Plans to invest £100m in energy-related projects that will work towards bringing about a low-carbon economy by 2050 have been outlined by Energy Technologies Institute CEO Dr David Clarke.
A partnership between global industries such as BP, Caterpillar, EDF Energy, E.ON, Rolls-Royce and Shell and the UK Government,the ETI is charged with developing secure clean and affordable energy for heat, power transport and infrastructure. It has put £60m into projects over the past 18 months in areas such as offshore wind, marine technologies, electrification of transport, carbon capture and storage and small scale micro generation and distributed energy..
In an interview with online financial broadcaster Cantos, Clarke says: "We're in the process right now of launching another £100m worth of projects. Over the last 18 months, the average project cost has been of the order of £3m to £4m. We expected they would go about £10m to £15m per project over a period of time as we ramped up and got onto the big projects. The generation that we're launching right now are £25m plus projects.
"So we've moved very rapidly from kind of the upfront design work — which is what many of the first projects were around — to what might be a sensible technology option for the future: what does it need to look like, what kind of engineering is in it? We're now moving very quickly into the hands-on, the real tangible demonstration phases of that, which cost serious money."
The challenge for the UK is moving forward, says Clarke. "We've got the potential to continue to use fossil fuels in quite a big way for the future. We've got some good low carbon alternatives such as offshore wind where we've got very good resources around the UK. But the challenge we have is how do we deliver those things whilst maintaining energy security and delivering affordable energy to the customer.
"So a number of the projects we're working on — in fact, virtually every project we're working on — is trying to achieve that balance between low carbon yes, security yes and affordability yes. The reality is that for security in particular, you end up saying the way to deliver that is through a portfolio of energy sources and energy generation — so, hence, partly why we're working on quite a broad range of programmes across a number of different areas."
Dr David Clarke's interview can be viewed in full at www.cantos.com.
