It seemed clear that something had to be done to protect UK consumers, as energy prices, already high, looked to rise even more due the energy impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Renewables were strongly to the fore in the response- along with nuclear. Kwasi Kwarteng, the business, energy and industrial strategy secretary, said: ‘This is no longer about tackling climate change or reaching net-zero targets. Ensuring the UK’s clean energy independence is a matter of national security. Putin can set the price of gas, but he can’t directly control the price of renewables and nuclear we generate in the UK.’
According to the Times, bold action was to be expected: under new government plans ‘people could be given new incentives such as interest-free loans to install solar panels, and higher payments from energy firms for the power generated. The government is also looking to change planning law to provide a presumption in favour of large solar farms and allow smaller farms without planning permission’. But, less palatable to some, there would also be more nuclear, at Wylfa as well as Sizewell. And more gas squeezed from the north sea along with more imports of LNG.
In an Ipos opinion poll 77% backed energy saving and renewables, 53% nuclear. Several proposals were pushed for renewable expansion and energy efficiency upgrades. There was certainly much that could be done quickly to cut gas use. For example Jan Rosenow, director of the Regulatory Assistance Project, said that it would be theoretically possible to stop importing gas by next winter if every home were made energy efficient: ‘We import about 150 TWh of gas for home heating every year. None of this would be needed if we insulated our homes & switched to heat pumps.’ Longer term Regen said that a net zero power system in the UK could be achieved by 2035 with substantial, coordinated investment in renewable generation, low-carbon flexibility, network infrastructure, digitalisation and system operability. And Scientist for Global Responsibility added a call for a switch to a green energy supply pool funded by long-term fixed-price contracts, to cut consumer costs
While we waited for PM Boris Johnson to decide on exactly what he wanted to do, Carbon Brief tried to pull it all into an overall perspective – including shale gas fracking, which some Cabinet Ministers evidently still fancied. Though few others did. There were also evidently some Cabinet battles over on-shore wind. Kwasi Kwarteng was in favour of loosening planning regulations to make it easier to approve plans for more onshore wind. But other cabinet ministers strongly opposed that. In 2015, planning laws were changed to give local councils tougher powers over whether onshore wind turbines were built in their areas. Coupled with exclusion from the CfD system, that meant there was an effective ‘moratorium’ on onshore wind. However, Kwarteng has said that the ‘the prime minister has been very clear that onshore wind has got to be part of the mix and we've got to look at planning’, though he added ‘We are not saying we are going to scrap all planning rules and all of these things have got to be in line with community support.’ But obviously things had changed since 2013, when Johnson had said wind turbines couldn’t ‘pull the skin off a rice pudding’, and there was even talk of promoting support for them by offering cheap power to people who lived near wind farms.
We have yet to hear details of that, but the spring budget statement did offer details of another quite big change: VAT will be removed on home energy systems - home owners installing insulation & energy efficiency materials, solar panels and heat pumps will have VAT cut on from 5% to zero for five years.
So far so good, but the wider new energy security strategy was a bit delayed, due to conflicts over the cost of large nuclear programme Boris evidently wanted- he was looking to a 25% power contribution from nuclear by 2050. But while the Cabinet wrangled over that, BEIS outlined a still quite ambitious target of 16GW of nuclear by 2030. That, it was suggested, would involve Sizewell C being backed with a 20% public share, and presumably other plants too, plus some Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). However the renewables would do even better, with BEIS calling for the number of solar panels to be tripled and offshore wind power to be more than quadrupled by 2030.
We now await the final plan- expected soon. But what we have already got led to some dissension, with the 25% nuclear target not going down well with some, especially the commitment to local SMRs. Daily Telegraph columnist Ben Marlow quoted a government aide as saying that Boris Johnson wanted to see Britain carpeted in so many mini-nukes that he foresees ‘not quite everyone having their own small modular reactors in their gardens, but close to it’. Marlow asked: ‘Does anyone genuinely believe that the average homeowner is going to allow the Government to build a mini nuclear plant at the bottom of the garden?’
In fact, though some US micro-nuke designs are small (e.g. Oklo’s 1.5 MW Aurora), as Marlow noted, the Rolls Royce SMR which may get used in the UK won’t be small: at 470MW, it would ‘cover roughly the size of two football pitches’. And on conventional large nuclear, he noted that Hinkley C ‘will soon be nine years overdue and £7bn over budget’. But Boris Johnson had told nuclear industry leaders that he was ‘insanely frustrated’ that the UK has ‘so little’ nuclear capacity and was ‘moving so slowly’ on building new reactors. So the die may be cast, with, as an inducement, there even being talk of providing free electricity to homes near new nuclear plants. A better deal then than living near a wind farm!
We shall soon hopefully see if either of those options is real – and if the huge nuclear expansion plan gets through. It does seem odd. Some say that the war in Ukraine is just being used as an excuse to back costly new nuclear. But it’s hard to see why. It won’t deliver power quickly and, in any case, it’s not really needed to cut back on the UKs quite small use of Russian gas- and it certainly would not cut power prices.
Meantime, over the channel, the EU plans to cut its much larger use of Russian gas rapidly, with renewables expansion strongly to the fore, maybe up to 45% by 2030, along with green hydrogen production from them. But also more LNG imports. Tragically, some member states may slide back a bit on coal, but Germany has so far resisted delaying the final stage of its nuclear phase out- with instead there being calls for the even more rapid expansion of renewables.
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