The UK's Commitment to Net Zero
Professor Julia King (Baroness Brown of Cambridge) visited Australia in October as our 2019 Distinguished Lecturer, sponsored by the University of Melbourne, Peter Cook Centre for CCS Research and the Minerals Council of Australia.
She presented two lectures in Melbourne on the UK's commitment, through the Climate Change Act, to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The challenges to achieving net zero emissions include: replacing gas heating; doubling the size of the electricity system; building a hydrogen energy system the size of the current electricity generating system from a zero base; and transforming transport and farming.
Professor King is an engineer, with an outstanding career in academia (Cambridge University, Imperial College, Ashton University) and in business and engineering at Rolls-Royce plc. Her current interests include climate change adaptation and mitigation and the low carbon economy. She serves as: Vice Chair of the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC), Chair of the Carbon Trust; non-executive director of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult; Council member of Innovate UK. She led the King Review for the Treasury on decarbonising transport, was the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassador for Energy for ten years and served as a non-executive director of the Green Investment Bank. She is passionate about education and engineering. Professor King is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Society and was awarded DBE for services to higher education and technology. In 2015 she was elevated to the Peerage as The Baroness Brown of Cambridge. She sits as a crossbench Peer and is a member of the House of Lords European Union Select Committee.
10/10/2019 – Net Zero Emissions by 2050 and the Role of Hydrogen
This lecture explains the approach taken in assessing the need for hydrogen, looks at the implications, such as the need to develop carbon capture and storage at scale, and the opportunities, including the combination of wind and hydrogen as a grid balancing mechanism.
Watch the lecture below:
08/10/2019 – Net zero: the UK’s contribution to halting global warming
This lecture covers the rationale for both the level of, and the timescale for the net zero target, the estimation of costs and the challenges to delivery, including: replacing gas heating in most of the UK’s 29 million existing homes; doubling the size of the electricity system; building a hydrogen energy system the size of the current electricity generating system from a zero base; stopping the sale of fossil fuel powered light duty vehicles by 2030; transforming farming; and delivering the required pace of change.
Download the lecture slides here: