Doosan Babcock voices

UK Industry & Policy Makers Must Work Together To Solve the Air Quality Conundrum

The media is currently awash with stories around “Pollution Crisis…” “Dangerous health impacts…” “Inertia from policy makers in tackling the issue…” and rightly so. The quality of the air we breathe and the negative health impacts affects us all. In this, the week of the UK’s first ever National Clean Air Day (#NCAD), Doosan Babcock & our employees are taking active part in the debate and working with Policy Makers to tackle the critical issues.

Along with DEFRA1, DBEIS2 and other leading energy innovators, Doosan Babcock is presenting at the Clean Energy Technology Workshop in London to help inform the government in creating the strategy and 25 year plan for Air Quality. It has been recognised that the AQ issue is wider than just transport, the graphic below demonstrates that emissions from non-transport sources have consistently been equivalent to or more than that combined contribution from transport, so this workshop has been designed to recognise the contribution of energy generation as well as the technologies now, and in the future, that are available to tackle the issue.

Doosan Babcock will be presenting their Distributed Energy offering, centred on the innovative Fuel Cell CHP. Fuel cell produces energy from an electrochemical reaction (rather than combustion) meaning it has near negligible pollution while running on natural gas. In future, when hydrogen fuel is available, the fuel cell would perform with zero CO2 and zero pollution emissions.

In addition to our activity at the workshop, leading up to NCAD Doosan Babcock have also been contributing to the AQ debate and supporting the UK Government in gathering key information through various consultations.

A summary of the Doosan Babcock position;

• The issue is wider than transport, energy generation is also a major contributor
• Decarbonisation drivers, such as increasing decentralisation, is increasingly bringing energy generation into our cities, exacerbating the AQ problem
• AQ legislation, including proposed MCPD limits could, and should, go further. Other European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands are already enforcing tighter limits
• Rather than setting minimum performance limits, perhaps a market mechanism should be introduced to recognise and incentivise the best performing technologies (similar to the RHI / FiT schemes for CO2)
• Demonstration funding should be made available for innovative technologies, such as fuel cell, that have a role to play in the decarbonised and de-toxified energy mix

This blog was written by Jim Hannigan, Director of Green Power Solutions for Doosan Babcock voices.