Huge progress has been made to limit chemicals’ climate impact, but lessons can still be learned from other industries, says Stuart Reid, AMP.
The chemical industry is one of the UK’s most energy intensive sectors. And, like many similar industries, it is facing the challenge of managing rising energy costs alongside pressures to reduce consumption and lower emissions.
That said, great progress has been made across the industry to limit its climate impact.
According to the Chemical Industries Association, the sector has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by over 80% since 1990 and has the ambition to source 80% of its carbon requirements from non-virgin fossil, sustainable carbon sources by 2050.
However, achieving this isn’t straightforward. The transition to renewables and greater electrification is where one of the biggest challenges lies. Like many energy intensive industries (EIIs), fuel switching to reduce Scope 1 emissions from heat is a huge undertaking for the chemical industry.
Meeting significant energy demand with renewable alternatives to gas and oil at industrial scale, without significant risk or CAPEX, has historically been a critical technical barrier.
That is why successful heat decarbonisation will require big, bold ideas that can easily be turned into reality.
Learning from other EIIs: turning wasted wind into a decarbonisation opportunity
One example is looking at how ‘wasted wind’ – excess wind power that is effectively lost when energy generators are paid to turn off due to lack of demand or insufficient grid capacity – can be used to decarbonise industrial heat.
Wasted wind is a particular challenge along the B6 Boundary, which is the physical boundary between the Scottish and English electricity transmission networks. It is a major bottleneck as it limits the flow of wind power generated in Scotland to where it is needed in England, resulting in high curtailment costs.
We believed that there must be a way to convert this otherwise wasted wind energy into the lowest-cost, zero-carbon steam available in the UK. It was an approach that we have successfully deployed for a business in another EII – the malt processing industry.
Simpsons Malt Limited is home to the largest malting site in the UK, producing around 245,000 tonnes of malt per year and supplying a significant share of the annual requirements for the Scotch Whisky industry. Typically, more than 140,000,000 kWh of gas is used annually to produce the malt – to put this into context, this is the equivalent of the gas consumption of 11,000 homes.
With ambitions to achieve net zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2030, Simpsons Malt wanted to find a new way to decarbonise its malting process and cut its reliance on fossil fuels.
The solution? A ground-breaking energy centre that harnesses the power of wasted wind energy to transition the site to sustainable energy sources and dramatically reduce its carbon emissions from heat.
It uses a state-of-the-art, high voltage 12MW electrode boiler, which is powered by curtailed wind energy, and three 6MW biomass boilers fuelled by locally sourced, low-grade woodchip.
This trailblazing project provides a highly effective way to decarbonise industrial heat, as well as reducing compensation payments to wind energy generators, by using energy that would have otherwise been wasted.
It also reinvents biomass as an effective long duration store of energy sourced from forest, urban and sawmill residues, which is readily available to use during periods of low wind curtailment.
A new era of industrial decarbonisation
For Simpsons Malt, the impact of the energy centre will see more than 140GWh of fossil fuels displaced, 25,000 tonnes of CO2 saved each year and a reduction of carbon emissions at the site by 72%.
By addressing grid constraints and optimising renewable energy use, the energy centre really does set a new standard for hard to decarbonise sectors. Other sectors including chemical industries can also approach decarbonisation in this way.
Importantly, this is a technology that is available and proven right now, meaning that decarbonising industrial heat no longer has to sit on the net zero ‘naughty step’.
