The global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration now is almost certainly higher than it has been for one million years. However, the good news is that 2015 was the first year ever recorded where renewable energy sources surpassed coal to become the world's largest source of electricity capacity.
We all know that one of our immediate challenges in energy is to minimise or eliminate any further increase. However, in addition to environmental sustainability, to ensure a sustainable energy future, nations around the world face two further challenges:
Energy security: managing energy supply, reliability of energy infrastructure, and ability to meet current and future demand.
Energy equality: accessibility and affordability of energy for everyone. For example, in 2011 18% of the global population did not have access to electricity at all. For those that do, the cost of electricity, and also fuels, has an impact on individual consumers and on businesses.
It is crucial that we balance these factors so that we can simultaneously supply affordable energy to a growing global population and minimise our impact on the environment. As with other global challenges, there is no single global solution.
Sustainable energy will require action from local to global scales and across many fronts, including political, economic and technological. And although the ultimate aim is a sustainable energy future, we must recognise that in the meantime, traditional forms of energy (such as fossil fuels) will continue to play an important role.
We aim to ensure that the chemical sciences contribute to their full potential to harnessing environmentally sustainable energy supplies, exploring new sources of energy and improving efficiency of power generation, transmission and use of all energy sources. All of these activities are connected with our work on energy focusing on the following areas.
On this page
Bioenergy
Nuclear
Solar photovoltaics & solar fuels
Shale gas extraction
Bioenergy
Energy obtained from biologically-derived material (bioenergy) is the biggest global source of renewable energy on the planet, providing about 10% of all our energy needs. Chemistry plays a key role in transforming these biologically-derived materials into fuels and other useful chemicals.
Biologically-derived materials are collectively known as ‘biomass’. Sugar cane, maize, willow, miscanthus (a kind of tall grass), farmyard manure, bio-degradable household waste, seaweed and microorganisms are just some of the types of biomass that have been used to produce fuels for transport and other purposes, known collectively as biofuels.
Bioenergy is renewable. As long as we keep producing biodegradable waste or other biomass, then this fuel source will not run out.
Biofuels can also cause a much smaller net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Most plants, for example, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they grow, as part of photosynthesis. As this removal offsets the carbon dioxide released upon combustion, the overall release of carbon dioxide from growing plants to final utilisation as fuel is smaller.
Different types of biomass can yield different biofuels for different purposes. Fat molecules, for instance, can be transformed via a chemical process, called transesterification, into biodiesel. Sugar molecules can be converted by a combination of microbial fermentation and chemical processing into alcohols like ethanol and butanol.
These products can then be used as fuels in cars and other vehicles adapted for this purpose. However, unlike other forms of renewable energy biofuel can be supplied without significant changes being made to the existing fuel supply and storage infrastructure. For example, in Brazil most cars use either ethanol derived from biomass or gasoline blended with 20% to 25% ethanol. In the EU, biofuel will also form a large proportion of the EU’s 2020 target of 10% of transport fuel being from renewable sources.
At the Royal Society of Chemistry we are keen to advance the scientific knowledge in this area so that better biofuels and other useful chemicals can be made from biomass in the future. Our meeting on ‘sustainable chemicals from microalgae’ brought together researchers from several countries to share their scientific research and discuss improved ways of making useful chemicals. We hope that the exchange of ideas at this and future meetings will help to develop improved ways of usefully using biomass to produce fuels and other chemicals in the future.
We are also trying to encourage future generations of scientists, as well as the general public, to learn more about the ways in which chemistry is helping to develop useful products from waste and other biological materials.
Read our magazine articles for students and teachers on biofuels and other uses for biomass. You can also watch our public lecture on the using wood to make fine chemicals and biofuels.
Nuclear
Nuclear energy is a safe, low carbon source of electricity and will be an essential component of our energy system for the foreseeable future.
The world’s energy future needs to be clean and sustainable, but renewable energy generation, energy storage and carbon capture and technologies have not reached the full maturity required for reliable energy supply.
Nuclear power is a safe, reliable low-carbon energy source
At present most of the world’s electricity supply is provided (primarily) by coal, oil, gas, and nuclear. Of these all but nuclear pump carbon dioxide into the air, warming the planet and acidifying the oceans.
Nuclear is one of the lowest greenhouse gas intensive power sources of all. Lifecycle analyses performed by the OECD, show that nuclear produces 6.2 CO2 g eq./kWh (carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per kilowatt hour), compared to 11.2 g for offshore wind, 88 g for solar PV, 379 g for natural gas and 1072 g for coal.
Perhaps surprisingly, nuclear power also ranks as one of the safest power sources available. Considering both direct effects and epidemiological estimates it is responsible for 1800 times fewer deaths per terawatt hour than coal and 40 fewer than gas.
In addition, nuclear is a reality and currently produces just under 20% of the UK’s electricity. There remain questions about the long term storage of waste, and safety regulation is crucial, but if we are to cut CO2 emissions whilst keeping the lights on then nuclear will be essential, at least for the foreseeable future.
How chemistry helps
Chemical scientists in collaboration with physicists, material scientists, and engineers play an essential role in nearly all stages of nuclear power. Chemistry contributes to fuel production, reactor manufacture and decommissioning, to waste treatment and clean-up, and to the understanding and monitoring of environmental effects.
What we do
We actively engage with government on a range of issues to do with nuclear energy. We made contributions to the UK Nuclear Research & Development landscape report (published alongside the Nuclear Industry Strategy by the UK Government in 2013).
For this we produced a statement with help from our members, highlighting the importance of chemistry in nuclear energy; the need to ensure we have the skills to build, run and develop nuclear power plants; the importance of coordination of funding across the research councils; and the need for public engagement.
Lord Lewis lecture: Renewable energy and nuclear power for the UK
We also brought together parliamentarians and the scientific community to discuss the UK’s strategy for nuclear, and the importance of chemistry within it, on the occasion of Sir David King’s Lord Lewis Lecture.
Sir David’s lecture was accompanied by a talk by Professor Francis Livens, Research Director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute in Manchester, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and member of the Ad Hoc Nuclear Research and Development Board.
This event engaged participants with the themes of the industrial strategy and also helped raise the profile of chemistry within the nuclear sector, as our contribution is not always apparent.
To help ensure that we have the knowledge and skills that we need in the future, we are helping members in the nuclear industry gain Chartered status through our accreditation team.
Our Radiochemistry and Energy Sector Interest Groups also do a great deal of work supporting researchers with a broad portfolio of events, conferences and awards.
Education in Chemistry, our magazine for teachers, has also published articles on different aspects of nuclear power. Read about the ways in which we can deal with radioactive waste and the possibility of next generation thorium reactors.
Solar photovoltaics & solar fuels
Solar energy could account for 8–15% of global electricity in 2050, depending on factors such as market demand, energy policy, manufacturing costs and technological advances. It looks likely also to play a role in providing power to the roughly 1.6 billion people worldwide without access to the electricity grid.
Today, renewable energy accounts for over 20% of total global electricity generation, with solar ranking fourth after hydro, bioenergy and wind. The majority of solar energy technologies on the market today are based on the ‘photovoltaic effect’, whereby an electric current is produced in a material when exposed to light. Chemistry has an important role to play both in improving current solar photovoltaic technologies and developing new ones.
Another route to harnessing solar energy to produce electricity is using concentrated solar power (CSP) and the world’s first commercial solar thermal power plant came online in Spain in 2007. Projections from the International Energy Agency are that the share of renewable electricity generation from solar energy will increase from 0.3% in 2011 to almost 0.6% in 2018, of which about one-tenth will be from CSP.
Longer term there is also the possibility of using solar energy and abundant raw materials, such as water and carbon dioxide, to produce fuels and other chemicals. The goal is to produce molecules such as hydrogen, methane and methanol, currently produced from fossil fuels, in a renewable way. Solar fuels is an active field of research in the chemical and other sciences, with groups around the world aiming to deliver commercial prototypes to pave the way for a disruptive technology within 10–15 years.
Solar energy and related underpinning research in materials, photochemistry and catalysis were major themes in our 12th International Conference on Materials Chemistry and our Faraday Discussion on Next-Generation Materials for Energy Chemistry.
Bringing everything together, Sir Harry Kroto, Nobel Laureate for Chemistry and our Past President, talks on BBC World News about the future of renewable energy and how advances in harvesting the energy of the sun, such as organic solar cells and artificial photosynthesis, are being inspired by nature.
Solar photovoltaics
There have been ups and downs in the story of the photovoltaics industry recently, but there has been overall significant growth in the uptake of this technology. For instance, the amount of new solar photovoltaic capacity installed globally in 2013 was 30% greater than in 2012 with, for the first time, more new installations in Asia than in Europe.
In the UK, solar photovoltaic panels are now installed on over half a million buildings and the Government launched a Solar PV strategy in 2014 in order to maximise benefits for consumers, the national energy mix and the economy. The Scottish Institute for Solar Energy Research released their report on a solar vision for Scotland in 2014.
Our office in Cambridge, UK, joined this list in 2013 when Julian Huppert, our local Member of Parliament at the time, switched on our solar panels. Our installation was done by a small local company called Evogreen which we featured in an article on Panels for Pupils about installing solar panels in schools. It is also one of the many small, medium and large companies that tell a wider story about the economic opportunities associated with solar and other energy research and innovation.
In current wafer and thin-film photovoltaic technologies chemical scientists and engineers are contributing to the development of: lower energy, higher yield and lower cost routes to silicon refining; more efficient or environmentally benign chemical etching processes for silicon wafer processing and; processes to improve the deposition of transparent conducting film onto glass.
Chemical scientists are also working on improving the efficiency and lifetime of organic and dye-sensitised solar photovoltaic technologies. These technologies offer the possibility of lightweight, flexible, coloured and inexpensive solar panels. For more information about organic and dye-sensitised solar cells you might like this article in The Mole, our magazine for young people. One of the authors, Neil Robertson from the University of Edinburgh, heads a UK national Solar Spark outreach project and you can also find their resources, including how to build your own Grätzel solar cell, on Learn Chemistry.
To find out more about the chemistry and materials research underlying organic photovoltaics (OPV) read a case study developed by our Organic Division, or the report on Organic Electronics for a Better Tomorrow from the 4th Chemical Sciences and Society Summit report. Thinking of how the future may look, you can watch our Faces of Chemistry interview with researchers at a BASF laboratory working on organic solar cells for a solar-powered car.
Dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) have been commercialised in niche applications such as solar-powered keyboards for tablet PCs. DSSCs is a tremendously active research area internationally and in the past year there has been a lot of excitement in particular about record efficiencies achieved in the lab for perovskite solar cells.
There are also important wider issues such as developing alternative materials, and materials recovery techniques, to reduce the dependence of solar and other energy technologies on critical raw materials or on high energy manufacturing processes. Recycling of silicon photovoltaic modules makes an interesting case study in our Resources that Don’t Cost the Earth report.
Our Energy Sector Interest Group also provides a forum to access knowledge and express views on matters relating to energy. Their conference last year on Next Generation Materials for Photovoltaics included topics in both current and next generation technologies.
Solar fuels
Scientists around the world are also working on technologies to harness energy from the sun to produce fuels and other chemicals for transport, industry and electricity generation.
In his foreword to our 2012 report on Solar Fuels and Artificial Photosynthesis, Nobel Laureate Professor Alan Heeger wrote that, although the idea that we could produce electricity using solar energy may at one time have been considered to be a remote vision, today solar photovoltaic panels are an increasingly common sight. The vision for solar fuels is a technology that uses sunlight to produce molecules such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methanol from water and carbon dioxide.
What is new is not these 'fuels' themselves – which are currently produced from coal, oil or natural gas – but the idea of using solar energy directly to produce them from water and carbon dioxide. The word ‘fuel’ is used here in a broad sense, referring not only to fuel for transport and electricity generation, but also chemical feedstocks used in industrial sectors ranging from petrochemicals and fertilisers to plastics and pharmaceuticals.
The infographic demonstrates how producing and using solar fuels might work in practice. This and other solar fuels infographics are available to download in the Global challenges policy page and on Learn Chemistry.
If the goal of capturing and deliberately storing solar energy in the chemical bonds of a fuel can be achieved, it will simultaneously address several energy and sustainability challenges by providing:
- a way of storing solar energy when it is available for use when it is needed
- sustainable fuels for transport
- sustainable raw materials (feedstocks) for the production of goods such as fertilisers, pharmaceuticals and plastics
Solar fuels could also play an important role in enabling or enhancing other sustainable energy technologies such as hydrogen transport and carbon capture, storage and utilisation.
The concept of making fuels using sunlight is the basis of photosynthesis, where sunlight is used to convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars or other materials which can be thought of as fuels. Scientists and engineers are developing systems that do this, sometimes exactly mimicking aspects of photosynthesis and sometimes aiming simply for the same starting point (sunlight, water and carbon dioxide) and end point (solar energy stored in the chemical bonds of a fuel).
Processes that use solar energy to chemically convert water and carbon dioxide into fuels are often called artificial photosynthesis. The idea is often attributed to Italian photochemist Giacomo Ciamician who, just over a century ago, predicted that in the future “the photochemical processes that hitherto have been the guarded secret of the plants … will have been mastered by human industry”.
There are also other promising approaches to achieving the goal of using solar energy to make fuels, eg using photocatalytic materials, living organisms or thermo-chemical routes.
A technology to produce fuels from sunlight would be transformative, but there are significant challenges which need to be overcome in making the transition from current laboratory prototypes to commercial systems.
There are prototype devices in laboratories around the world that use light to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Combining elements of this 'water-splitting' step with carbon dioxide reduction to produce, eg carbon monoxide or methane, is even more challenging scientifically. Hydrogen by itself can be used directly as a transport fuel, such as in fuel cell vehicles, and is also a key raw material for many industries. You can read about some of the latest research in solar fuels on our Energy & Environmental Science blog.
You can listen to a radio programme on BBC Radio 4 about artificial photosynthesis, including recordings with researchers participating in an event we held in London in 2012. You can read a summary of their discussion on Solar Fuels and Artificial Photosynthesis: Global initiatives and opportunities along with an introduction by our President, Professor David Phillips CBE.
Watch our interview about solar fuels
This interview followed a feature on BBC World News about the Joint Centre for Artificial Photosynthesis US Energy Innovation Hub.
Around the world there are many other examples of research initiatives targeting solar fuel technologies including:
- the Korean Centre for Artificial Photosynthesis
- several US Energy Frontiers Research Centres
- the Dutch BioSolar Cells consortium
- the Swedish Consortium for Artificial Photosynthesis.
The Solar Fuels Institute is a global consortium of research centres and in the UK the Solar Fuels Network brings together researchers working on molecular approaches to solar fuels.
As part of our work to raise awareness of the challenges and opportunities associated with solar fuels, we were delighted to support a Royal Society Summer Science exhibition stand on solar fuels developed by researchers at the University of Oxford, University of York and Botanic Garden – University of Oxford Museum & Collections. You can also read articles about solar fuels in our magazine for young people and in TUNZA, the United Nations Environmental Programme magazine for youth, which is available in several languages.
Shale gas extraction
Regardless of how we feel about unconventional fossil fuels (for example, shale gas), we need chemists to inform decisions around their extraction and use.
Fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) form a significant part (more than 60% in 2013) of our current world energy mix. In recent years, new resources of oil and gas, such as those found in shale, have come to the fore and occupied the attentions of scientists, policymakers and the public.
The extraction of such fuels using hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ has become a topic of widespread discussion. Whilst some experts have stated that shale gas can help to replace traditional fossil fuels such as coal, because it is less polluting, others still have concerns about potential environmental impacts and compatibility with long-term emissions targets.
As such, whilst some countries have been hesitant to begin extraction, others (such as the USA) have already started exploration and commercial production.
What is shale and fracking?
Shale is a type of sedimentary rock formation that contains tiny pockets where natural gas and other fossil fuels can be trapped. However, these pockets are not linked and so to extract the gas, tiny fractures have to be made in the rock, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Fracking involves vertical drilling to reach the shale formation, followed by horizontal drilling into the rock itself. Once the well has been drilled, a casing is fitted and perforated at specific points. Fluid is then injected into the well at high pressure causing fractures throughout the shale formation. The fluid contains sand which holds open the newly created fractures. The gas then flows back through the well, up to the surface for collection. Once gas collection is complete, the fluid used is also returned to the surface for collection (this is known as flowback fluid).
Concerns around unconventional oil and gas extraction include:
- its potential to cause earthquakes
- whether or not fluids can contaminate water sources
- the potential health and environmental effects of the fluids used
- greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide or methane
- the impact on local communities where drilling takes place with respect to traffic, noise and air pollution.
Chemistry’s role
Chemistry has important contributions to make at all stages in the fracking debate. In particular, chemical sciences research provides evidence on potential environmental challenges. Such evidence can inform those who hold an interest in this area, including the public, policymakers and industry.
Following the fracking process, the flowback fluid must be collected and treated, as it contains a mixture of salts and naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM), as well as the fracking fluids added at the beginning of the process. We need chemists to determine what is in flowback fluid, to treat it and to also monitor local groundwater sources for potential contamination by gas or fluids during extraction.
Chemical scientists can also examine the release of greenhouse gases, such as methane. Existing chemical techniques can be repurposed to monitor the levels of different gases before, during and after any fracking operations, which can identify any fluctuations in emissions that may be associated with the extraction process. Specialist equipment is also useful for recording the amounts and types of gases at different sites. Monitoring these emissions is important not just during fracking, but also before drilling begins, to establish baseline levels, and for many years after the well is abandoned to ensure that there are no leaks.
What we do
In 2013, we brought together scientists to discuss the challenges in environmental monitoring across the energy sector, including those working in the nuclear industry and researchers examining the potential risks around shale gas extraction.
This knowledge-sharing meeting examined some of the commonalities in monitoring and understanding impacts on the local environment across energy sources (for example, understanding what happens to ecosystems, existing infrastructure and the potential effects on the local populations). It concluded that there are a range of areas where further research was needed to develop processes for environmental monitoring in relation to shale gas extraction. These included studies to understand any impacts on local ecosystems and gaining a better understanding of gas emissions across the whole extraction process. You can read a summary of the discussions from the meeting.
We are also, alongside the Geological Society, one of the supporting organisations of ReFINE, an independent consortium that researches the potential risks of shale gas and oil extraction. The group researches water source contamination, air pollution and the impact of fluids used in shale gas extraction, amongst others. Its research has shown that although decommissioned oil and gas wells in the UK can leak methane, the level of emissions are comparable to methane from agricultural uses of land. ReFINE has also shown that on average the UK experiences three man-made earthquakes a year.
This baseline, established before extensive shale gas extraction, will help us to understand the impacts of fracking if it becomes established in the UK. Alongside publishing research papers, the group also communicate their findings through research briefs aimed at non-scientists.
In 2015, our Environment, Sustainability and Energy Division supported UK researchers to participate in a workshop with US scientists on improving the understanding of the potential environmental impacts associated with extraction of fuels using techniques like fracking. The subsequent report from this workshop, Joint US-UK Workshop on Improving the Understanding of the Potential Environmental Impacts Associated with Unconventional Hydrocarbons, identifies knowledge gaps in this area and future research areas that could help to address these. The priority areas included developing an accurate picture of whether or not there are potential long-term effects on human health from unconventional oil and gas extraction, how to better detect leaks in gas wells and how much flowback fluid is produced.
Watch Professor Fred Worrall, one of the workshop’s UK participants talk about some of the points covered in his lecture, Exploring the impact of the unknown: a potential UK shale gas industry. Fred’s work on monitoring emissions from onshore oil and gas operations is also the subject of a recent Education in Chemistry article.
Science Team
- Email:
- Send us an email