Committee on Climate Change
Independent advisors to the UK Government on tackling and preparing for climate change
Profile on David Clarke, CEO of the Energy Technologies Institute |
 David Clarke joined the Energy Technologies Institute as CEO in January 2008 from his previous role as Head of Technology Strategy at Rolls-Royce plc. David has been involved in collaborative research and development of advanced technologies for over 20 years. Q1/ What are the major technologies that we will need to build a green economy? We need to demonstrate technologies that will provide affordable, reliable, and clean energy for heat, power, transport and the supporting infrastructure. This will accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by increasing commercial investor confidence in low carbon solutions and will also increase the security of energy supplies. It is a massive challenge, and there is no one easy answer. That is why the ETI is leading projects across 8 different areas covering offshore wind, marine, distributed energy, buildings, energy storage and distribution, carbon capture and storage, transport and bio-energy. Q2/ What is the Energy Systems Model and how will it be used? The Energy Systems Model has been developed by the ETI to help identify those technologies capable of having the greatest impact on the 2050 targets and highlight those which potentially offer the lowest technical and financial risk in the face of a number of future demand scenarios. Crucially for me, this ensures that we focus on what could deliver the lowest cost energy solutions for the UK. We need to ensure we hit our greenhouse gas targets but we also have to deliver affordable energy to both business and domestic consumers. The model is already helping to inform Government policy and the initial results have led the ETI to add bio-energy as a new programme area this year. Q3/ Where do you think there are gaps in the UK’s current approach to innovation? There are 3 key elements we have to get right if we are to ensure we deliver innovative energy capability quickly and affordably. Firstly, we need to renew almost the entire UK energy system. The sheer scale of this challenge means we need major industry groups to lead in deploying new capability and new systems. Secondly, we need real step-change innovations in terms of new ideas and new thinking, so we need to build effective partnerships linking big corporations with small and medium size enterprises and academia. Third, it is critical that we have consistent, long-term policies and regulatory frameworks that incentivise these groups to work together, develop, demonstrate and deploy new solutions for the UK. Q4/ Do you think there is potential for CCS to be developed for gas? The ETI has carried out a wide ranging review and analysis of current and potential future CCS technologies. We are currently building a project team to deliver a £25 million project demonstrating one of these options ready for commercialisation initially on coal plant but we expect the technology could also be applicable to gas fired plant. As well as this major project, we are also looking at potential ‘Wave 3’ technologies, with the focus more specifically on those that could be applied to retrofit and new build gas-fired generation, so we welcome the CCC’s recent comments advising the Government to extend its current CCS demonstrator programme to include gas as well as coal. Q5/ What do you do to reduce your carbon footprint ? I used to drive well over 10,000 miles a year visiting project teams, potential delivery partners and collaborators. This year so far I’ve only driven 313 miles on business and moved heavily to trains already totalling 14,000 miles by rail this year. Away from work, my wife and I have some alpacas and are interested to see if their fleece can be used for insulation material. Alpaca fleece is very soft with excellent thermal insulation partly because the fibres are hollow. The softness of the fibre means the first choice is to put it into jackets, duvets, and blankets but coarse off-cuts might be used for more general insulation so it will be interesting to see if the UK population of 25,000 animals could deliver enough to make this viable. |
- Text: Smaller | Larger
Printable Version
email a friend
