WHAT IS DECARBONISATION?
Outcome:
Pupils understand that different fuels and energy sources have a different impact on the climate
Pupils understand that their fuel and energy choices can increase or limit global heating.
Decarbonisation
You might have seen this word on the news.
Governments and businesses are being asked to replace their use of high carbon fossil fuels with low or zero carbon alternatives
But why is decarbonisation necessary?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blsTXGFdeDk
Watch this
Burning fossil fuels emits carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that warms our atmosphere.
We don’t just burn fossil fuels when we burn gas, coal or oil for heating or transport.
UK electricity generation is still powered by fossil fuels.
We emit carbon dioxide through most of our activities
transport
fuel
We emit carbon dioxide through most of our activities
food
fertilisers
production
transportation
production
stuff
transportation
post-consumer waste
leisure
how we power our hobbies
Activity 1:
Think of 3 ways that you could decarbonise
(reduce energy demand and carbon emissions in)
your life.
Think of 3 ways you could decarbonise your school.
Worksheet
Electricity is a really good example of something we can decarbonise.
You can generate electricity from burning fossil fuels.
Or you can generate it through renewables technology.
Most of us don’t get to choose how much fossil fuels contribute to our electricity unless we have solar panels on our roof and we can 100% state that our electricity is coming directly from that and from nowhere else.
Is that you?
fossil fuel
electricity
green
electricity
Some of us choose a green tariff for our electricity. But that doesn’t mean we’re using 100% green electricity
That's because we get it from the nationwide network that's fed from multiple sources. With green tariffs, your supplier will generally buy enough renewable energy to cover what you use to fund future production, or it invests in schemes to offset carbon emissions produced from the energy you use, such as planting trees.
green
electricity
Explainer
Most of us get our electricity from the National Grid which is a mix of fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear - a mix of higher carbon and lower carbon energy.
On cloudy, calm days or still nights, or when lots of people are using electricity at the same time, it’s probably higher carbon.
If it’s a sunny day or really windy our electricity is probably low carbon because it comes from renewables.
Activity 2
On the worksheet, rank the sources of energy from
low carbon to high carbon
Activity 3:
Visit https://www.mygridgb.co.uk/ and find out how the National Grid has been powered over the last month.
Graph the low carbon and high carbon electricity sources
It’s much easier to make electricity low carbon than it is for heating.
How many ways can you think of to heat a building?
Find out how homes in your area are heated
(England and Wales)
This was how UK homes were heated in 2016.
Activity 4:
Heating is more difficult to decarbonise than other areas. Why do you think this is?
Activity 4:
Heating is more difficult to decarbonise than other areas. Why do you think this is?
Think back to Activity 1.
Would you change your answers? What might you add?
Visit https://energysparks.uk for more activities about energy and climate change and for ways to take action in your school.