Project Summary
Our electricity network is exposed to the increasingly unpredictable and severe impacts brought about by climate change, like flooding and extreme heat. Typically, hard engineering solutions have been used to protect assets from problems such as flood risk. Whilst these are undeniably effective for their primary purpose, they offer no additional benefits and the materials used in their construction is extremely carbon intensive.
However, nature provides us with other options and approaches which are effective, and provide climate, biodiversity, social, and well-being benefits. Nature4Networks with GHG, Frontier Economic and SSEN will explore using nature-based solutions to safeguard our electricity networks.
Innovation Justification
How does your Project demonstrate novel and ambitious innovation in the energy networks?
Currently DNOs rarely consider approaches other than engineered options when designing network assets. There is growing recognition of the potential of innovative NbS and their importance in tackling the combined climate and biodiversity crises. This has seen some sectors (e.g., water) begin to embrace NbS to address common challenges, including water management, flood risk reduction, whilst potentially increasing acceptability by key stakeholders.
Readiness Levels:
We judge the current TRL for some options to be mature (7/8) but we envisage needing to identify additional options specifically for electricity sector challenges. Using the lessons learned from other sectors, our project seeks to raise the current low IRL (2) and CRL (3) for application of NbS to common challenges associated with electricity network assets (e.g., substations and transformers) by 1 or 2 levels. See Appendix 1 below for more detail.
Engineering solutions are effective and well understood, and can be designed for almost any conceivable problem, within fine and well-defined margins of tolerance. However, materials like concrete and steel are extremely energy intensive, they are also generally single purpose, delivering one technical function (and limited additional benefits).
By comparison, an NbS approach, like the re-wetting of a peatland as part of flood mitigation strategy, represents a flexible and expandable solution to meet technical requirements and safeguard organic rich soils, enhance biodiversity value, increase the water table and regulate flow rates and support recreation. The project will look at options for the assessment of these benefits within the investment process.
Lack of evidence is the biggest barrier to uptake of NbS approaches in place of traditional engineered options. Concerns arise over the efficacy and cost of NbS, including how they compare with well-understood engineering approaches and how the delivery risk (including financial) can be managed when dealing with uncertainties related to nature.
Our project sets out to identify issues related to different network asset types that may be addressed by NbS approaches; operational parameters that solutions must adhere to; any regulatory changes needed; and define (at a high level) the nature of the NbS and counterfactual approaches.
We are looking to provide a greater evidence base to overcome concerns highlighted above, which will provide a foundation for subsequent design of schemes suitable for specific locations, preparation of investment cases and measuring their effectiveness once deployed.
Impacts and Benefits
Impacts and benefits description
The project will assess the feasibility, costs and benefits of using Nature-based Solutions (NbS) tailored to electricity network assets relative to existing conventional solutions deployed to address issues such as flooding, noise and over-heating. Should NbS approaches provide effective alternatives for these challenges, the project will provide not only financial savings through lower network costs but also wider environmental and social benefits (carbon emission reduction, carbon sequestration, biodiversity enhancement, physical and mental well-being support) and increased social acceptance.
The benefits to consumers will be assessed using a number of key metrics:
Financial -- reduced operating cost and impact on customer bill: Investing in NbS could represent the most value-for-money option to mitigate issues faced by network operators as part of their day-to-day operations. These savings could then be passed on to end users and result in lower electricity bills. Savings will be measured by calculating the long-term cost (including capex, opex, and repex) of NbS and traditional solutions.
Environmental - both direct and indirect CO2 savings per annum: The construction of "grey" infrastructure is often carbon intensive, (e.g. concrete flood barriers). By contrast some NbS approaches may produce negative emissions through sequestration into biomass. Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions will be qualified for both NbS and traditional solutions. The project will also quantify other environmental externalities -- e.g. relating to biodiversity or the amenity value of land.
Revenues : The project will explore and quantify revenue streams through which DNOs could attract additional returns in investing in NbS and share the upsides with customers (e.g. payments for ecosystem services such as carbon or biodiversity credits, or payments from neighbouring landowners).
Other benefits which may directly impact consumers (such as noise reduction and increased acceptability relative to conventional solutions) and de-risk asset roll-out will be identified and assessed.
Discovery stage will provide a shortlist of appropriate NbS for DNO assets; identify key benefits and costs when compared to a traditional counterfactual and illustrate where (if anywhere) there is likely to be sufficient value.
Should sufficient value be demonstrated, Alpha stage would build on this by identifying barriers to the adoption of NbS and how they can be overcome and carrying out a quantified Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) potentially using a SROI methodology. This CBA will include metrics described above and will assess the benefits of adopting NbS from the perspective of a DNO as well as society as a whole.
Impacts and benefits
Financial Benefits
Investigation into UC1-SuDS illustrated that the use of vegetated swales instead
of BAU solutions like physical barriers to address flooding was particularly cost
effective, in the order of £637k social Net Present Value (NPV).
This represents ongoing reductions in network operating costs -- as an illustrative
example, we estimated that this translates into approximately £1.53 m/yr social
NPV across GB if it's applied to 10% of sites.
Investigations into UC2-Linear Woodland to address Visual Amenity showed
similar cost to the BAU alternative of undergrounding, but with more
environmental and social benefits (identified below).
The alternative to proposed NbS for most of the 14 possible use cases identified
in Discovery is the use of traditional grey engineering solutions. As 'do nothing'
was not an option for UC1_Linear Woodland, and UC2-SuDS, it was not included
in the CBA scenarios for our Discovery investigations.
Environmental Benefits
NbS inherently produce more environmental benefits than any grey BAU
solutions. Our case studies illustrated environmental benefits in terms of:
*Carbon -- reduced direct emissions, increased sequestration and reduced indirect
carbon embedded in traditional solutions like concrete or steel barriers; and
*Biodiversity -- increased biodiversity net gain.
Particularly, the linear woodland CBA showed significant environmental benefits in
the order of £216k (social NPV). Performing the same high-level illustrative
example as the SuDS investigation (applying this to 10% of sites across GB), we
estimate this translates into approximately £4m/yr across GB.
Our SuDS investigation also had a significant benefit (£76k social NPV) from not
utilising physical barriers with embedded carbon.
Revenues and New Market Offerings
We have identified ways in which the external benefits (carbon, biodiversity etc.)
may be monetised according to markets and schemes throughout GB, allowing
the DNO to offset its costs and presenting greater value-for-money for consumers.
We also started to identify various external parties that may be willing to pay for, or
jointly maintain, NbS (e.g., landowners that would also benefit from installed flood
prevention measures such as SuDS) or other sources of funding available like
grants for the development of woodland.
Additional Benefits
There are several social benefits associated with NbS like health benefits and
improved Visual Amenity.
Visual Amenity is a significant cost area and one that is allowed for within the current RIIO-ED2 framework. We have identified health benefits in the linear woodlands use case in terms of improved air quality.
