David MacKay Memorial Lecture 2024: Britain’s Changing Energy System

In this lecture recording, Dr Grant Wilson of the University of Birmingham will outline the significant changes that have happened in both supply and demand of the electrical and gas systems, together with alternatives for its energy system flexibility to meet future demands and Net Zero targets.

[@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle]

Thanks IMechE for making this excellent talk accessible online. A couple of comments / questions - a lot of discussion in politics / media about policy such as ban on new private ICE vehicles by 2030, I wonder if this could be modelled on the total fossil fuel graph. At what point would EV take up have an impact on that line? What share of total fossil fuel use is private vehicles? Similar questions for heat pumps? These are deployable technologies today, but I have a feeling they would have a small impact on the total fossil fuel graph, and then a small impact on the electrical demand graph too. It would be interesting to see it modelled. And then on the final part of the talk, on storage, at what point would EVs, with vehicle to grid technology as standard, assist the total energy system respond to issues like beast from the east, or just day to day peaks / troughs of energy demand. If 50% of private vehicles (let's say 15 million) were electric, and plugged in, and willing to give up 5 kWh for the cause... does that work out as 75 GWh of stored energy in the same way as the other energy stores were described? One thing that is clear after the talk, is there is a long way to go!