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Archive for May, 2012

UK is facing electricity shortage

Posted in energy, renewable energy, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In my last post, I said that “between a quarter and a third of current UK electricity generation capacity will come offline by the end of the decade.”

In a subsequent comment, Mel Starrs asked me for my sources. It’s such an important fact, I think it’s worth fleshing out.

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inevitable slide into gas?

Posted in chp, climate change, energy, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, tagged , , on May 3, 2012| 3 Comments »

Sometimes a tweet just won’t do. Yesterday I tweeted this:

DECC cnsltn out on gas gen. Um, 25% of UK elec gen lost by 2020. 20 yrs to new nuclear. No coherent RE strat. #DoneDeal #Fracking #3Degrees

…but somehow it doesn’t immediately convey the whole point. So here’s an expanded version:

DECC has today published its call for evidence  to “to inform a gas generation strategy to deliver a secure and affordable route to a low carbon economy.”
It’s lovely of them to ask. But consider the backdrop to this consultation:

  • Between a quarter and a third of current UK electricity generation capacity will come offline by the end of the decade. (It’s worth reading that sentence again – the implications are massive.)
  • New nuclear will not fill the gap. It will take at least 8 years to build each new nuclear power station and the stable of new UK nukes is struggling get out of the gates – that 8 year clock hasn’t even started ticking. In a massive setback to new nuclear, last month RWE and Npower abandoned plans for two new power stations in the wake of the collapse of the German nuclear market.
  • Without a radical change in policy, Renewables and energy storage will not grow at a sufficient rate to fill the gap.

So what does that leave us?

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