By Professor Declan Diver

 

IN 1881, the pioneering scientist Lord Kelvin became the first person in the world to light a home completely with electric bulbs powered via energy generated by burning fossil fuels.

Just a few years later, a Scottish academic named James Blyth found a new way to power the bulbs in his holiday home. He designed and built the world’s first wind turbine, which provided enough electricity to light 10 25-volt bulbs.

Almost 150 years after Kelvin flipped the switch on his electric bulbs, the world is in the midst of an urgent conversation about how we keep the lights on without continuing to rely on fossil fuels. Governments around the globe are searching for ways to decarbonise their power grids to help mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.

One solution is generating power from renewable sources like the wind. James Blyth would no doubt be pleased to know that his turbine design, refined and expanded over generations, is helping push Scotland towards achieving the Scottish Government’s ambitious targets for renewable energy generation.

But while renewables have already proven their worth in the push to net zero, they’ve also demonstrated some shortcomings – on days where there is less wind, for example, the grid may struggle to deal with peaks in demand.

In order to ensure the lights stay on while the wind waxes and wanes, it makes sense to strengthen the resilience of our national energy generating capacity by harnessing additional sources of low-carbon power.

One potential route to boost our capacity could be fusion power – a clean, limitless, zero-carbon source of electricity. And Scotland could once again play a leading role in energy innovation by offering a home to the world’s first fusion power plant on the Ardeer peninsula in North Ayrshire.

Ardeer is currently in the final stages of consideration as the base for the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP).

STEP has the potential to significantly bolster our energy resilience by providing the template for commercial fusion power plants around the world.

It will also help underpin a just transition to our net-zero economy. At Ardeer, STEP will create around 3,500 skilled jobs during its construction phase, and work for up to 1,000 engineers, technicians and support staff once the plant is operational. It’s also likely that STEP will spark other innovative industries in the area, drawn by its breakthroughs in areas like advanced welding, materials science, diagnostics, gas handling systems and magnetics.

STEP could also help to decarbonise other local industries. Because the fusion reactor works at temperatures of around 700°C, excess heat could be siphoned from its cooling blanket to help produce materials like glass or cement more sustainably, or piped directly to homes as part of a district heating scheme.

Scotland has played a vital role in shaping the modern world through scientific advances like Kelvin’s and Blyth’s. Bringing STEP to Ardeer could be a bridge to a brighter, more prosperous, net-zero future.

Professor Declan Diver, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Physics & Astronomy, is convenor of the Fusion Forward (Ardeer) consortium, which is supported by North Ayrshire Council and NPL Group