If you crack open a bottle of one thing – be it wine, water or delicate drinks – over the festive season, there is a good probability the glass got here from the Encirc manufacturing unit in Cheshire.
Here, on the banks of the River Mersey, you will see that one of many world’s largest glass factories. They take sand from Norfolk, soda ash created from the salt sitting beneath the Cheshire countryside and quite a lot of recycled glass and throw it into two of the largest glass furnaces on the earth.
There, within the furnace, at temperatures of round 1,600 levels centigrade, the sand melts and turns into a liquid river of molten glass. It is a chemical response people learnt 1000’s of years in the past, however right here at Encirc it is carried out on a gargantuan scale.
This manufacturing unit alone produces two billion bottles and containers a yr, a quantity which is tough to course of, till you be aware that it contains round 40% of all of the wine bottles consumed within the UK.
That features a vital proportion of all of the New World wines we devour right here, by the way in which. Mostly, the wine from Australia, California and Chile arrives not pre-bottled, however in massive baggage inside transport containers, that are then emptied into metallic vats at Encirc, from the place they’re pumped into bottles made right here within the UK.
It’s a rare website – a spot which says so much each about our urge for food for liquids (each alcoholic and never) and our capability to show uncooked supplies into subtle merchandise.
The wrestle to get to internet zero
But turning sand into glass is an enormously power intensive course of. Some of the warmth within the furnace might be created by electrical parts which warmth the underside of this monumental oven. But glassmakers like Encirc say it is not possible to do what they do – making glass on an unlimited scale – with out blasting that furnace with a highly regarded flame.
At the second that flame is produced utilizing methane – pure gasoline – with the upshot that this glassmaking facility produces relatively quite a lot of carbon dioxide. And even in case you might discover a approach of operating their furnace with no bare flame it will nonetheless be producing a sizeable quantity of CO2, since a few of it derives from the chemical response as sand turns into glass.
In quick, this glass manufacturing unit is a reasonably good illustration of how difficult it’s to get to internet zero. Much of the power use on this nation might be shifted from fossil fuels to inexperienced electrical energy – whether or not that is automobiles or dwelling heating. Sometimes the price shall be excessive; typically in the long term, going inexperienced shall be cheaper than the established order.
But for a handful of essential industries it is, far tougher. Glassmaking is a kind of industries. You can run small furnaces on electrical energy however not the large ones it’s good to feed an enormous glass container manufacturing unit like this one.
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All of which is why they’re looking for one other different. The most evident route to permit this plant to decarbonise is to interchange these methane flames with hydrogen ones, after which to gather all of the CO2 popping out of the chimney and sequester it beneath the bottom.
And, because it occurs, the know-how is just about there. We know easy methods to make hydrogen each from pure gasoline and from electrical energy (the previous nonetheless entails some carbon emissions; the latter is extraordinarily costly, so these choices are not with out their points). We know easy methods to seize carbon dioxide.
But there’s a few issues which have at all times deterred companies like this from taking the leap. The first is that it hasn’t made any financial sense. Capturing carbon is dear, so why do it when it is cheaper to pay for carbon credit and keep on burning gasoline?
Location, location, location
The second is that the infrastructure is not but there. Right now in case you collected carbon dioxide out of your chimney, there’s nowhere to place it. Someone wants to put the pipes out to the depleted gasoline reservoirs beneath the ocean the place we’d be capable of retailer it. That’s additionally costly.
All of which brings us to one of many least mentioned, however arguably most essential matters within the inexperienced power transition: clusters. In quick, if companies like this glassmaker are going to inexperienced it’s much more more likely to occur if they’ll achieve this alongside different heavy business gamers.
Look on the geography of the UK’s industries and the concept makes various sense. Many of the nation’s greatest polluters occur to be clustered comparatively close to one another on the coast. Alongside Encirc you will discover one of many nation’s greatest oil refineries, in addition to the Inovyn (a part of Ineos) chemical compounds plant, to not point out a serious gasoline energy station and, some miles additional away in North Wales, a cement producer.
All of those companies have large power calls for. They would all profit both from carbon seize or hydrogen. Squint a little bit bit into the long run and you may envisage a world the place they share pipes each taking the carbon away and delivering the hydrogen.
How to make it occur?
But easy methods to create these clusters? How to finance them? How to coordinate the companies that each one need to make earnings whereas fulfilling their commitments to scale back or remove their carbon emissions?
It’s a query nobody has but been in a position satisfactorily to reply, however whoever does may have that the majority valuable of issues: a blueprint about easy methods to decarbonise the trickiest little bit of the world’s carbon price range.
And guess what: it so occurs the UK is additional forward of most different nations world wide in planning its blueprint for clusters. It now has detailed plans for easy methods to fund, assemble and run a collection of main clusters: one across the Encirc manufacturing unit (the Net Zero North West Cluster Plan), one other within the Tees Valley (Tees Valley Net Zero), in addition to plans for Scotland, for the Humber, for the Black Country and South Wales.
An space the place the UK is genuinely main
Thanks partially to authorities funding, which started in 2019, Britain’s clusters experience is admired far and large. While the US is extensively seen as having taken the lead on industrial decarbonisation, because of its monumental Inflation Reduction Act set of subsidies, Americans – and lots of from Europe – have been usually visiting the UK to know easy methods to do clusters.
There are many areas the place UK politicians declare (with out a lot foundation) to be world leaders, however right here is an space the place it does even have a world-beating proficiency. However, the federal government funding for clusters is coming to an finish in March, and people working listed here are nervous that this might be one other space the place the nation squanders an early lead and shortly turns into a laggard.
While the cluster in Cheshire seems to be more likely to change into a bodily actuality, with firms quickly laying the pipes that may join plans to hydrogen and carbon dioxide pipes, these within the Black Country and elsewhere are a lot much less superior.
It’s one thing to ponder as you will have a drink over the festive season. It’s tempting to imagine that Britain now not makes a lot of something any extra. However, go to vegetation just like the Encirc one, and also you realise that that could be very far off the mark.
And there is a prospect that this nation, which introduced the world the Industrial Revolution, might be on the forefront of managing the inexperienced Industrial Revolution. In a couple of years’ time that tumbler might be actually low carbon – possibly in the end it might be zero carbon. But it’ll take much more work – particularly on clusters – to make it a actuality.
Source: information.sky.com”