carbon limited

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.

In a 2008 report, Poyry cited the UK government’s own figures stating that of the 76 GW of connected capacity in 2007, 22.5 GW are due to close by 2020. That’s about 30% of the UK’s generation capacity coming offline.

DECC currently estimate that around 20GW of capacity will close in the next decade, a nearly identical figure to Poyry’s from 2008.

As a soundbite, it’s definitely not languishing in quiet obscurity. Highlighting the energy gap is now a key ingredient in many of the executive summaries of papers and consultations coming out of DECC. Here’s the intro from the recent Electricity Market Reform white paper:

With a quarter of the UK’s generating capacity shutting down over the next ten years as old coal and nuclear power stations close, more than £110bn in investment is needed to build the equivalent of 20 large power stations and upgrade the grid.

Whether the figure is 25% or 30%, the core of this shocking statement is true. But while people agree on the facts, views are strongly divided about how to address the problem. In the DECC quote above, the statistic is being used to create urgency behind the Electricity Market Reforms, which are the Government’s mechanism for subsidising new nuclear (however loudly they protest to the contrary). But it can just as easily be used to justify arguments for fracking, energy efficiency or renewables, depending on who’s doing the talking.

So what’s behind these plant closures?

The mothballing of UK generation plant is due to two main factors. About 12 GW fossil fuel plant (including 8 GW of coal) will have to shut down by 2015 because they can’t meet the minimum clean air requirements under the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive. That’s around 15% of UK capacity going offline in the next three years. Meanwhile the UK’s first and second generation nuclear power plants are coming to the end of their lives. While some of the second generation (AGR) plant may get sweated a bit longer, any stay of execution is unlikely to last long.

What should we do about the energy gap?

According to Poyry, just meeting our 2020 renewable energy and energy efficiency targets would mean no new fossil fuel baseload plant would need to be installed until the end of the decade. In other words, there would be no energy gap. Given that this is something we have to do anyway, it makes you wonder why there’s such a panic – you could be forgiven for thinking we don’t intend to meet our renewables target!

So expect to hear more about the UK energy gap in mainstream media in the coming days. It’s scary and it demands action (though which action isn’t clear). And worst of all, it’s true.