Shell Energy Security Scenarios show grid technology innovation is needed to meet the long-term challenges of energy security and climate change
Shell’s new Energy Security Scenarios map the realistic pathways for future energy and climate security.
The only scenario that delivers less than 1.5C of warming relies on full decarbonisation of the power grid, something which is impossible with current technology.
Recent technology innovations, which form the basis of Enoda’s innovation, will be necessary to deliver this positive outcome.
Since the 1970s, Shell’s scenarios team, has worked to understand the dilemmas facing the energy system and how they could plausibly unfold. The new Shell Energy Security Scenarios (ESS) rightly spotlight the security pillar of the energy trilemma - the war in Ukraine has made clear, an energy transition that doesn’t deliver energy security has never been a viable option. But they also pose a question: “can a world desperate for immediate security also meet the long-term challenge of climate change?”.
The ESS illustrate two possible futures that are differentiated chiefly by whether the current trend to address security challenges through regional and national efforts continues, or whether humanity can come together to take much more integrated action.
Archipelagos shows a world in which current regional and national efforts continue to define security, constraining the types and scale of action that is possible to address climate change.
Sky 2050 illustrates what would be required in terms of integrated international policy action to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and then negative emissions to bring temperate rises back below 1.5C by the end of the century, all while continuing to deliver on energy security. In Shell’s own admission, Sky 2050 requires “stretching assumptions”.
While their international architecture and climate outcomes differ, the fundamental ingredients of the energy transition are similar. In particular, Shell, like many others, argues that electrification will be the key to a secure, affordable, and clean energy future. Electrification accelerates in both scenarios: In Sky 2050, the electricity system grows twice as fast as in Archipelagos. For the last century, electricity’s share of total primary energy has grown by roughly 2% a decade. In Archipelagos, this accelerates to >5% per decade, and it accelerates even faster in Sky 2050 to >10% per decade.
This then raises a key question: Can the electricity system grow this quickly while simultaneously becoming more secure, affordable and clean?
Archipelagos follows the current trend of bioenergy replacing fossil fuels in the power system (e.g. burning wood chips in converted coal-fired power stations) while fossil fuels retain a significant role. This enables the power system to retain the inertia of spinning thermal generators (fossil fuelled, biomass, nuclear), which create and stabilise the AC waveform on which the electricity system depends.
Sky 2050 appears to take things further, and one of the assumptions that the scenario stretches is the technical capacity for grid decarbonisation. In Sky 2050, only 2.7% of total electricity comes from spinning thermal generation, the majority of which is nuclear. Countries without nuclear, or perhaps hydropower, will have virtually no spinning mass in their energy systems. While Shell has meticulously analysed how energy storage, including batteries, hydrogen and pumped hydro can balance the intermittency of renewables, the power system that is described in Sky 2050 will have two serious problems if it needs to be delivered with contemporary grid technology:
The quality of AC waveform in the grid will degrade as switched generation (i.e. renewables, which inject their power into the grid through inverters and are not synchronously coupled with the AC waveform in the grid) and load (e.g. electric vehicles which use large converters to convert the AC waveform in the grid to DC power to charge batteries) introduce noise, harmonics and transients into the AC waveform.
As the quality of the AC waveform degrades, the carrying capacity of existing poles and wires falls and transmission losses increase. If the problem of signal stability is not addressed, the investment required in transmission and distribution will be even greater than Shell anticipates.
This matters because, as the Shell Scenarios Team put it, the scenarios represent “bookend[s] for the possible span of outcomes in 2100.” If Sky 2050 is the best achievable climate outcome, then it is critical for the world to understand whether it’s realistic to achieve it. This is particularly important because Shell argues that carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), like electrification, must be a cornerstone of the transition. Both of the scenarios include high levels of CCUS. This is far more controversial than the emphasis on electrification, with recent headlines from energy analysts like “UK politicians fail to shake off CCUS charlatans”. Without CCUS, retaining the spinning mass of thermal generation in the power system will take an even greater toll on the climate.
In order to deliver the more positive world of Sky 2050, the grid needs to become a self-stabilising, highly efficient platform for much larger quantities of electricity. We cannot deliver the future with the technology of the past, and ESS do not explain what the technology of the future is that will enable Sky 2050.
Innovations over the last decade in a range of technology areas now enable active correction of the AC electricity signal. Implementing this technology at scale will enable a self-stabilising grid that can accommodate the decarbonised generation mix of Sky 2050.
To realistically do this, we need to deliver an integrated solution for self-stabilising grids. One that corrects and stabilises AC signal, removing the need for spinning mass, and one that significantly increases the carrying capacity of existing poles and wires. We also need a control system that can seamlessly adjust demand to match supply across the entire platform, without needing to directly manage millions of individual devices as virtual power plants do today. This is how Sky 2050 becomes a reality and why what we are building at Enoda is so fundamental to the future of our world.
Paul Domjan was a member of the scenarios team from 2002-2004.
