The long awaited, much delayed, White Paper on Energy did not emerge as expected in mid November, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson did launch a ten-point energy plan to set the UK on a path to ‘net zero carbon’ by 2050. As had been indicated in previous announcements, renewables are strongly featured in the proposed ‘Green Industrial Revolution’. Offshore was wind expected to be producing enough power ‘for every home, quadrupling how much we produce to 40GW by 2030, supporting up to 60,000 jobs’. In particular, 1 GW of floating offshore wind capacity was expected to be in place by then.
The 40 GW offshore wind target had already been set in the 2019 Conservative Manifesto and most of the other commitment in the new plan are in fact not new. Indeed, it has been claimed that only £3bn of the £12 bn total mentioned was actually new money. However, there was now more detail. For example, on hydrogen, much talked up of late, there is a target to generate 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes. There will be a programme of almost £500m, ‘including for trialling homes using hydrogen for heating and cooking, starting with a Hydrogen Neighbourhood in 2023, moving to a Hydrogen Village by 2025, with an aim for a Hydrogen Town, equivalent to tens of thousands of homes, before the end of the decade’. Homes will also benefit from a £1bn programme for making new and existing homes and public buildings more energy efficient.
Nuclear and CCS
So far so good- although the home energy investment is somewhat less than the £9.2 billion promised in the 2019 election manifesto. But what about big new ventures like nuclear plants? Some had expected a decision on the proposed Sizewell C plant, but there was no mention of that, just ‘£525 million to help develop large and smaller-scale nuclear plants, and research and develop new advanced modular reactors.’ It includes £215 million for Small Modular Reactors, like the one being promoted by Rolls Royce; and up to £170 million for a research on high temperature Advanced Modular Reactors, which might be used for hydrogen and synthetic fuels production, with a prototype ‘by the early 2030s’.
That’s all pretty much as expected- some way off and quite small as these things go. And of course with tiny costs compared with what would be needed for new full-scale power plant construction- e.g. probably well over £20 billion for Sizewell C. We may have to await the While Paper to get any news on that.
The nearest thing to a major new commitment in the plan was the provision of an an extra £200 million to create two ‘carbon capture’ clusters by the mid-2020s, with another two to be created by 2030, all this being destined to create jobs ‘for areas such as the Humber, Teesside, Merseyside, Grangemouth & Port Talbot’. That’s a worthwhile aim, though £200m won’t go far, but this extra does increase the total invested in CCS to £1 billion. However, do we need CCS? Isn’t it just an expensive and difficult way to allow us to keep burning fossil fuel? Friends of the Earth Scotland said there was ‘far too much reliance on long-term false solutions to the climate crisis like carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and nuclear’ in the plan, and its hard not to agree, at least about CCS- and nuclear. Zero carbon green hydrogen made using renewable power though has many roles to play, unlike blue hydrogen produced from fossil gas with CCS used to make it lower carbon.
Some work in these advanced technology areas is already underway. Some of the hydrogen projects, backed with £240 million, may be worthwhile, ITM Power’s Gigstack PEM electrolyser project especially- it is to be linked with offshore wind generation. Some may also see value in the recently started first phase of a £100 million Greenhouse Gas Removals project, including Direct Air Capture, and in the £222 million provided for the upgraded STEP nuclear fusion programme, though that’s very speculative- a long shot.
However, much of this will have passed most people by: the more catchy headline commitment was to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, with very big slabs of cash to make this viable: £1.3 billion to accelerate the rollout of charge points for electric vehicles in homes, streets & motorways across England; £582 million in grants for those buying zero or ultra-low emission vehicles to make them cheaper to buy and incentivise more people to make the transition; nearly £500 m to be spent in the next four years for the development and mass-scale production of EV batteries.
White Paper and beyond
The 10-point plan is to be followed up by not just the delayed Energy White Paper, which may still yet emerge later this year, but also by a whole series of other reports including an update of the National Infrastructure Strategy (now out), a Net Zero Strategy, an Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy and a Hydrogen Strategy. These are all interactive with each other and, with the Covid and Brexit situations still being in flux, you can perhaps see why it has all been a bit delayed. But we can’t hang on for ever. Some issues are getting urgent.
The next round of the CfD subsidy system is to go ahead as planned next year and will be expanded to 12 GW, with on-shore wind and large PV solar allowed back in, as was agreed after heavy pressure. But how will that square with whatever funding mechanism is proposed for any further nuclear projects? And what happens to small PV solar? The export market systems that was introduced last year to replace the FiT export tariff once enjoyed by self-gen ‘prosumers’, wont be enough to push domestic PV capacity ahead fast. And there are some other loose ends. In relation to the commitment in the plan to install 60,000 heat pumps in buildings every year by 2028, Dr David Toke from Aberdeen University pointed out that the building regulation banning the fitting of new gas fired heating will not take effect until at least 2025- an initial 2023 deadline having been withdrawn. And then there’s a biggie- there have been complaints that grid links are not keeping pace with renewable growth for off shore wind in particular, but also for on shore wind, in Wales especially. Lots of things need attention and soon, and key decisions need to be made, with a challenging study from Wartsila claiming that, if the UK government backed renewables and flexible balancing technologies instead of a new nuclear plant, then £660m p.a. could be saved.
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