heating almost totally replaced by electric heat pumps and around 17GW of domestic PV installed.
www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/2450AADD-FBA3-49C1-8D63-7160A081C1F2/61591/UKFES2013FINAL3.pdf
Wind is certainly seen as likely to get big. DECC’s new ‘high wind’ scenario has 39GW
of offshore wind by 2030, though DECC stresses that it’s scenarios are not
targets- markets will decide on the mix! www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-the-draft-electricity-market-reform-delivery And DECC now say PV solar might reach
10GW or even 20GW by 2020…
Certainly, a cross-party think tank
Policy Connect says that renewables like wind and
PV might have to take on even more of a role. It says the government must
develop in effect a renewables-focused ‘Plan B’ in case nuclear and Carbon
Capture and Storage do not deliver as much as hoped. The report says ‘The Government expects that
nuclear power is likely to provide the majority of additional low carbon
electricity between 2020 and 2030. However, should costs or deliverability
prevent this from happening, more low carbon electricity from renewables or
fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage will be needed to meet carbon
objectives.’
It claims that should nuclear, fossil fuels with CCS fail to deliver, ‘renewables
could provide between 45 and 55% of total [electricity] generation by 2030’. That includes 10% from
biomass.
The report calls on ministers to begin
work with industry and academia to identify suitable "no and low
regrets" investments and develop policies to encourage these options more
. As it stands at present, the report warns that a lack of certainty over the
policy environment post 2020 will make it harder to mobilise the necessary
investment in renewables and that investment opportunities ‘could be missed,
delayed or more expensive if there is insufficient confidence about long term
demand for key technologies, such as offshore wind.’ It says ‘work by Government to help incentivise these investments
would increase the likelihood that technology cost reductions are achieved and
help mitigate against high costs if new nuclear or carbon capture and storage
development fail or are delayed’.
The report says that the initial extra cost
could be more than offset by energy efficiency savings, and, longer term,
investing more in renewables would help avoid bill increases driven by fossil
fuels. www.policyconnect.org.uk/cc/research/report-future-electricity-series-part-2-power-renewables
Well
it may now be time to put this plan into action. The long drawn out
negotiations with EDF over the proposed new EPR nuclear replant at Hinkley have
delivered a very high cost package, including an offer of an extra £10bn
in investment risk reducing loan
guarantees and a high level of long term (35 year) revenue support via the
Contracts for a Difference system. And some funding from China. For future UK
reactors, efforts are being made to get even more backing from foreign sources,
including (once again) China (despite even more misgivings about handing over
control over the development and management of key infrastructure to
oversea powers), Japan (for upgraded versions of the Fukushima type of
Boiling Water Reactor), and even Russia (for their VVER design, which is said
to be vastly safer that than the Chernobyl design).
Inward
investment may have its merits, but the UK’s attempt to get private funding for
new nuclear from overseas, by offering juicy subsidies to be paid for by UK
taxpayers and consumers, is sounding increasingly desperate, with any pretence
that this is about competitive markets having been abandoned. Asked in parliament in September whether,
prior to entering into negotiations with a single company for a new nuclear
plant at Hinkley, DECC had invited tenders or expressions of interest from
other companies, as required under Article 8 of EC Directive 2009/72, Energy
Minister Michael Fallon said: ‘We do not consider that the potential
investment contract for Hinkley Point C falls within the scope of Article 8.
The investment contract, if agreed, is designed to be a market-based
intervention to provide price stability for nuclear generation during the
transition to a low carbon economy’.
The interventionist approach, what some have called ‘administrative
pricing’, though dressed up as all
being about free markets, has gone so far that there has even been calls to go
it alone completely- and state fund new nuclear projects.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10289972/Set-up-Olympics-style-body-for-new-nuclear-says-John-Armitt.html
The
Engineer, wryly, said
that in fact, with mostly state owned EDF, and now China, running the show,
that had already happened: ‘we’ve now arrived at a situation where our
nuclear sector is nationalised, just not by us. Perhaps the ultimate
irony is that with the emergence of China as a UK nuclear player, we now appear
to be destined to entrust large chunks of our future energy infrastructure to
an autocratic communist regime’. http://www.theengineer.co.uk/opinion/comment/missing-the-hinkley-point/1017346.article?cmpdate=Wednesday%20Agenda:%20Wednesday%20Agenda:%20Missing%20the%20Hinkley%20point&cmpid=tenews_21854
And all this
for new very expensive and as yet mostly untried technology. It is true that some
ABWRs have been built in Japan and elsewhere, although some have performed very
poorly, but there are as yet no Westinghouse AP 1000’s running anywhere and the
delays and cost over-runs faced by the French and Finnish EPRs have become
increasingly surreal. In the USA,
where, for good or ill, market discipline may have more power, old plants are
being closed early, plans for new plants abandoned and EDF have finally concluded that there is ‘no
room for nuclear to expand in the U.S. at this time’ and it would instead focus there on renewables. Maybe the
UK should do the same. And redeploy some of massive effort it has put
into trying to push nuclear ahead to an accelerated renewables programme. After all the UK does have the EU best
offshore wind, wave and tidal resources and the (marine) engineering expertise
to develop them. Surely that’s far better than importing French, US, Japanese
or even Russian nuclear technology?
Or are we now the only country in the western EU where they can be
dumped, with UK consumers and taxpayers picking up the ever expanding bill ?
Renewables won’t be cheap, at least initially, but I know what I’d rather pay
for!
For more, see
my new book on Renewables. http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-0-750-31040-6
