The most efficient way to meet “Net Zero” target is a whole system design approach and cross-sector collaboration. ‘Zero-2050: South Wales’ will bring diverse stakeholder groups (utilities, industry, academia, SME, consultants, Government, regional experts etc.) together to design a pathway to address decarbonisation needs of the South Wales region. A multi-energy vector modelling exercise will be carried out to estimate the impact on utilities’ networks for different scenarios.
The project will recommend a pathway to decarbonise South Wales supported by solid analytical work and taking in to account the regional socio-economic aspects.
Objectives
To bring diverse stakeholder (utilities, industry, academia, SME, consultants, Government, regional experts etc.) views together, adopt a whole system view and technology neutral perspective, critically review and challenge the options, quantify them with facts and analysis, and then design a pathway to meet South Wales net-zero target which delivers the best value to consumers.
Learnings
Outcomes
The key project outcomes are summarised below:
- Development of a series of decarbonisation scenarios for the energy system in South Wales, based on innovative optimisation modelling approaches.
- Providing evidence based recommendations for actors in the energy sector to deliver the decarbonisation scenarios.
- Recommendations for low regrets measures are identified in the final project report, including specific investment and further investigation opportunities. An adaptive pathways approach to making future decisions is recommended, and tipping points for this are also identified in the report.
- Building a network of practitioners and stakeholders throughout the project delivery, through the project team and Review Committee, resulting in increased skills, capacity and knowledge sharing across the energy sector in South Wales.
Lessons Learnt
The key lessons learnt from the project is summarised below.
1. Net-zero scenario development
It was found challenging to define the scenarios to achieve net-zero emission at a regional level through a whole-system approach. A lot of assumptions were required with a high degree of uncertainties such as low-carbon technologies widely adopted, household development trend and travel preference in future, etc.
2. Coordination with multiple work packages
The coordination among multiple suppliers turned out to be challenging, especially for the work where lots of data and assumptions need to be shared between different sectors. The project took a significant time to set up an appropriate working model among different work packages. The key lessons learnt is that for a complex project with multiple project partners, suppliers and stakeholders, a well-defined project governance model and regular engagements are essential.
3. Strategy and alignment
The scope of work packages that resulted in demand profile outputs, particularly WP2, WP4 and WP5, were defined prior to the development of an approach to whole system modelling. As a result, it was a challenge to ensure that the demand profiles used for the whole system modelling were a complete reflection of the future energy system demands. This was overcome by adopting additional published data sources to fill gaps. Additionally, restrictions on the access to data collected in WP5 led to limitations in using this information flexibly in other work packages. For future projects, data needs across all work packages should be considered in the development of data sharing agreements.
Dissemination
- Project reports on the Zero2050 website (https://zero2050.co.uk/report/)
- Webinars on Zero2050 across 2019 and 2020
- Presentation at Energy Network Innovation Conference on 9th Dec 2020
- Presentations on Energy Network Innovation Forum on 24th June and 25th November 2020
- Presentation at Wales Climate Week on 3rd November 2020
