Fuelless. It’s a rather cumbersome word. Spellcheckers don’t like it and it doesn’t trip off the tongue. But in this world of climate change phrases that morph until they mean very different things to different people I feel it’s a useful term, one that reflects a strong belief I have in the fundamental direction of the energy transition and it’s not very susceptible to ambiguity. That’s may be why it’s not commonly used, but carbon.scot will do what it can to make the term more widely used.

Rather than mess around with terms like “clean energy” or “low-carbon” we use the term fuelless to describe the energy sources we want to see supported. Fuelless has three key advantages over other energy sources:

1. there’s no burning of stuff so there are no direct emissions. This is good for the environment and climate change mitigation
2. all of the inputs for creating energy are present at the point of generation. Therefore no fuel needs to be moved around the country which would generate even more indirect emissions.
3. Any reduction in emissions, direct or indirect is a gain for public health.

So who are the stars of “fuelless”

• Wind
• Solar PV
• Solar Thermal
• Marine/Tidal
• Geothermal
• Hydro

I’m kinda agnostic about nuclear. It’s not in our bag of fuelless energy sources because obviously they use fuels such as uranium. Nuclear is definitely considered low carbon and it plays a role in keeping emissions down. But it’s expensive and takes decades to build so it’s not very useful in a crisis. I don’t care for SMRs. In short, I wouldn’t rush to shut existing nuclear down, but I also wouldn’t want to live next to a nuclear plant.

Biomass is a complex topic, but it’s definitely not fuelless. Its name is a fuel. It’s not even low carbon really.

Some people argue that it’s carbon neutral because the carbon dioxide emitted comes from carbon recently sequestered from the atmosphere by fast growing species such as willow.

That envisages a biomass plant situated next to its source of fast growing fuel stock. But in reality biomass for electricity generation is being shipped across continents by diesel fuelled trucks. Biomass can also negatively impact on food and land prices. That’s not to say it doesn’t have a role in small scale off-grid or industrial situations.

Hydrogen is a fuel not a renewable energy source and therefore definitely not fuelless.

… are fuels.