UK innovators must seize the opportunity of clean technology for a net zero future

Energy Systems Catapult’s latest report, ‘Innovating to Net Zero 2024,’ created four future scenarios (Clockwork, Patchwork, Homework, and Dreamwork), using the internationally peer-reviewed Energy System Modelling Environment (ESME) to explore 3,600 different net zero energy system pathways.

The study found that while there remains ‘significant uncertainty’ about the pathway to a future energy system, the options are narrowing.

As such, it states that accelerating the deployment of technologies such as offshore wind and solar, large-scale nuclear, and the electrification of heating in homes and buildings at an even faster rate than witnessed in the past 10 years is essential to propel the UK to a net zero future.

Energy Systems Catapult said that this should be delivered in parallel to an ‘accelerated’ programme of innovation in novel technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs), long duration energy storage, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

Investment in these high potential, but less mature technologies, offer the UK’s clean tech innovators an opportunity to capture the high value parts of the international supply chain, according to the report.