Category Archives: hydrogen

What will the UK’s future energy research and innovation infrastructure look like?

Energy Storage, Energy Systems, Heat, hydrogen, Impact, Net Zero, smartgrid, , , , ,

Dr Zoya Pourmirza and Dr Hamid Hosseini talk about their recent work as part of a team of energy experts from Newcastle University helping UK Research & Innovation with an analysis of the UK’s existing research landscape and future infrastructure requirements.

About the authors

Dr Zoya Pourmirza is a Research Associate in Newcastle University’s School of Engineering. She is involved in a number of research and teaching projects. Her principle research interests are in smart energy systems and information and communication technology (ICT) with particular emphasis on making the ICT infrastructure energy aware and cyber secure.

Contact details: zoya.pourmirza@ncl.ac.uk
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Dr Hamid Hosseini is a Research Associate in Newcastle University’s School of engineering. His principle research interest is in the simulation and analysis of energy system. In his work for the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI), Hamid has been investigating the planning, optimisation and operation analysis of integrated energy networks.

Contact details: hamid.hosseini@ncl.ac.uk
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UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) has recently published two reports giving an analysis of the UK’s existing research landscape and identifying its future infrastructure requirements. These reports make recommendations across six broad research sectors key to ensuring the UK remains a global leader. These six research sectors are Biological Sciences, Health and Food; Physical Sciences and Engineering; Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities; Environmental Sciences; Computational and e-infrastructure and Energy.

As members of a multi-disciplinary team of EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) academics and researchers from Newcastle University, we were commissioned by UKRI to consult with the energy community. The team, led by CESI’s Director, Professor Phil Taylor, worked with UKRI to draft reports detailing our findings and recommendations. In carrying out this work, we made a substantial contribution to the preparation of the energy sections of the UKRI Research Landscape and Research Infrastructure reports.

Consultation exercise

The consultation exercise had three main aims: to inform future research and innovation infrastructure priorities, to provide the groundwork to ensure the UK remains a global leader in research and innovation and to set out the essential infrastructure needed to reach this long-term vision.

The team consulted extensively with leading UK energy industry and academics with expertise across a wide range of sectors, including nuclear, renewables, hydrogen, conventional technologies and whole energy systems. The consultation process was also extensive, including two questionnaires, four facilitated workshops at different locations across the UK and over one hundred 1-1 interviews with experts.

Initial analysis and findings

Based on the feedback received in the first stage of the consultation process, we drafted an interim report to UKRI giving an initial analysis of the UK Energy research infrastructure and a description of the existing energy research landscape. This interim report was included as a chapter in the UKRI Infrastructure Roadmap report alongside chapters for each of other five key research sectors.

An important finding of our initial consultation exercise was that opportunities to grow future energy research and innovation infrastructure could be classified in seven key themes. These informed further rounds of consultation, and are listed in the UKRI initial analysis report as follows:

  • Whole energy systems, including energy demand and power distribution networks
  • Fuel cells and hydrogen
  • Energy storage
  • Renewable energy sources
  • Alternative fuels
  • Nuclear energy – fission and fusion
  • Carbon capture and storage
Energy sector themes overview [Graphic: UKRI]

Final reports

Following this second consultation exercise, we incorporated our findings into two detailed reports for UKRI on the existing energy research and innovation landscape and on the sector’s future infrastructure requirements. These formed the basis of the Energy sections in the two recently published UKRI reports:

These reports referenced key energy research undertaken across the UK, including research involving multi-disciplinary teams from Newcastle University such as CESI and the Active Building Centre (ABC).

Key findings and recommendations

As a result of the consultation exercise, we helped to develop a snapshot view of existing infrastructure of regional, national and international importance. We identified thirty-three dedicated energy infrastructures and help to write case studies of existing key energy research infrastructure which were published in the Landscape Analysis report.

In the report identifying opportunities to grow our capacity, our findings contributed to recommendations for how the energy themes can be progressed and identifying case studies for each. The published case studies include one of CESI’s research demonstrators, The Integrated Transport Electricity Gas Research Laboratory (InTEGReL), as infrastructure offering a whole-systems approach to the UK’s energy use. Newcastle University is working in partnership with Northern Gas Networks and Northern Powergrid to develop the site. Its aim will be to allow academia, industry and government to explore and test new technologies in the electricity, gas and transport sectors in one place, delivering a more secure, affordable, low-carbon energy system.

The Integrated Transport Electricity Gas Research Laboratory (InTEGReL) [Graphic:Northern Gas Networks]

Of particular relevance to CESI are the recommendations for the whole energy systems theme. These include a new interdisciplinary centre for excellence in energy analysis integration and a decarbonisation of heat demonstrator, both of which will make an important contribution to investigations into how we might achieve a net-zero energy future.

UKRI Research and Innovation Infrastructure: Energy
Project team

Professor Phil Taylor
Dr Damian Giaouris
Dr Sara Walker
Dr Zoya Pourmirza
Dr Hamid Hosseini
Laura Brown
Alison Norton

Are we ready for the hydrogen energy revolution? – Matthew Scott

geography, hydrogen,

In the drive to decarbonise heat in the UK, extensive engineering research and development is being carried out on the technology and infrastructure to allow us to utilise hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas. But it isn’t only a technological challenge.  How will society react to this change? What are their thoughts? CESI researchers Dr. Gareth Powells, Lecturer in Human Geography, and Matthew Scott, PhD student and teaching assistant are investigating this. Matthew writes here on the results of their initial surveys.

About the Author 

Matthew Scott is Teaching Assistant and PhD Researcher in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University.

Contact:-  matthew.scott@newcastle.ac.uk

 

Midway through Jules Verne’s 1874 novel The Mysterious Island, when the protagonists are musing about the ever-increasing burning of coal by Western civilisations, the railway engineer Cyrus Harding abruptly proposes water as the most obvious future energy source. “Water!” exclaims one of his companions, “water as fuel for steamers and engines! water to heat water!” “Yes, my friends,” Harding replies, “I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.”

“I should like to see that,” replies Harding’s companion, presumably with more than a hint of incredulity. Although the scepticism of Harding’s companion was probably well placed in 1874, the possibilities of using water – and more specifically hydrogen – as an energy source is now the subject of research being carried out by members of CESI at Newcastle University –  Dr. Gareth Powells, Lecturer in Human Geography, and myself, Matthew Scott, a PhD student working as an RA on the project.

Researchers and energy systems stakeholders increasingly believe that hydrogen may have an important role to play in any future shift to a low-carbon economy. Unlike its cousin natural gas, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned, burning hydrogen releases only water into the atmosphere. And while there are still considerable technological uncertainties surrounding how a transition to hydrogen energy might be achieved, several initiatives in the UK are now exploring it more detail; Aberdeen’s hydrogen bus project and Leeds’ H21 Citygate Project being two of the most recent demonstration examples.

However, a great deal hinges on whether or not hydrogen can become an accepted and uncontroversial part of the general public’s everyday energy use. We currently do not know much about how families, communities, and businesses will respond the prospect of using hydrogen in their everyday lives. Furthermore, much depends on how the introduction of hydrogen might transform the way we all go about our core practices of cooking our food, heating our homes, and travelling on the road.

These are the issues that this research is seeking to investigate. Over the summer of 2017 we asked members of the public at different locations in the North East of England what they think about hydrogen, and how they thought using hydrogen might change their everyday lives. We were interested, firstly, in what (if any) existing knowledge people had about hydrogen and its potential use as an energy carrier. This was not only a case of asking about peoples’ knowledge of hydrogen’s properties as a gas, but also about what people associate with hydrogen more generally – if hydrogen is associated with danger, or fire, then this will undoubtedly have implications on the extent to which it can be accepted in the home, regardless of how safe it might be proven to be.

We also asked about whether or not people thought using hydrogen would change the way they cooked and heated their homes, and how it would impact upon their methods of personal transport. As well as emitting no greenhouse gasses when burned, hydrogen also emits no carbon monoxide, and burns with a flame that is almost invisible in daylight conditions. Many of our participants did not know this before speaking to us. We consequently asked participants to imaginatively place themselves in their homes: cooking, turning on the heating, running a bath, and posed – if you were doing all of this using hydrogen, how do you think you would do them differently? And just as importantly, would any change in how you do these things be acceptable to you, or would they be an insurmountable obstacle and therefore push you away from potentially using hydrogen in the future?

As well as this, we sought to explore what worries and fears people might have about using hydrogen, and how this compared to concerns they had about their existing sources of energy like electricity and natural gas. Finally, we also sought to determine, given most people’s knowledge of hydrogen was low, what forms of evidence and information would be valued knowledge about and confidence in hydrogen, and who the public would trust to provide them with it.

The day when hydrogen replaces natural gas in our pipes and boilers might be some time away yet, but Cyrus Harding may have been eerily prescient when, back in 1874, he referred to hydrogen as “the coal of the future.” Yet hydrogen can only be implemented effectively if we appreciate and understand the complex ways it would change our everyday lives and the extent to which any potential changes could weave themselves into our daily practices. As a result, we hope that this research will produce insights of relevance to researchers, industry, and governmental organisations investigating the ways in which hydrogen might be used in the UK energy system.