Given the UK’s tight economic situation, there were some concerns about backsliding on renewables and watering down plan to fully decarbonise the power grid by 2030 after PM Starmer said, at the end of last year, that the target was now to have ‘at least 95%’ clean power generation by that year, i.e. lots more renewables plus some new nuclear, but not totalling 100%.
However, Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband said the remaining 5% was due to the need to maintain a strategic gas reserve. Well it is wise to have a reserve margin, and it does seem that these plant will have Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) added. But it will be quite challenging to get down to 5%, and all with CCS, by 2030, given that fossil gas fired plants supply around 30% of UK power at present and there are as yet no full scale gas CCS plants working in the UK. The first ones look like, at best, they won’t be starting up on Teesside/Humberside until 2028.
He also said nuclear power was vital, and that led some to speculate that Labour might condone higher power bills to pay for Small Modular Reactors, although he didn’t go quite as far as the Tony Blair Institute report which pushed new nuclear hard and said that the impacts of Chernobyl and Fukushima, ‘while serious, have been significantly overestimated’. The report was dismissed as ‘mostly tosh’ by Johnathon Porritt. Certainly it did feel a bit backward looking, whereas, according to Emma Pinchbeck, one time head of Energy UK and now chair of the Climate Change Committee, private investors were keen to see ambitious new approaches to energy and climate change being backed by the government. It is true that some ‘big tech’ companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google, may be looking at Small Modular Reactors and some other nuclear techs, but the bulk of global funding for new energy tech is still going to renewables- and the big IT companies investment in SMRs/AMRs may just be a speculative, but possibly doomed, side bet.
That’s not to say there may not be problems ahead for all parts the UK’s new energy programme, as the UKERC argued at the end of last year- there was ‘very little room for error’ and it may turn out to be costly. Miliband’s plan to bring large onshore wind projects back into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime in England also means that the government would have the final say on approving wind farm projects larger than 100 MW, rather than local councils, and that is controversial. But there will be local consultation, and, overall, the government does seem to be trying to get it right on pushing ahead rapidly with renewables, even if it is still a bit trapped in what some see as a nuclear dead end and also by its arguably misplaced optimism about CCS. Certainly Dr Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK, said ‘any money earmarked for carbon capture and storage- which is expensive, impossible to make zero carbon and fails to detach electricity prices from the volatile international gas market – would be better spent on the renewables, grid and storage infrastructure that will actually deliver clean power’.
Perhaps inevitably though, Conservative energy shadow Coutinho said Labour was stalling on nuclear, while its rush to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030 would push up electricity prices and cause more hardship for people across Britain. And, more surprisingly, Bloomberg ran an analysis saying something similar. It quoted Cornwall Consultant’s view that ‘assuming renewables keep reducing in cost as manufacturing and installation costs fall, then installing more in the short-term could result in locking in higher costs, compared to installing the same capacity later when costs have fallen’. Carbon Tracker also said ‘we will need to select some projects which are less economical and have higher costs’. And Bloomberg presented data suggesting that back-up power will cost more in the accelerated plan & there would be more curtailment losses. But a government spokesman said that, in terms of consumer bill charges, ‘it stands by independent modelling based on pre-election prices which said that the savings could be £300 based on clean power by 2030.’
It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds, in the UK and elsewhere, in the months ahead. Certainly, while many people say they want green energy, not that many want to pay more for it.... and although the potential is large, and the cost should fall, there is still a way to go for some of the more advanced renewable options like floating offshore wind. Green hydrogen too, due to the current relatively high cost of electrolysis, with hydrogen generally falling out of favour, at least in some circles. Though it seems not blue hydrogen, if you are a CCS supporter! Or pink, red or purple hydrogen if you are a nuclear supporter! All part of the nuclear and fossil CCS defence of the energy status quo!
However, there are other views. For example, based on a Royal Society study last year, it was concluded that, although the UK would need a lot of energy storage capacity, ‘a system based entirely on wind and solar, supported by large-scale hydrogen storage, and a possible mix of other storage options........... would not be expensive.’ And more recently Dale Vince, Labour-supporting Ecotricty founder, said ‘we can secure a cleaner, cheaper energy future without nuclear’. He noted specifically that the cost of Hinkley Point C had ‘ballooned to £46bn’ after it was ‘originally priced at £18bn’ and argued that ‘if Hinkley Point C is anything to go by, Sizewell C really should have rigorous financial scrutiny.’ Certainly Hinkley Point is running late. It is now scheduled to be complete in 2031, after EDF’s former chief executive Vincent de Rivaz had originally said it would come online by Christmas 2017.
And Vince was also uncertain about CCS. He said ‘Carbon capture has not been proved to work at scale anywhere in the world today and the announced £1bn a year for almost a quarter of a century shows it’s not expected to be working any time soon. I’m just not convinced that it’s worth the money. The 4,000 jobs to be created in the first year – will be costing £250,000 each – not exactly good value in my opinion.’
Clearly he feels we would do better to get on with the new green energy technologies. He is not alone. Hopefully 2025 will see more of that, and less backsliding.
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