A technical approach to decarbonisation in the food and drink sector
Watch SLR's webinar, where they explore the key steps to consider within a decarbonisation strategy. For any more information - please contact James Patterson.
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SLR - A technical approach to decarbonisation in the food and drink sector
SLR - A technical approach to decarbonisation in the food and drink sector
0:04
Good morning everyone and welcome to today's webinar which is on a technical approach to decarbonisation in the Food and Drink Centre, hosted by our professional affiliate members SLR.
0:14
First of all thank you to everyone for coming today, we hope that you find the content useful.
0:19
There will be a Q &A at the end of the webinar so please put any questions that you have into the questions box and we'll do our best to go through as many of them as we can at the end.
0:27
Following the webinar we'll be sending you an article email in the next couple of working days and this will contain a recording of the webinar, a copy of the slides, and the contact details of today's presenter.
0:38
So, without any further ado, I will hand you over to today's presenter, who is the technical director at SLR, James Patterson.
0:46
Thanks, Luke. Good morning, everyone. I'm James Patterson.
0:49
I'm a technical director, as Luke says, at SLR within the carbon management energy efficiency team.
0:55
My background is in consulting energy efficiency carbon management over many years.
1:02
So today we're going to talk about a technical approach to decarbonisation in the food and drink sector.
1:09
It's very much focused on the manufacturing sector and it's mainly focused around scope one and two emissions but we do touch on scope three as well.
1:15
We're going to have a little look, a bit of scene setting at the decarbonisation challenge both at UK level and what the food and drink sector itself has signed up to and other commitments.
1:26
Then we'll do a little bit more scene setting around a decarbonisation strategy, give an overview and then go into some deep dive into some of the technical approaches that we might employ. So first of all the decarbonisation challenge.
1:43
Well it's no secret that there is a challenge and a target has been set by the UK.
1:49
So the UK government is aiming to have the country at a net zero level by 2050 with an interim target of a 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to a 1990 baseline.
2:05
The target's met through a series of five yearly carbon budgets, which are set by the Independent Committee on Climate Change.
2:13
We're currently in the sixth budget for the period 2033 to 2037 has just been set, requiring 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
2:25
In order to achieve this, the Climate Change Committee recognized that there's going to be some fairly big changes required, so a massive increase in low carbon solutions, electrification of the transport sector, shifting industry from fossil fuels to electricity or hydrogen, increased uptake of carbon capture and storage technologies.
2:48
There will also be a massive increase in generation of low carbon electricity, so including 40 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 100 gigawatts plus by 2050.
2:59
And also the projections include the assumption that electricity demand will double or even treble by 2050 as a result of the electrification of transport and heavy industry and others.
3:15
So, we also expect to see an increased use of hydrogen for shipping and transport, which we'll come back to later on, because that's an interesting one, but also a reduction in demand for high carbon activities in the food and drink sector, in particular, might want to take note of that.
3:28
I'm sure they have already, but that includes a change in dietary habits for the UK away from some of the higher carbon intensive food products, along with a reduction in demand for travel.
3:41
And there will also be changes around land use and increasing greenhouse gas removals.
3:47
For the FDF itself, so the FDF has signed up to a commitment to reach net zero by 2040, so ahead of the UK PLC curve, which is an ambitious target, there's an interim target set out in the FDF submission 2030 to contribute to an absolute reduction of 50% in emissions across the agribu supply chain by 2030, again, back to 2015 baseline.
4:11
Obviously, this requires rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and really to start action now, we can't afford to wait.
4:19
So hopefully many companies are on with that.
4:21
And those that we that we work with are already putting projects in place and thinking about how they might address this challenge, but there isn't really time to waste.
4:34
Just a bit of scene setting.
4:35
And so the UK's food and drink sector is responsible for 158 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum, that's the 2019 figure, which is equivalent to around 22% of the UK's carbon footprint and that's across the whole of the supply chain.
4:49
So ingredients sourced from the UK imports, packaging, transport, and so on.
4:53
And the manufacturing, which we're talking about tomorrow, is a comparative small part of the overall picture, but nonetheless important, one where you as food and drink manufacturers can make a meaningful difference.
5:07
Around two-thirds of manufacturing energy demand in the drink sector is heat for thermal processing of products and of that around 97% of that heat demand in the UK is met by natural gas with the rest being LPG oil and other fuels.
5:26
FDF has already done quite a bit of work in this space there are a couple of guides there you haven't seen them already well worth seeking out.
5:32
So the 2015 industrial decarbonisation roadmap produced for the FDF 2015 and a later one in 2021 which looked specifically at the decarbonisation of heat and we draw on some of those learnings from that within this session.
5:52
Just a quick recap on the types of energies we're talking about.
5:59
So coolings and chillers, cooling towers and so on, chilled cold storage, processing of ingredients and products, vixi stir and grinding conveyance or electricity used in pumping, ventilation air movement, compressed air generation vacuum and then the building services that house those processes which are probably quite a minor part of the overall picture.
6:23
And on the thermal side tends to be generated there's a lot of reliance on steam in the food and drink sector so it will largely be steam or hot water, sometimes thermal fluids and so on, for providing heat for cooking processes, so cookers, kettles, fryers, ovens, evaporators, dryers, pasteurizers and so on, not forgetting cleaning place systems and general process hot water.
6:47
So we're going to be focusing some of the opportunities to reduce carbon emissions from those.
6:52
Before we dive into that too much, I just want to kind of give a little bit of a primer on the grid decarbonisation picture the moment. So, we're touching back on that UK ambition.
7:02
UK is well on track, has made huge reductions in its carbon emissions.
7:08
Certainly, since I started working in this industry, largely through the move away from coal-fired generation towards gas-fired generation, which had a very significant reduction in overall carbon emissions, but then that's continued through generation of renewables and deporting clean electricity from other countries, notably France, through interconnectors and so on, to bring the grid mix down.
7:35
And this is the latest projection which came out around, or is drawn from the latest projections that came out from DESNES around the end of 2023, showing that we're kind of on course to achieve kind of near zero carbon right about 2040. It does still require a lot of investment.
7:52
There's, you know, it's not a done deal.
7:54
There's a lot of work to be done to make that happen.
7:57
And, you know, it has an impact on energy prices and infrastructure and who's gonna pay for all that stuff.
8:03
So expect to see and hear lots of noise about that in coming years.
8:07
But that is the, that's the government's plan trajectory.
8:09
And that's what underpins a lot of what's talked about in decarbonization, particularly when we talk about electrification and transport.
8:18
The other part of it is the decarbonization of the gas grid.
8:21
So as I'm sure you'll know, most of the UK gas grid is drawn from natural gas from North Sea, UK or Norway or imported LNG from North Africa, Middle Eastern and North America at the moment.
8:35
It's mainly methane.
8:37
There has been some work done on those projections to partially decarbonize the grid by injecting either biomethane or hydrogen into the grid.
8:48
I think both of those are limited the biomethane injection will be limited by the availability of biomethane.
8:55
It will require growing energy crops to satisfy that demand because there just won't be enough feedstock for AD.
9:01
And landfill gases is not really such a big player anymore since a lot of waste goes to energy recovery through thermal processes.
9:13
There's also talk of a plan to blend hydrogen into the with no major changes to combustion equipment, which would be all be fine, provided that hydrogen is available.
9:26
There was some talk a while back about the complete conversion of the grid to 100% hydrogen, which is theoretically possible. It could be a huge cost.
9:36
There'd be quite a lot of infrastructure upgrade.
9:39
Hydrogen has to be delivered at much higher pressures and questions around whether the existing gas grid could stand that are all things to be answered.
9:48
So I think it's unlikely to happen in the, certainly in the short to medium term.
9:55
But, you know, never say never.
9:56
Ultimately, it's a national policy issue.
10:00
So onto actually the strategy.
10:03
So a simple process that we go through a series of steps.
10:09
At the first point, I'm sure most on this call have done this, the kind of discovery.
10:15
And many companies focusing on the scope one, direct emissions and scope two, indirect emissions.
10:21
And then mapping out where energy use and carbon emissions occur within that process.
10:26
So understanding the process, where is heat used, where is steam used, what are the steam users and also profiles where we must easily target reductions and setting targets as well.
10:38
So for example, science-based targets or other targets which could be internal or external but they help to focus attention on opportunities and investment.
10:49
Then we're going to skate through talking about basics, doing the basics of maintenance, optimization and so on, and energy efficiency and then go through fuel switching and renewables and touch on scope three.
11:01
This isn't really a scope three discussion, but we will bring it in at the end.
11:08
So the discovery phase talked about there.
11:10
So obviously that's covering all fossil fuel use, mainly gas, we talked about there could be other fuel oils and so on, transport where that's the direct responsibility of the user rather than outsourced.
11:23
It could include refrigeration emissions or other gases that are used in processes or electrical equipment.
11:31
The indirect emissions from imported grid electricity or other imported heat, for example purchased heat or cooling from third-party providers.
11:42
We recommend the process mapping, which requires good data and ideally some metering to be able to get under the skin of where that energy is going.
11:49
If you look at your manufacturing facility as a black box, you could put the total amount of energy into a total amount of product out and you wouldn't really get a lot of insight in there.
12:00
It does require a kind of a next-level data approach through metering and through analysis.
12:08
So understanding whether heat's used in the process stages, that might require some temperate heating or some metering or some detailed study, electricity use in processes and equipment, and understanding production inputs and outputs at each stage, particularly if it's a site making multiple products, multiple different products as well.
12:27
We also use load curves and regression analysis to understand those relationships and what does good look like and what does bad look like.
12:35
There's targets, so SBTI is a commonly used target, it's not the only one out there, there's no compunction to use it, but it is internationally recognised, it's a tough target, it requires very stringent reductions of 90% across all three scopes by 2050, which many will find difficult to achieve, but it is not to say that we can't try to.
13:00
So into the actual meat of it, so the first bit that we talked about before during the basics, so first of all understanding, I've got an understanding where the energy is used, we need to kind of go through a process of optimisation.
13:14
So what does good look like, how do we perform in our facility compared to industry best practice, peer plants, maybe some data available in other sectors or within the FDF.
13:28
We also look at load curves, so plotting the production against energy use on a daily basis and see what's the best and worst that plant achieves, you know, when it's at its absolute best, what's driving that?
13:44
Is it that we've just gone through a maintenance campaign or cleaning campaign or something, what's worst, you know, is there some issue holding us back?
13:51
So it's understanding what drives good and bad performance and then trying to eliminate the bad performance replicate the good as much as possible.
13:59
Plant operators are key to that and they really do know how the plant works and it's really great to be able to engage with them and bring them on board, help them to understand the data, what data is available and how to interpret it and how to optimize production.
14:18
Maintenance is another key part of this and again it you know goes without saying but often plant you know maintenance is around keeping the plant running the product out the door but this you know I would add to that it's getting the product out the door in an efficient manner so basic stuff like making sure that sensors are calibrated and controlled, measurement loops are working correctly, making sure that heat exchanges are cleaned on a regular basis, repairing the leaks, steam leaks, compressed air leaks, vacuum leaks and so on, checking that steam traps were fitted and working as they should, making sure they were on top of insulation and on-park work and plant, optimizing combustion efficiency and so on and so forth, all that stuff that helps the plant to operate at its very best.
15:05
So that is, say it's low cost, obviously there's obviously cost, there is resource cost and there's a maintenance budget cost to it, but it compared to where we're going next, it's comparatively low cost.
15:19
So when we talk about energy efficiency, we're talking about investing money, spending money.
15:23
We categorize those typically through low, medium, and high-cost investments.
15:27
So low-cost investments in the grand scheme of things.
15:30
Things like LED lighting come on massively in the last five to 10 years.
15:35
It is the default for all.
15:38
Replacements when we have fluorescent or other types of lighting failing, and we should be replacing that with LED, and all new facilities will be LED now.
15:49
Also think about controlling that lighting while we're building new lighting.
15:56
So can it be zoned?
15:57
Can we link it to daylight?
16:00
Intermittently used areas like changing rooms and stores and so on.
16:06
Can we fit occupancy sensing controls there?
16:09
Insulation as well.
16:10
So improving insulation, which does degrade over time, particularly in outside areas.
16:14
So keeping on top of that, maybe upgrading it and improving control wherever we can.
16:19
In the medium cost, we started to talk about motors, so one of the things we could do in our discovery phase is compile an asset list of motors, look for those, the big motors that run high loads for long periods of time and look at targeted replacement of those with high efficiency motors, when motors fail, as they do, you know, doing that compare and contrast decision, cost benefit of analysis of whether we get the motor repaired, rewound the local factory where they replace it with a new high efficiency motor and again that comes down to cost and running hours and load and so on but it should be a replacement decision most of the time.
16:57
Variable speed drives, VSDs and inverters are always a great investment, particular fans, pumps, variable flow requirements where you get the cube law relationship between energy input and the duty performed, so they're a real good investment that pays back very quickly indeed.
17:16
Also applicable to things like conveyors and air compressors and so on, you don't quite get the same level of savings you do in fancy pumps, but it's still worthwhile and can improve process control and bring other benefits as well.
17:30
Also looking at heat exchangers, so particularly a heat recovery, regenerative heat exchangers, doing an analysis, so we're getting as much heat this as we can if it was something that was spec'd when the plant was built then have a look at it can it you know can we replace it can add further plate packs to it to improve its regeneration ratios it's another great one and also installing heat recovery systems so oftentimes when the energy costs have increased so much recently that what might not have been cost effective to recover 10-15 years ago probably is worth recovering now so where we've got waste heat have a think about how we recover that always cool as well, if it's not to be performed.
18:07
And then we get to the high cost stuff, it's replacing older plant and equipment, for example, air compressors, cooling towers, chillers, pumps, and so on, and it would include boilers and that as well, but that's gonna come into the fuel switching section that we're gonna talk about next.
18:23
And lastly, like process change, the really big stuff, you're thinking about what we manufacture, how we manufacture it, is it the best technology that's available, is there anything else we can do, you know, moving away from thermal heating of product to other techniques, electrical techniques and so on, which again comes back to the fuel switching question.
18:47
So onto fuel switching, so we're going to talk through a few available options there, so starting from a base case that the running boilers either generating steam or hot water, what would be the alternatives to that.
19:01
So a go-to we often see with clients when they think about decarbonisation is simply replacing the gas-fired boiler, steam or hot water boiler with an electric boiler, which is great, simple technology, and it's comparatively low capital cost.
19:17
However, you're not really, although you are getting a slight efficiency benefit that you don't have any combustion losses, it's pretty much 100% efficient at the point of use, you are going to pay through notice for that in terms of your energy bills going forward because of the difference between gas and electricity costs.
19:33
If you say that gas is three to five per kilowatt hour and electricity is probably 20 to 30 per kilowatt hour, so you're immediately going to see a massive increase in operating costs by going down that route.
19:45
That might be the right solution for some people, but before we reach for the electric boiler catalogue, we need to kind of ask you to kind of stop and think about where that could be done better through an alternative approach which come to next.
19:58
Another alternative to straightforward heat boilers is heat storage boilers and there's some quite interesting technologies coming to market now which enable you to charge up effectively heat batteries overnight say on cheap rate overnight electricity or through certain electricity got renewables on site or access to renewables You could be, instead of exporting that to the grid for a certain fixed price, you could be putting that into a heat storage boiler and using it yourself at times of peak electricity charges.
20:36
So that's interesting.
20:37
Heat losses are quite low.
20:38
They can store heat reliably for up to 24 hours with very minimal loss, heat loss, and they're capable of generating steam from a lot of hot water and so on.
20:50
And on a light for light comparison against using surplus electricity or overnight electricity against batteries, it's cheaper, but there's a little bit more nuance to that we're considering that against gas-fired boiler.
21:02
But it could be an option against a straightforward on-peak electric boiler.
21:07
Next up, and again, I think we can go back to our electric boiler question.
21:12
The first thing we would say is you're going to use electricity, then how about heat pumps?
21:15
So heat pumps are not new technology.
21:17
They've been around a long time in lower temperature applications.
21:21
So for space heating in particular and sometimes hot water generation, chances are many today are sitting in an office by heat pumps.
21:31
I know I am. So it's not new technology.
21:34
But what is new and what is changing is the availability of coming to market very rapidly of a new generation of heat pumps, which are capable of operating at much higher temperatures.
21:45
The amount of work that a heat pump does is dictated by a couple of things.
21:50
So the source of the heat, so we're talking about air source heat pump heat in the building, we're talking about ambient air at 10 degrees and so on and you know it's going to struggle to get much above 60-70 degrees and as the higher it goes and the lower the outside temperature the harder it has to work in the performance falls.
22:06
But if you've got a ready source of higher temperature heat for example, a waste heat stream, liquid or gas stream at a higher temperature say 50-60-70 degrees or something, then you can use that through a high temperature heat pump to jack that up to the temperature to both generating serious heat for steam generation.
22:27
Not cheap, but then you do get the advantage of the, certainly not cheap compared to a straightforward electric boiler, but you get the advantage of the coefficient performance or the ratio of electricity input to drive the heat put to the heat out.
22:41
Typically that varies between two and six depending on application, but you could reasonably count on somewhere between three and four.
22:49
So there's a bit of maths to be done around that, but that would be a great solution.
22:55
CHP is another one that's worth touching on as well.
22:58
CHP has long been used in the food and drink industry as a means of making better use of import gas, so it replaces or sits alongside gas-fired boilers and grid import.
23:09
Then you're basically recovering the heat you're using the CHP to generate power on using the waste heat from that to act as a boiler to generate steam or hot water.
23:18
And it offers good energy efficiency, some 60-70 percent energy efficiency, and also significant cost savings, depending on the difference between gas electricity costs.
23:29
It also used to offer good carbon savings, but as the grid is decarbonised, as we saw before, that is starting to become a little bit neutral as of today, or as of the last couple of years, it's a bit marginal as to whether there'll be a carbon saving and going forward looking at that curve that we saw earlier on, it will become a carbon, what's the right term, it will become a net increase to carbon compared to importing grid electricity.
23:56
So it might, we not see quite so much application of CHP these days for decarbonisation.
24:04
Next up, biomass. So biomass can be a good option.
24:07
There was subsidies available a few years ago through renewable heat incentive which saw a big explosion in the biomass market, food and drink sector where there are often co-products that can be used as a feedstock.
24:22
RHI has now ended or closed to new Africans so that market is slightly cooled now but it can still be a good option particularly if you've got a good source of low cost, sustainable biomass, for example, taking good waste from timber processing or forestry operations.
24:39
We've got a sure supply that can last you the lifetime of the asset, 20 plus years.
24:44
If you're buying on the open market, it may well be more expensive than gas, but it can be lower carbon.
24:49
It's not absolutely carbon free because there are obviously emissions associated with the harvesting and transportation of the fuel.
24:56
There are also practical issues to consider.
24:59
For example, the number of vehicle movements for fuel delivery, which might be three, four, five trucks a day, 25 ton trucks, bringing fuel in for a decent sized plant like the one shown in the photo top right.
25:15
You've also got to think about ash removal disposal, some of which may be hazardous. You've got to think about local air quality issue.
25:21
mean most modern plant now will have emission will be designed to minimise emissions and will have abatement technologies in it but it's additional to glyphor in an air quality planning area and so on.
25:33
So it is an option to consider and we can be used to generate heat and form steam or hot water or heat and power as well.
25:43
An anaerobic digestion is another potential technology we should be looking at there so I just noticed I spelled anaerobic wrong but apologies for that.
25:51
So in the food and drink sector there's probably feedstocks available already, may well be feedstocks available but they may well be going off-site like animal feed or to third-party AD plants and generating biogas for grid injection or other purposes but you know maybe we should be thinking about how we use that ourselves on site and what about our own AD plant and certainly plenty of projects we're working on at the moment with food sector clients doing doing exactly that.
26:21
And the hydrogen, coming back to hydrogen, which mentioned before, so there was a lot of interest in hydrogen in the market the last three, four years and so on, and presented as a silver bullet for decarbonisation.
26:35
Yes, it is attractive in lots of ways, but we have to think about the harsh economics of it as well.
26:44
and also how that hydrogen is sourced as well.
26:47
So a lot of hydrogen at the moment in the market is so-called grey hydrogen.
26:52
It's been generated from steam methane reforming of natural gas which releases CO2.
27:02
If that's fed to the atmosphere then there's barely any decarbonisation benefit from that at all.
27:08
It can be paired with carbon capture and storage and there's ongoing on that at the moment which would improve the environmental performance of it as a fuel.
27:17
The ideal is the so-called green hydrogen which would use electricity from clean source of power such as onshore or offshore wind to electrolyse water to generate that hydrogen.
27:32
It then begs a question actually if you're going to use that electricity then why not use that electricity directly to try and heat pump or some other technology rather than using it to convert water, generate hydrogen from water, then store that and pump that and so on and so forth.
27:49
So it may or may not be a solution.
27:53
I think it could be a solution for specific examples, and we'll come back to that later, particularly some of the higher temperature examples and so on, directly from fryers and so on.
28:03
and there are third-party providers that come along who will put your packaged hydrogen generation plant and electrolyser in your car park next year, production facility, and sign you up to a PPA to import green hydrogen and groups for a green electricity and generate green hydrogen on site for a long-term agreement.
28:23
And that would be ideal for hitting those particular heat demands that you have.
28:31
There are also some significant risks around hydrogen as well.
28:35
It's on a volume basis, it's the lightest element, the least dense element, so on a volume basis it has a very low calorific value, it's about one quarter of methane.
28:46
So in order to get the same amount of heat delivered through a hydrogen system, you're going to need to compress that gas quite significantly, so much more than the natural gas system is compressed now, that will bring into question the questions around gas types of existing systems and so on and so forth.
29:07
There is also, it has much higher explosion because of wider explosion limits, so it brings further safety risks and there could be NOx issues and so on and so forth.
29:16
So lots of technical challenges to overcome there.
29:21
They touched on some of the direct applications and again just referring back to that FDF guide to decarbonisation, the heat uses within the food and drink processing sector, there's some quite handy references in there.
29:35
So looking at particular applications, for example, cookers, which will tend to be heated by direct steam or hot water or thermal fluid or direct fire, then how might we decarbonise that particularly?
29:50
So skinned steam, so if we're gonna go back to one of those early solutions, like a high temperature heat pump or electric boiler and so on that we can continue to use steam which would be decarbonized accordingly or you know maybe we want to you know process change are we going to continue to use steam as the heat carry medium or is there a better way of doing that for example direct electrically heated cooker or fryer and so on and so on so I won't dwell on that on that but there is lots of useful information about that in the FDF heat station guide.
30:28
Next up, just talking about renewables, which could be on-site or indeed off-site by a third party selling you that renewable clean power through a power purchase agreement.
30:41
So solar PV, solar PV is the one that we often go to in our minds when we think about on-site renewables, so roof-mounted or ground-mounted or car park-mounted.
30:54
The costs are falling.
30:55
It's widely available now.
30:56
The market has really kicked in and there's lots of availability and costs are dropping.
31:02
So whereas before we might have seen paybacks in the 10 to 20 year bracket now, probably paybacks are in the five to 10 year bracket for UK applications.
31:14
It is quite low generation density.
31:16
So if you've got a typical food plant, got a nice south facing roof and you can plaster that in PV panels then you know at best you might if you're reasonably energy intensive you might be making a sort of five percent five to ten percent dent in your electricity demands so it doesn't really have the firepower if you like to to do 100% decarbonisation unless you've got a lot of spare land or a lot of low energy intensive process or maybe in a significant car parking or even a water course.
31:51
Onshore wind however is probably more viable away from urban areas, so if you've got a bit of land and good wind speed or a coastal location then one-site wind would be a viable technology.
32:10
It was growing great guns but political changes that saw basically a moratorium put on onshore wind over the period 2015 onwards but the recent change of government has removed those restrictions so expect to see more onshore wind and it's the cheapest bang for buck in terms of renewable power generation in the UK at the moment.
32:36
Another one, it's not got application everywhere but not to forget about thermal heat, deep geothermal heat where in certain areas of the UK with the right resources, there is heat available deep and over ground when we're talking about 1km drilling depths to bring up heat or to pump down water and bring that back up over the temperatures suited for process use, either directly as hot water or as a preheat for steam generation.
33:05
It's not going to be for everyone because it's not available everywhere and it also has significant costs and the sort of thing that you would do on your own, but you might do it as a cluster.
33:16
And then lastly, I just wanted to touch on scope three.
33:19
As I said before, it's not really a scope three focus presentation because that in itself is a huge topic, but most large players would be on top of scope one and two emissions now and started to think about scope three or at least have done some mapping of scope three.
33:34
Scope three, very much in most cases where we do the scope three analysis, it dwarfs the scope one and two emissions.
33:40
Partly that's because you're looking throughout the supply chain and there's a bit of double counting there, because your scope 3 is usually somebody else's scope 1 and 2, so there is that double counting which is deliberate, but in order to tackle this we have to get under the skin and understand it.
33:55
So we start with a mapping process to work out under the 15 scope 3 categories which categories are relevant, so some could be scoped in or out.
34:10
And then of those, you know, focusing on the biggest ones, which should probably be purchased goods and services and and for the food, drink sector, raw materials, incoming raw materials, understanding where they're sourced and whether they're right raw materials. Is the data correct?
34:24
If we're using spend-based scope 3 factors, that is a source of inaccuracy, which can be, you know, we need to get under the about and understand a little bit more about what the actual emission is because by relying on spent base factors there will be no change or go up as costs go up.
34:43
So there's a lot to be done there then we can start to improve our understanding and then start to talk to the supply chain and we're seeing a lot of work in the moment with big players in but not just in the food drink sector other sectors, farms and chemicals, where they are, where the service started to engage with their supply chain and done their own or got a good handle on their own scopes one and two and got their own reduction plans in them, started to look at the supply chain and working with their suppliers, you know, maybe doing energy orders, decarbonisation orders and trying to help them to reduce their own scope one or two as a means of minimising their scope three.
35:26
So as I was very active in this area, we're developing our own process and we've got a mature process for decarbonisation, which follows this five-step process, which we can drop into any point with you to understand where you are today, so maybe understanding that pretty nice gas footprint, scopes one to three, helping to develop a strategy, set targets and so on.
35:49
Coming up with the road map, so this is not a theoretical we'd like kind of get in and do some bottom up looking at specific opportunities applying some of those technologies we've talked about and working out what's cost effective applying techniques like marginal abatement costing so you know possibly a hundred odd things you could do then which are the 10 things or the 20 things that are most likely to give you the biggest reduction in carbon emissions at the lowest capital cost and resource cost to achieve targeted program and then helping with implementation and keeping on top of that and feeding back to make sure that we're adhering to those targets. So that's the end of the chat.
Webinar overview
By focusing on energy and heat decarbonisation, adopting innovative working practices and technologies, and ensuring legislative compliance, companies can create a robust, value-added pathway to achieving Net Zero.
This webinar focuses on:
- Optimisation
- Energy efficiency
- Fuel switching including electrification of heat
- Renewable energy technologies
You will also gain insights into how these can be integrated to form part of an effective Net Zero plan.
Speakers
Speakers
James Patterson - Technical Director –Carbon Management and Energy Efficiency, Corporate Sustainability
James has a BEng (Hons) degree in Fuel and Energy Engineering, and is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Energy Institute and a Member of the Energy Institute’s Energy Efficiency Experts Register (EER).
His experience spans over 30 years in energy and carbon consultancy, specialising in the delivery of carbon and energy management services in a range of industrial, commercial and public sectors, both in the UK and International markets. He has wide experience of energy efficiency and decarbonisation in the food and drinks sector, having worked with many leading manufacturers across the industry in his career.