Net Zero Needs
YOU
To hold politicians to account
The future is cheaper, quieter and cleaner:
100GW of wind, 200GW of solar
Electrify motorways
Insulate homes
Install heat pumps
100 TWh of "hydrogen-to-power" storage
No nuclear, carbon capture or bioenergy
* * * Save Many ££ Billions! * * *
A Road Map for Net-Zero
£130 billion in 2022
A unique window into the UK's energy future
Powerful model tests different energy strategies
Tomorrow's clean energy will likely come from wind, solar, nuclear and storage. But in what proportions? And how much will it all cost? Our interactive grid model crunches real-world-data to find the best solutions to keep the UK’s electricity grid running.
Photo: ElectricShock
Net-Zero Needs YOU
Get informed. Bust myths. Talk. Call time on costly carbon.
In 1996, the world's first climate summit in Kyoto attempted to cut CO2 emissions and halt climate change. At that point, humanity had only produced 923 Giga-tonnes of carbon (as CO2) since the dawn of civilisation.
In the 30 years since, that figure has
DOUBLED
as producers, policy makers and consumers knowingly overlook the damage they cause.
Britain's main emissions culprits today are road transport and heating, accounting for 50% of emissions from fossil fuels. Whilst other sectors have fallen dramatically, these have barely decreased in 35 years. Now electric cars and heat pumps have the potential to eliminate all those emissions. Emissions from electricity production have fallen by 75% since 1990. This is partly thanks to North Sea Gas, but increasingly due to growing wind and solar power, which provided 1/3 of the UK's electricity in 2023.
Get Informed. Bust Myths. Talk.
Electrified motorways like this one in Germany solve the problem of battery size for long-range trucks, cutting emissions and saving £millions in fuel. Plans for similar pilot schemes
in the UK
have stalled.
Photo: Siemens
North Sea Oil & Gas have run out
New oil and gas will not solve energy security.
Remaining reserves
are hard-to-reach and uneconomic to exploit without subsidies or support.
UK depends on imported fuels
costing £60 billion
to meet energy needs.
photo: Wikimedia/ Hannes Grobe.
We address the biggest question in the world right now:
What is the Cost of Net-Zero?
The top priorities to reach net zero are:
(1) Expand clean energy fast -
Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electricity today, producing
30%
of Britain's electricity in 2023. It could provide 100% with help from storage, but that will require MUCH more capacity - we can reveal exactly how much.
(2) Decarbonise road transport - Battery electric vehicles use 1/3 of the energy of combustion engines. Costs are falling and technology advancing fast. The technology is there, and affordable.
(3) Decarbonise heat - Heat pumps are up to 5 times more efficient than gas boilers, and UK homes are poorly insulated.
We will show how decarbonising heat will require the electricity supply to double, and what it will all cost.
The biggest challenge is decarbonising the electricity supply
Wind and solar power are cheap and plentiful, but when the wind stops, we still rely on gas at the moment. The electricity grid must find clean ways to supply power when there’s no wind. The challenges for electricity networks are (1) to increase the supply of renewables, and (2) to stockpile enough surplus electricity to use when there’s no wind.
Use the sliders below to see how energy supply and weather affect the ability to meet demand:
(Graph derived from half-hourly figures from National Grid/Elexon
and Sheffield Solar)
£130 billion on
Fossil Fuels in 2022
Solar car ports don't just produce electricity: they provide cool shade from sun and rain... and they're not on farmland. Photo: WikiMedia/AirborneMedia.com.au
Step 2 - How much Storage?
The National Grid could use batteries, pumped storage hydro or hydrogen to stockpile surplus energy during windy periods, ready to feed back into the grid when there is not enough wind or solar. Use the sliders to add battery storage:
How we calculate it all - the numbers behind the graph
Our source data is real-life published records the UK’s live electricity supply and demand, at 30 minute intervals, going back nine years. That’s over
150,000 lines
of real-life data.
How we calculate wind and solar output - We can see precisely how demand, wind and solar varied with weather conditions over the last nine years. We know there was roughly 23GW of wind turbines installed at the start of 2023, so if we double the original data, or treble it, it reflects what output could have been if 46GW or 69GW had been operational at the time instead of just 23GW, etc.
How we calculate storage requirements - If there’s any surplus electricity (supply-demand is +), it can be added to storage. If there’s a deficit (supply-demand is -), we take it from storage to meet demand, multiplied by an efficiency factor to take conversion losses into account.
Step 3 - Transport and Heating
Net Zero means decarbonising much more than just electricity. Petroleum products (mostly in transport) account for 39% of the UK's energy use, and natural gas (heating) for 34%, compared to just 20% for electricity. (Figs from Gov.UK )
UK Road Transport - currently uses 460,000 GWh/yr ) of energy (petrol & diesel, 2021). Electric vehicles are three times more efficient, so electrifying road transport would require an extra 150TWh per year, or 410GWh per day.
Domestic heating - UK households uses around
562,000 GWh
of gas each year. That's a LOT of energy. However, replacing the gas boilers with HFC-free heat pumps (£10-15,000 each, in the UK's 30 million homes), could reduce this by 2/3, and properly insulating the UK's buildings (rough estimate £10-15,000 each) could reduce it by 2/3 again.
Pumped Storage Hydro is well established for helping smooth out the peaks and troughs of electricity demand. But could it store enough energy to help meet winter demand? Photo: WikiMedia Commons
Don't trust any politician that backs hydrogen vehicles. Making the hydrogen consumes either fossil fuels or twice as much electricity as the battery electric equivalent. Who persuaded Johnson & Kwarteng to make hydrogen cars and boilers their 2020 flagship policy?
photo: Wikimedia/ 160SX.
Step 4 - How Much Supply?
Total cost: £ Bn
How much electricity does the UK need to clean up TRANSPORT and HEATING?
End Emissions from Road Transport?
End Emissions from Natural Gas?
Adds massive load to grid, mostly during winter. The only way to reduce this is to lower demand through energy efficiency:
Insulation 1 in of homes £ Bn
Heatpumps 2 in of homes £ Bn
The next steps look at different kinds of storage, and testing over a much longer period
'Biomass' (wood) pellets that the UK burns for electricity are 'dirtier than coal'. Studies show they produce at least 25% more CO2 than coal, and the trees don't grow back properly until the next century.
Photo: WikiMedia/ Sheila1988
Biofuels displace 300 times more valuable farmland than equivalent solar panels
110,000 acres of UK wheat grown for bioethanol in 2023. Solar panels could provide for the same driving distance from
just 370 acres
Photo: Wikimedia/ Dreamy Pixel
£130 billion in 2022 on
Fossil Fuels
Step 5 - Storage Options
This model uses three main
storage technologies
Batteries - Very expensive, cost is determined by the amount of energy stored, but can be up to 90% efficient
Pumped Storage Hydro - also expensive, costs depend on size of reservoir (amount of energy) and the power of turbines. 85% efficient
hydrogen - electrolysers to make hydrogen and CCGT (turbines to turn it back into electricity) are both relatively cheap, and the amount of energy stored could be almost limitless. But with efficiency of just 41%, it wastes a lot of energy.
Total cost: £ Bn
Stored energy
Stored energy (in Thousand GWh): Hydrogen stores (Graphs 2) Battery, Pumped Storage and V2G stores (Graph 3):
Modern turbines that generate electricity from natural gas can turn up to 60% of the fuel's energy into electricity. Manufacturers are now designing (CCGT) gas turbines to run on hydrogen.
Photo: Wikimedia/ Siemens.com
Step 6 - Nine Years of Data
So far we've only looked at a two week duration, but for longer periods, you will need the ability to zoom in on dates.
The last step is a control for the date range.
Use the two date-zoom sliders above to adjust start and end dates.
The basic full grid model looks at a whole year's data. There are actually 9 years of data available (from 2015 onwards) detailing over 140,000 data periods.
Full charge/discharge cycles completed:
Why Sunak didn't talk about Energy
Only
30% of voters
rank environment amongst their top 3 issues. Narratives drive political agendas, but the amazing stories, facts and figures about our carbon-free future aren't getting out to fire public imagination.
We have to talk about ENERGY
Photo: Crown Copyright UK Prime Minister
Bust the myths. Spread the word!
Net-zero costs less than fossil fuels. Start expecting more.
Our aim is to call out politicians' failures, to inspire debate and motivate rapid change. We need you to:
1. Vote for change
2. Share this site - help end the myth that net-zero is expensive
3. Donate £5 if you can (we need just a tiny bit of money to survive) ... AND we offer benefits in return
4. Be energy aware - understand what you believe
5. Persuade people - most voters think immigration is more important than climate change
More Energy Tools
(Please donate to support us!)
● Much bigger dataset - 9 years at ½ hour intervals instead of just 1 year at 4-hour intervals
● much more control over parameters (costs, other technologies [eg gas with CCS, different battery types, load shifting storage, etc])
● alternative versions of the model in excel and python
● half-hourly data instead of 4-hourly
xx% - Gas-fired power stations 
yy% - Nuclear power stations 
zz% - Biomass-fired power stations 
xx% - Wind power 
yy% - Solar power 
zz% - Coal-fired power stations
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