Powering up Britain: A Curate’s Egg
There is plenty of good in the government’s two (not so) new strategy documents: energy security and net zero strategies. The latter is also more delusional than it should be, e.g. the rest of the world is, we are told, following our leadership.
No evidence is given for that. Focusing on the inadequate gives a distorted view but highlights where the government needs to think again. The strategies’ main problems, in descending order of immediate importance, are: under-estimating 2050 electricity demand, developing the networks needed to cope, under-estimating the need for nuclear and how many small and advanced modular reactors (S/AMRs) will be needed, financing their introduction, streamlining regulatory approval, sites and Scotland.
Because energy in 2050 will be almost entirely electricity, it is much more likely that the electricity provision in 2050 would need to increase five times to 209 mean GW, split 75, 58 (28%) and 76 renewables, nuclear and gas (with carbon capture and storage) respectively. Because the wind does not always blow nor sun shine, increasing the size of the wind fleet does not solve the problem of variability. An increase in wind capacity may not solve the problem. In 2022, wind capacity was 28.6 GW. However, for half the days in the year, wind failed to supply even 4 GW at some stage of the day or night.
The existing plans, or lack thereof, for expanding the networks give no confidence they will be able to handle a five times increase in provision. The Electricity Networks Commissioner has been asked to report, in June, what can be done to speed up the network infrastructure planning approvals process but that is a side-track. What we want to know is what the 2050 networks will look like and how they will be achieved, including finance. Some people consider this to be the single most important issue and yet government just kicks the can forward.
The new security strategy still claims to be aiming for 25% nuclear, not far off our estimate of 28%, but it says (p.31) that 24 GW of nuclear equates to a total energy market of 96 GW – clearly bunkum. The day of the full size (3 GW+) reactor is over. By the time Sizewell C gets to be approved, if it ever is, we will not be able to afford it. Only HS2 compares for equivocation destroying the financial justification. We reckon about 100 S/AMRs will be needed (about the same number as Poland) and that would justify four suppliers manufacturing about 25 each. They can be built in factories and taken by road to their sites.
They can all be financed by the private sector except the first two of each model and that is where the argument lies. HM Treasury, in its customary penny-pinching short-sighted mode, says it will only finance two suppliers but that would not be enough for market competition or creative development. The answer is quite simple: HM Treasury should tell the fossil fuel major companies that they should stop trying to maximise the indefensible (gas will be with us for some time anyway) and move into the 21st century by sponsoring one AMR each. Otherwise, windfall taxes will be the least of their problems. For a start, CCUS should be funded by them, not households or HM Treasury.
As Professor Dame Sue Ion told the BEIS Select Committee, we have run out of time on nuclear. We needed to be building them now. Approval by the Office of Nuclear Regulation should only be needed for the “first of a kind” and, where that type is already approved by a major country, like the US, Canada or France, that should only take a couple of months, not the current four years. Site approvals should be automatic where S/AMRs are to be located in existing approval sites or old power stations and otherwise decided within four weeks by a specialist team from HM Planning Inspectorate.
Finally, energy is a devolved matter and yet the new strategy only mentions Scotland once in the Security plan’s 84 pages (saying devolution will be respected) and five times in the Net Zero plan’s 126 pages. “In 2005 the British Electricity Trading Transmission Arrangements (BETTA) were introduced and created the single integrated GB electricity market for the first time.” Before that, Scottish electricity supply was separate. Today the National Grid ESO and Ofgem operate equally across all Great Britain. The Future System Operator (FSO) will take over, maybe, in 2024. “The FSO will be in the public sector, with operational independence from government.” Quite how the UK and Scottish governments will interact with the FSO is unclear as is the way the two governments will cooperate to achieve the Great Britain objectives.
We biggest problem is that we and others have said all the above many times before and sent the evidence to the department. They are not listening and that does not augur well.