Abstract
While the main thrust of the meeting on Material efficiency: providing material services with less material production was to explore ways in which society's net demand for materials could be reduced, this paper examines the possibility of converting industrial energy demand to electricity, and switching to clean electricity sources. This paper quantifies the scale of infrastructure required in the UK, focusing on wind and nuclear power as the clean electricity sources, and sets these requirements in the context of the decarbonization of the whole energy system using wind, biomass, solar power in deserts and nuclear options. The transition of industry to a clean low-carbon electricity supply, although technically possible with several different technologies, would have very significant infrastructure requirements.
pdf (Cambridge UK).