contributor to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a member of numerous industry, governmental and multilateral advisory boards, an angel investor, a former member of the board of Transport for London, and an Advisor to the UK Board of Trade.
This event was kindly supported by the following organisations:
Downloadable Presentations & VideosYou can download all presentations and view video from the event below. Please note that some of the videos are quite large so please allow a few seconds for them to display.
Session 1Video from session 109:15 – 09:30 Opening remarks by the event Chair, Michael Liebreich
09:30 – 11:00
Prof. Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith on Renewables, energy storage and Net-Zero UKProf. Goran Strbac (Imperial College London) – Role and value of energy storage in supporting cost effective transition to resilient zero- carbon energy future Prof. Paul Ekins (UCL) – Energy policy and uncertainty11:00 – 11:30 Break
Session 2Video from session 211:30 – 13:00
Gary Preece, Chief Market Development Officer, Highview Power – Flexible Long Duration Energy Storage Prof. Keith Bell (CCC) – Delivering a reliable decarbonised power systemHannah Bronwin ( SSE) – SSE and Energy Storage13:00 – 13:45 Break
Session 3Video from session 313:45 – 15:15 Semi-structured discussion
Jon Saltmarsh, Energy Systems Catapult – Flexibility and Storage, the long and short of it Naomi Baker, Energy UK – Long Duration Energy StorageToby Morris, Sunamp – Application of Phase Change Materials15:15 – 15:30 Break
Session 4Video from session 415:30 – 17:00 Plenary discussion and summary outcomes
Join the energy storage discussionif you would like to join the discussion around energy storage and policy, and want to be kept informed of future events and reports on this subject, please email us with your details and your interest in energy storage.
Contact us

Royal Society Large Scale Energy Storage event
2023-09-08 08:00 - 17:00 | Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AG, United Kingdom
The Royal Society’s Large Scale Energy Storage event
On Weds 8th September, an event was held at the Royal Society in London on the critical subject of Large Scale Energy Storage and the report on the subject that was recently published by the Royal Society.

It commenced with an introduction by Peter Bruce, followed by Chris Llewellyn Smith providing an overview of the findings of the report published by the Royal Society on Large Scale Electricity Storage.
Presentations delved into various aspects, such as the effects of weather and climate change, modeling with multiple storage options, and the economics of storage, led by Sara Walker, Tony Roulstone, Seamus Garvey, and John Rhys.
After a brief break, the focus shifted to large-scale storage technologies, including hydrogen and ammonia, as well as non-chemical alternatives, chaired by Sara Walker, Mike Muskett, and Phil Eames.
The event also featured a plenary discussion and Q&A session, providing an opportunity for valuable insights from the panel of previous speakers, led by Peter Bruce.
Following a lunch break, breakout sessions explored the implications of the report in areas like economics, market changes, regulator controls, grid and system impacts, and the future of hydrogen and ammonia technology. These sessions were guided by experts including Cameron Hepburn, Maxine Frerk, Nilay Shah, and Yulong Ding.
After another break, the event reconvened with plenary feedback from the breakout sessions and discussions, moderated by Chris Llewellyn Smith.
Catherine Bremner addressed government policy impacts, shedding light on the role of policy in shaping the energy storage landscape. Finally, Peter Bruce and Chris Llewellyn Smith delivered a summary and brought the event to a close.
This event served as a platform for comprehensive discussions and insights into the challenges and opportunities of large-scale energy storage, with experts and policymakers coming together to drive progress in this crucial field.
Notes from the event
Two notes have been produced as a result of the event which can be downloaded below:

Hydrogen storage in aquifers and depleted gas fields
Transporting Hydrogen vs. Transporting Electricity and the Relative Locations of Supply, Storage and Demand

Download the event slides below
The slides from the event can be found by clicking on the relevant links in the programme, or alternatively you can download the full pack of slides below:

Royal Society Energy Storage Launch Presentations

Read the Royal Society’s report
The Royal Society’s report into Large Scale Energy Storage and other information about their work in this area can be found and downloaded from their webpage.
Event Programme
10.30: Welcome and Introduction, Peter Bruce
10.40: Overview of the findings of the report – Chris Llewellyn Smith
11.10: Presentations on:

The effects of weather on climate change – Tony Roulstone
Modelling including multiple stores – Seamus Garvey
Economic implications and questions – John Rhys

Chaired by Sara Walker
12.00: Presentations on large scale storage technologies

Hydrogen and ammonia – technical assumptions – Mike Muskett
Non-chemical storage technologies – Phil Eames

Chaired by Sara Walker
12.25: Q&A session with previous speakers, Chaired by Peter Bruce
14.00: Breakout sessions looking at the implications of the large scale energy report

Economics of Storage, Market Changes and Regulatory Controls, Chair – Cameron Hepburn
Grid and system impacts, Chair – Maxine Frerk
Likely developments in hydrogen and ammonia technology, Chair – Nilay Shah
Likely developments in medium duration storage, Chair, Yulong Ding

15.00: Plenary feedback from the breakout sessions and discussion. Chair, Chris Llewellyn Smith
15.30: Government policy impacts, Catherine Bremner
15.50: Summary and close, Peter Bruce and Chris Llewellyn Smith
Contact us

If you are interested in this subject, have any comments on it, or would like to be contacted about future events, please email Professor Seamus Garvey at the University of Nottingham.
