Worshipful Livery Company of the fuellers hosted a very successful, third Duke of Edinburgh conference with an event title, ‘Future Energy.’ HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, past master of the fuellers attended, summarising, he spoke message of future workforce with a showcase of opportunity for next generation in the fuel and energy. Supported by UK Power networks, the four key-note conference took place in the last days of November, each key note was supported with energetic panel Q and As. Even seasonal input as livery voted on the belief in Santa. Hosted in London West End on the soft red seats of the Royal Society of Medicine Wimpole Street it was a perfect location for a perfect conference. The Conference reviewed energy, future and decarbonisation with a lively audience focused to challenge in their questions. Hydrogen to fusion, home and commercial. Networking and natter amongst a small exhibition generated a lively and engaged event full of focus on fuel and energy. In a panel one straw poll vote twenty five per-cent of the guests said they owned an electric vehicle. The fueller livery is decarbonising from within.

Past Master Duke of Edinburgh remarks

‘Let's explain the opportunities in the energy sector to our next generation.’

Starting point for this news is aptly the past master fueller, HRH Duke of Edinburgh. ‘A terrific conference, a broad subject, energy, renewable, sustainable issues. And many livery companies here. Well done the fuellers for organising this conference. HRH spoke EV vehicles, great but how do we deal with batteries, watch this space as the world looks at the rare materials that make the batteries. HRH focused on the Skills shortage in the sector of energy and fuel. ‘Skills has taken strong mention at the conference, its not a driver but this sector needs to explain the opportunities in the energy sector, lets work out the breadth of jobs in the energy sector and showcase that to our next generation in our schools.’

Keynote 1 Energy Outlook – A Perspective from the United States

Lucian Pugliaresi, President Energy Policy Research Foundation, USA.

Intermittent energy - Just because something is in-exhaustible does not mean it is cheap.’

Discussing fuel in a public forum, Lucian reflected on heating oil discussion in the United States. North America and the Western hemisphere are net exporters. Lucian looked back in time to the Fuellers livery engagement with the wood-mongers. Even today traditional medieval fuels are strong. Total World demand, World Oil demand 2030, OPEC forecast for 203 keeps going up.’ ‘You have to keep investing in exploration just to stay at the current rate.’ ‘The vision alternative fuels will mean future oil is not needed is not the answer. You are going to see spikes in oil and gas price. Wind and solar is free yet when we look at the World power solutions, we still have to manage the systems costs. Intermittent power is difficult to manage. Intermittent energy - Just because something is in-exhaustible does not mean it is cheap.’ We will see compromise in energy security. Is the World committed to net zero? We must not give up on de-carbonisation. How can we do this in a more sustainable way! We need to do the cheap and low stuff first. People want energy, it will be produced.

Keynote 1 - Lucian Pugliaresi, President Energy Policy Research Foundation, USA.

Panel 1 Energy Markets

Chair: Jon Clark, EY.

Quarter of the audience said they owned an electric car,

Discussion: Jon Clarke, the future of energy is uncertain, he challenged the panel. How has the energy cost crisis affected energy and climate policy? What do we need to change? How can we finance the future of energy: The panel replies were energetic and focused. First a vote. Quarter of the guests in the panel one audience said they owned an electric vehicle, none of them said they would return to fossil. Reliable electricity around the World was challenged. Need of spend on grid infrastructure featured strong. Gareth Ramsey said there should be a cost placed on carbon. Question time ran out as diversity of fuel ran from hydrogen boiler heating in homes to hydrocarbon in food production.

Gareth Ramsay, BP Economist, ‘Carbon emissions have been going up. Fossil fuels have been stuck at about eighty per cent of world use for years, but they are about to decline. The challenge is about demand. The most incredible uptake of renewables, they rose by a sixth last year. Half of that growth was in China. The Netherlands has twice as much solar than the whole of Africa. Electrification is growing, not just transport but buildings too. We must invest in our grid. We need to double the spend in grid infrastructure worldwide. There should be a price placed on carbon.

Richard Nourse, Schroders Greencoat, Richard started with a straw pole vote on electric vehicle ownership in the audience. A quarter of the guests said they owned an electric vehicle. We have seen a miracle of values in the fall of renewable cost for wind and solar. They have reached affordable price. In the future there will be increased green jobs, less people will suffer from asthma. I believe we will heat houses in the future in very different ways. Richard sited a sewage works case study and commented gas and hydrogen for heating homes was the future.

Dr Carole Nakhle Chief, Crystol Energy. Carole spoke with a lens from Libya, she explained 45% of people around the world do not have access to reliable electricity. In the las 35 years our dependency on fossil fuel has only declined four per-cent. Natural gas and coal move to green is not going to happen overnight. ‘The real problem for energy transformation for me is the driver, coal remains dominant. Coil to oil was driven by competitiveness. Industrial transformation and competitiveness is not driving fuel change today, change is been driven by customer choice. Do not put all the producers in the same category. High carbon need communities will be the last to leave the fossil market. Carbon tax, carbon price is a no brainer. But we need support from people, we need social reality of people with us for carbon tax.

Panel one – chair John Clarke

Keynote 2 Energy Outlook – A British Perspective (including the regulatory/technical challenges we face)

Juliet Davenport, OBE, President Energy Institute

‘The doing will make a difference.’ From physics I like to simplify. The re are five areas to deliver on climate, Innovation with R&D, Infrastructure,, regulation, Consumer involvement, Skill and leadership’ In the UK we are good at small, we are good in the lab, but we are not so good at large scale. Power networks, we need to see significant change, we need to think UK whole. We need a masterplan people are talking about it but a master plane does not yet exist. How do we accelerate systems for power networks? Heat networks, new technology is coming such as intense heat stores, but heat appears way behind, we see pilots of heat networks as a form of power storage. This thinking is evolving, we will need to protect consumers who purchase systems that do not come to work. Power markets, market is driven by gigawatt hours not gigawatts, energy is priced at time of creation, cost of storage must be incorporated into renewables in the future. We need incentives for balanced power delivery. Domestic and business customers, in the past we simply took a lens of meters, There was no vision of what happened on the other side of the meter. Agile charging, smart chargers are potential future plays. We must encourage people to join our industry, we must make energy a choice of next generation for our industry. We need to capture capacity of future skills, we need future skills for our fuel sector.

Keynote two – Juliet Davenport – customers are not just a meter, we need balanced delivery

Panel 2 Innovation

Chair - Prof. Robert Gross, UK Energy Research Centre,

Robert Gross smiled and introduced, long haired professor talk. ‘The transition is happening’ ‘Innovation should not be linear.’ ‘We need to remove carbon from the atmosphere at scale.’ Robert from Imperial works on innovation and spoke technology Advances Overview as he introduced the panel. ‘Remember 2050 is not the end. New technologies and new business models are still needed. In this second panel we draw from the world of engineering and digital sciences to explore the innovations being made, the problems they are solving and the opportunities they are creating.’

Richard Hulf, Founder Hydrogen One. – Richard explained green hydrogen and spoke, large and micro hydrogen and ammonia production and usage technologies. ‘Its happening all over the World. UK a little slow on hydrogen but it is a real solution.’

Sir Ian Chapman, UK Atomic Energy Authority, ‘Tomorrows nuclear.’ Sir Ian moved to Fusion, ‘Fossil to fusion.’ ‘To make fusion happen we need a lot of energy, there are technical challenges to the reality but the world needs fusion. While fusion always seems thirty years away Sir Ian showcased a 35 country project to build reality of infrastructure build. Big complicated engineering, it is really happening. The technology is coming together.’ ‘ Not melting the wall, the test facility reduced the heat arriving at the wall by ten, this brings a much smaller project opportunity that brings affordability to future.

Paul Spence, Director Strategy & Logistics EDF Energy – Fission. We are at the anniversary of a quarter decade since EDF took its first step into the UK. We see a need for doubling the electricity we need, we need to change how we transport and replace electricity. We need more electricity, more from renewables, more from nuclear, at EDF we are trying to make some of this happen. We are building the first next generation large reactor at Hinckley Point. Things are going well, it is a challenge at this level. It’s a big effort, about eleven thousand people a day on the site. There is innovation everywhere helping make it happen. Paul spoke future units 3 and 4 at Sizewell and modular opportunities in the areas such as Hartlepool.’ Paul finished with a passion for next generation, learning and education for the sector via apprenticeships, building net zero skills.

Jason Frost of Aker Carbon Capture. Carbon Capture and Storage; ‘We build carbon capture plants.’ business as usual, we cant keep producing carbon. Jason spoke about traditional carbon capture on fossil fuels. Then Capturing carbon from the atmosphere, its costly using a lot of energy. Bio energy capture is a project we are working on with Microsoft who are buying carbon credits in support of our project in Denmark.

Panel two  the Fuellers conference Innovation

Keynote 3 Energy Outlook

Dame Mary Archer DBE, Chemist, Chair of the Board of the Science Museum.

Four actions – ‘To move away from fossil fuels.’

Let me comment on the great changes I have seen in the sector. ‘We must stabilise the climate in our time.’ When I was a young Chemist I soon appreciated carbon but no one looked at carbon dioxide. Dame Marry spoke of academic life and her road through solar from photosynthesis. It was the World oil crisis that generated focus on modern solar. Photo chemistry discussion was strong, 1973 at a Unesco conf called the ‘Sun in the Science of Mankind.’ I saw little interaction of individuals in the UK. Photo electro chemical methods came of age in the eighties but they fell out of favour with PV and electrolysis as a step to green hydrogen. It was the nineties when I looked more closely at the carbon footprint. Nuclear followed. Viability and advanced efficiency in domestic dwellings was showcased in Milton Keynes. NHR The national Home regulation scheme looked far beyond the building regulations. Todys scale runs from one to twenty but today there is only one net zero home recognised in the UK. An average building today in the UK only score five on the NHAR scale.

Today four key challenges.

To move away from fossil fuels in the most pro growth possible.

Second to provide affordable energy across the UK

Third to strengthen the national grid,

Fourth, to see we play our art on the international stage to secure a future for net zero.

Keynote 3 Dame Mary Archer ‘to move away from fossil fuels.’

Panel 3 Society and Organisational Change

Chair, Philip Nicol-Gent, Company of Air Pilots .

Philip Nicol-Gent, ‘For the third panel of the day we now turn our emphasis towards how we can move towards achieving Net Zero. We are going to look at Society and Organisational change which is a vast subject and could itself be the subject of a full day conference. So to focus, how we can effect those changes and at a pace which society can accommodate is an important challenge. We will explore what it is like to be managing organisations involved in transitioning towards Net Zero and as you will have noted we have representatives here from 3 of the major transport sectors, Road, Sea and Air.’

Panel:

Carl Lomas, Liveryman of the Fuellers, Worshipful Company of Carmen.

Lomas both Livery of the fuellers and Livery of the Carmen, spoke with a road transport fuel lens, a fuel user on decarbonisation and a net zero world for transport on wheels. ‘Client and compliance drive for decarbonisation in the land of livery.’ ‘Taking a look at decarbonisation with the lens of livery is a lens of geographic. That geographic for livery is London and the City Square Mile. Decarbonisation on the roads is driven by vehicle fuel. Decarbonisation is driven in the land of livery by compliance and client. London has led the UK in clean air zone compliance for road, first with truck low emission zone, then ULEZ, then expanded ULEZ. Livery of the Carmen sees commercial vehicle operators shift to cleaner vehicles, fuelled by livery of the Fuellers variation on technologies and fuels. It is a livery match made for decarbonisation on the roads. Beyond livery, commercial road transport has rapidly adapted to that compliance with a wide variety of technology and fuel solutions. Electric and gas trucks are delivering in the land of livery to provide decarbonisation in ever greater numbers. Walking parcel delivery using trollies, bicycle delivery, cargo bikes, electric scooters are all client and compliance driven decarbonisation in Lonon. It is this land of livery that is leading the UK direction for road decarbonisation. But it is fundamentally client that drives the compliance, This month we saw the new DPD docklands hub open to deliver to London, electric only, opened by the sec of state but applauded by the final mile clients. Zero emission for London parcels delivered on the road. The greatest win for decarbonisation on the roads is for the vehicle operator who is breathing the air around them.’ Barriers include technology, fuels and infrastructure for the next generation of clean air road transport.

As a Carmen and a fueller, I welcome decarbonisation for the road

Livery of the Carmen, Carl Lomas spoke alternative fuel for road transport users.

Panel session 4. The way forward

Chair: Ash Shastri, Junior warden, Fuellers.

Junior Warden of the Fuellers, Ash Shastri reflected from within the Fuellers. Fuellers of different career stages and professional background reflected on the changes in the policy-innovation and market context they expect to see in the next 12-24 months, based on the themes emerging from this Conference.

Panel;

Simon Brewster, CEO at Dolphin N2, Fueller

Jai Ferguson, next generation. Neuroscience & Psychology at King’s College London , Sutton Trust Scholar , Fueller , Emerging Technologies Intern at HSBC. I am just finishing my degree, at the start of my fuel a career. My theme is data science with an internship at HSBC. I am reflecting my sector life post graduate in he private sector.

Owain Johnson, Managing Director, Global Head of Research and Product Development at CME Group, Fueller.

Gavin Towers, Head of Energy Solutions, Brook Green Supply, Fueller. A gap in supply of gigawatts. A need to reflect on grid connections, focus is on off shore wind. The most efficient energy you use is te energy you do not use.

Keynote 4 The Big Picture,

Dan Monzani, Managing Director for UK and Ireland, Aurora Energy.

The final session saw a strong stay for the guests. Dan, a leading thinker from the world of energy surmised key insights and give a personal reflection on the path forwards.

The Master Fueller - Closing thoughts and call to action

Master Fueller, ‘A splendid conference, breadth and variation of all things fuel.