Results:

This working paper considers the risks and opportunities posed to UK heat sector businesses by a potential transformation towards a low-carbon heat system in the UK. It is an output from the Heat, Incumbency and Transformations (HIT) project which is part of the UK Energy Research Centre programme.

The HIT project is investigating the idea of incumbency, considering what the term means, how it is present in the UKs heat sector and what the implications of incumbency are for the UKs potential transformation from a high carbon heat system to a low-carbon heat system.

The previous working paper developed a working definition of incumbency (Loweset al., 2017). This working paper forms the second phase of the project, exploring who the incumbents are in the UK heat system and the implications of the potential transformation for incumbents.

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This systematic review presents data on the total installed costs for domestic heat pumps in the UK and internationally. It covers historic and forecast costs, across a range of technology types and building contexts.

This document is a summary for the project titled 'THz nanodevices for energy harvesting'.

The urgent need to reduce carbon emissions in order to limit the impacts of global warming necessitates action for us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by switching to various carbon-free renewable energy resources. In the UK, the government has set up ambitious targets for the production of electricity from renewable sources, 10% of electricity by 2010 and 15% by 2020. Therefore the development of a new low-cost, efficient and environmentally friendly way to generate electricity would be of enormous benefit to society as a whole. This project outlines a plan for the technical and commercial development of 'rectennas' which can be used to convert heat, and later solar, energy from a variety of sources directly into usable electricity. It will also provide significant business opportunities internationally as countries strive to move towards more sustainable ways of generating electricity. This technology has the potential to overcome the fundamental limits of high cost and low efficiency that have limited the success of conventional thermoelectric and photovoltaic devices as low carbon solutions to the world's energy needs.

Heat energy, in the form of infrared radiation, is emitted from any object above absolute zero temperature; the hotter the object the more energy is released. This project aims to develop technology that can harness this energy by converting it into usable electricity using 'rectennas'. Rectennas consist of an antenna, to capture electromagnetic radiation, and a rectifier (requiring diodes with particular characteristics) to convert the energy into DC current. A square meter of material at 700°C, for example, releases about 50kW of energy as heat which would be enough to power 2,500 energy saving light bulbs. The work extends proven technology, shown to be highly efficient (>80%) in the microwave region (GHz), into higher frequencies (Thz) to harvest heat (infrared) from a variety of sources including waste heat from computer chips, car exhausts and beyond. Further development of this technology offers hope of highly efficient light (solar) energy capture. Despite the great potential benefits the device could deliver, the technology is relatively simple and requires only two main components making them cheap to produce and reliable to operate. Antennas that operate at frequencies (infra-red) which allow them to capture heat energy frequencies have very recently been developed, tested and manufactured at low cost however work is required to get rectifiers to operate at this range. Developing recitifiers which are capable this is the main objective of the project and Prof. Song is a world leading expert in the high speed diodes which make up rectifiers, diodes are semiconductor devices which only allows current to flow through it in one direction.

The UK Energy Research Centre welcomes this opportunity to provide input to the BERR Consultation on the UK Renewable Energy Strategy. We have addressed a number of the questions posed in the consultation document calling on all UKERC members for input.

To meet the EU 15% renewable energy target will be a significant challenge for the UK. It is important to understand that reductions in the UKs total energy demand will produce proportional reductions in the renewable contribution required. Although self-evident, this simple fact is often overlooked. Indeed the UK has to date failed to achieve any reductions in energy use, in fact the reverse is true: energy consumption in the key sectors of electricity and energy for transport continues to rise steadily.

In addition to reducing the demand for energy, there will need to be a massive increase in the contribution of renewables to transport fuel (predominately biofuels), heat and electricity. This submission concentrates on renewable electricity because UKERC has core competency this area. In Table 1, below, UKERC presents an illustrative scenario for the contribution of renew

• Without the adoption of a more holistic approach that addresses BETTA structural reform and network regulation, it is difficult to see how a satisfactory resolution of the transmission access issue can be achieved.
• It is proposed that more strategic and unified development of the onshore and offshore network together with the provision of interconnection would be encouraged through common or at least zonal ownership of offshore transmission assets, while cost-effectiveness and the efficient delivery of assets could be achieved through tendering and outsourcing construction.
• Modern distribution networks are not typically designed to accommodate generation; a number of technical and operational challenges will need to be addressed in order for the connection of significant amounts of distributed generation on these networks.
• The consequences of intermittency or variability of input will need to be managed by a combination of retaining conventional plant and developing demand response. Additionally, interconnection with adjacent transmission systems and improved forecasting of wind resource and maintaining geographic diversity of wind generation could also reduce the impacts of intermittency.
• The role of smart grids will be to enhance the capacity and utilisation of the electricity grid (both transmission and distribution) by means other than investing in traditional transmission assets and, via the deployment of smart metering, massively increase the contribution of the demand side to system security and the decarbonisation of the heat and transport sectors.
• UKERC is concerned that a major opportunity will be missed unless there is a timely change to a regulatory regime that encourages objective and costefficient choices between investment and smart grid solutions.

We welcome the Welsh Government's interest in locally owned renewable energy. Our response draws on a range of research undertaken by the Heat and the City research group at the University of Edinburgh, including a UK-wide study of local authorities and energy; and on the Financing Community Energy research project being led by Tyndall Manchester.

In our response we made the following general comments, before responding to individual points raised in the call:

• We suggest that greater attention should be paid to city/town/settlement scale infrastructure for a low carbon energy system, including area based upgrading of the built environment and low carbon heating infrastructure. Heat and energy efficiency for a low energy building stock are crucial to meeting Welsh and UK Government legally binding targets for carbon abatement.
• At national scale, Wales has opportunities for sharing risk, costs and benefits of energy developments - i.e. the direct benefit to the citizens of Wales through public ownership and the aggregate costs across society of decarbonisation.
• Local Authority planning and ownership could be considered further as key components to securing greater local control and accountability, and achieving Welsh Government objectives. Our research indicates that further developing specific roles, powers, resources and responsibilities of local institutional actors in energy planning and ownership, especially Local Authorities would also add value to Welsh society and economy.