Conversion to clean energy is no overnight switch - David McEwing and Nick Taylor

In less than a month, we’ve seen energy suppliers fail via the high price of wholesale gas while UK drivers queued around the block to top up their tanks.

Vehicles queue to fill up at a petrol station as panic-buying takes hold. Photo by ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images

Meanwhile a groundswell of pro-green public opinion has, with the help of a very determined teenager, drawn attention at governmental level for what feels like the first time since Greenpeace’s direct action in the 1980s.

Being green isn’t going to be easy. Trillions will be needed to fund an energy transition which will be no overnight switch.

Converting billions of carbon-hungry people to clean energy is arguably the biggest challenge the world has faced since post-war reconstruction, as the rush to fill up at the pumps showed.

David McEwing is a Partner, Addleshaw Goddard

New construction, engineering and technological solutions are needed to achieve net-zero – not absolute zero. They will require huge volumes of the world's resources: composite materials for turbine blades; precious metals for technology; aggregates, and more.

Environmental impacts to air, land, sea and the seabed will continue.

Finding solutions to either meet Paris Agreement targets or get us as close as possible to the 1.5C global warming limit enshrined therein by 2050, has sat squarely on the shoulders of business since 2015.

Energy majors are investing in decarbonising oil and gas production – new facilities expected to come onstream in the next five years will emit half the volume of carbon during operations of their aged counterparts.

Nick Taylor is a Partner, Addleshaw Goddard

Companies of all scales, from all sectors, are looking at ESG strategies, with encouragement from lenders seeking guarantees that work is being decarbonised as far as technically possible.

Yet continuous carbon consumption is unavoidable: concrete; steel; heavy industry; plastics; consumer goods; pharmaceuticals; every piece of technology on the planet – all need derivatives of oil and gas to exist.

Carbon capture and storage can mitigate the effects of manufacturing, but still needs compressors to scale, and making such machinery has a carbon cost.

Scotland has options to generate and store clean energy to power the process of manufacturing products with the oil and gas that remains technically recoverable. Hydrogen, wind power, hydro-electric and battery storage are also the keys to sustainability in terms of powering and heating homes.

With those methods scaled to a level where they can sustain our communities, we will still need backup from localised gas fields for those days when turbines aren’t turning.

Utility companies are working to scale hydrogen; projects are underway in the UK, Norway, Italy and Australia to convert existing natural gas networks to the fuel.

The UK has a small number of towns with a closed gas network, including Oban on the west coast and Wick in the far north, alongside a handful of others in England. Gas is delivered in tankers, stored and then piped to properties – but this must come to an end, and hydrogen is the clearest clean alternative.

Truly green hydrogen generation is possible via an electrolyser fed by electricity from a local wind farm, and local governments are preparing to provide funding to support the first test facilities. Oxygen can also be produced as a by-product, for potential use in medical applications, further decarbonising another vital supply chain.

Aberdeen’s hydrogen hub project is another example of what can be achieved locally. However, like closed gas network replacements, it is a relatively small project.

Many clean energy answers are out there, with small-scale innovators which can’t attract the attention or funding needed to realise their vision. Westminster has tried to help, new green investment has generally been state-funded, but it’s still not enough.

The UK Government’s financial commitment on hydrogen alone is tiny compared to what’s needed to scale the technology at a national level.

The societal challenge, reducing emissions associated with day-to-day life, is of such complexity that it massively outstrips the financial cost of the post-WWII rebuild, when the US was in a position to fund the reconstruction of Europe.

COP26 is a real test of global leaders’ resolve. Will they commit to the kind of stimulus/punitive measures agreed by everyone not in government as a necessity to curb our carbon diet?

Or will they still ask industry to fund the change while continuing to deliver fossil fuels needed for cars, air travel, food, consumer goods and healthcare supply chains that people otherwise show little sign of giving up?

David McEwing and Nick Taylor are Partners, Addleshaw Goddard