Does Government Really Expect 24% of UK Electricity to be Imported in 2025?

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By Paul Homewood

 

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From the GWPF:

 

New UK government projections of capacity and supply suggest that interconnection and electricity imports must grow by over 300% by 2025 if demand is to be met. While imports are not in themselves to be feared, it is worrying that government appears to be using assumptions about interconnection as a free parameter to paper over deficiencies in what is now in effect a centrally planned electricity system.

The GB system currently has about 5.7 GW of interconnectors, and in 2016 net imports of electricity over these lines amounted to about 18 TWh, mostly from France, and the Netherlands, though with traces from Eire and Northern Ireland. This is approximately 6.5% of demand on the GB system.

Data published last week by the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as part of the latest iteration of its Updated Energy Emissions Projections shows that interconnection must rise to 20 GW as soon as 2024, and net imports must rise to 77 TWh in the following year, 24% of requirements, if expected demand for electricity is to be met.

BEIS’s own chart (5.1 in the UEEP itself) is not particularly helpful in appreciating the overall picture, so I here redraw that data in two figures, the first showing electrical energy generation in terawatt hours by fuel type from 2016 to 2035, and the second re-expressing that data in percentage terms.

Figure 1. UK Electricity Generation (TWh) from 2016 to 2035. Source: Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2016 (March 2017). See Web Figures.

The salient facts are:

1. The quantity of electrical generated from gas-fired generators is expected to fall sharply in 2017, and to decline, though with some short term increases, thereafter.
2. Nuclear output is expected to expand significantly after 2025.
3. Renewable output roughly doubles over the period.
4. Imports grow very sharply in the middle of the next decade, and then decline in volume towards the end of the period.

The percentages bring this into sharper focus:

Figure 2: UK Electricity Generation (%) from 2016 to 2035. Source: Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2016 (March 2017). See Web Figures.

As can be seen in 2025 the UK is nearly 25% reliant on imported electricity in spite of renewables contributing upwards of 35% of demand in that year.

The evolution of generating capacity behind this phenomenon can also be charted from BEIS’ projections:

Figure 3. UK Electricity Capacity 2016 to 2035 (GW). Source: Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2016 (March 2017). See Annex L: Total Electricity Generating Capacity.

The salient features of this chart are:

1. Total capacity increases by about 40% in the period.
2. Natural gas capacity does not grow significantly, indeed it falls from a peak in 2018 of 39 GW to 31 GW in 2035.
3. Nuclear capacity declines to a low of 5 GW in 2024 and then climbs to 17 GW in 2035.
4. Renewables grow steadily from 37 GW in 2016 to 63 GW in 2035. This is by no means implausible; the government’s own Renewable Energy Planning Database, records 55.2 GW of consented renewable capacity.
5. Interconnection rises rapidly from about 6 GW in 2016 to 20 GW in 2024.

The rapid, major increase in import capacity and in electricity imports is far and away the most important single feature of these charts, and not, it must be emphasised, because imports are to be feared in themselves, but because of what this tells us about the way that BEIS has constructed the estimates. In many circumstances imports are to be welcomed, as economic, but the BEIS projections have little or nothing to do with comparative advantage. They are not grounded in economic analyses suggesting that within a few years it will be the best use of resources for UK consumers to buy over 20% of their electricity from overseas suppliers. On the contrary, it seems clear that what BEIS has done is use imports simply as a free parameter. Where their models of new generation and output fail to meet projected demand they have assumed that imports will make up the balance. That is why the net imports fade away both in absolute quantity and in proportion after the mid-2020s, when new nuclear generation starts to be built

In one sense we can take comfort from the fact that these are not realistic scenarios; importing in distressed circumstances is clearly not an attractive prospect, and BEIS itself remarks that “The results do not indicate a preferred alternative and should be treated as illustrative” (UEEP, p. 31). But illustrative of what? Departmental despair? It is, at the very least, disconcerting to learn that in spite of having assumed all but complete responsibility for the supply of electricity the UK government has in 2017 little or no idea how it is going to meet demand in the early and mid 2020s other than ad hoc assumptions with regard to imports of electricity over interconnectors the vast majority of which are not yet built and from markets that may not be able, let alone willing to supply the UK’s needs.

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I have raised this issue about interconnectors before.

As I have often said, they make a good deal of sense, in terms of balancing surpluses and deficits in generation, as long as the economics stand up.

But the worrying thing, as John Constable now highlights, is that the UK’s energy strategy now increasingly appears to depend on imports of electricity.

As he comments, this should not be an objection in principle, as the UK relies on imports of all sorts of things.

Nevertheless, energy is particularly essential from a strategic point of view. Can we depend on the reliability of electricity imports, especially when power margins are tight across Europe? At best, we may secure supplies at a great cost.

As with all other vital supplies, establishing a wide variety of sources should be the number one priority.

Imports of electricity from other countries may have its attractions, but should never be regarded as a substitute  for a proper energy policy.

And, as John points out, the use of interconnectors does not even appear the result of any logical strategy. Instead it appears to be the default option, when everything else has failed.

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March 18, 2017 at 11:00AM

Talk Of Flexible, Smart Energy Systems Misses The Point

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By Paul Homewood

 

 

“Flexible” and “smart” are the new buzzwords when discussing energy.

“We need electricity to be our flexible friend”, says Richard Black.

“We want to move from a 20th Century energy system to a smart, clean system fit for the 21st Century”, says Greg Clark.

Smart meters, battery storage, demand side response. These are thrown up as examples of how we can manage the inherent intermittency of wind and solar power.

But just how much difference will they make?

Black’s ECIU has just published a report suggesting that the Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR) scheme has been a waste of money, as The Times reports:

 

A government scheme that paid £180 million to keep old power stations open as an emergency reserve to prevent winter blackouts has ended after never being used.

The Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR) scheme was introduced in 2014 when the closure of old coal plants and delays building greener replacements led to fears that Britain could run short of electricity in a cold snap.

Plants that might have closed received millions to remain on standby in case they were needed as a last resort, if plants operating in the normal market proved insufficient.

The scheme ran for three winters and had been expected to be called upon several times as other plants shut and the gap between peak supply and demand tightened.

It finished at the end of February after what National Grid described as two exceptionally mild winters.

In a report today, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) think tank suggests that the scheme was a waste of money. The fact that SBR was never used shows that “warnings of blackouts in the UK have been overblown, leading to potentially excessive spending on insurance policies to ensure energy security”, it argues.

Last winter was the most expensive period of the scheme, with £122 million spent to keep ten plants open. The plants were never needed despite what the report argues was “a tough winter”, owing to “a long spell of cold weather with low wind output, one of the cables connecting us to France broken by a ship’s anchor, and multiple French nuclear power stations out of action for safety checks”.

James Heappey, Conservative MP for Wells and an adviser to the ECIU, claimed that the scheme had been unnecessary. “Bill payers have spent £180 million on standby power stations that were not needed,” he said.

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They have obviously never heard of insurance policies. Just because your house did not burn down last year does not mean that you should cancel your insurance.

In any event, I find it extraordinary that Heappey is worried about a cost of £180m over 3 years, when he is happy to accept subsidies to renewables of £8.7bn this year alone.

 

But on the deeper issue of standby capacity in future years, there is an implication that all we need is a flexible, smart system.

Unfortunately, the data does not agree.

 

If we look at rolling system demand during a typical week in January, we can see that demand ranged from 28517 MW to 50846 MW.

The average for the week was 40413 MW.

 

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Let us therefore suppose that we could smooth this demand perfectly across the week, so that demand was a constant 40413 MW, something that would plainly be totally impossible anyway.

In the latest Capacity Market auction for 2020/21, the government has purchased capacity of 52430 MW.

So at the most, perfect flexibility would only reduce the need for this standby capacity by 12017 MW.

The auction clearing price was £22.50/KW, so the potential saving would only be £270 million. This is loose change, compared to the cost of subsidising inefficient renewables, which will amount to £12.6bn by 2020.

 

Whilst we persist with heavily subsidised renewables, there is no alternative to having some sort of system which guarantees standby capacity.

Currently most of this is contracted from existing coal, gas and nuclear plants, which can naturally undercut new generation plants.

This is something that Richard Black and his chums find distasteful.

 

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In reality, however, we badly need a mechanism that brings forward new plants to replace the older ones due to shut in the next decade.

No amount of fanciful talk about smart, flexible energy systems can deny this essential truth.

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March 18, 2017 at 07:00AM

Does Government Really Expect 24% of UK Electricity to be Imported in 2025?

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
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New UK government projections of capacity and supply suggest that interconnection and electricity imports must grow by over 300% by 2025 if demand is to be met. While imports are not in themselves to be feared, it is worrying that government appears to be using assumptions about interconnection as a free parameter to paper over deficiencies in what is now in effect a centrally planned electricity system.

The GB system currently has about 5.7 GW of interconnectors, and in 2016 net imports of electricity over these lines amounted to about 18 TWh, mostly from France, and the Netherlands, though with traces from Eire and Northern Ireland. This is approximately 6.5% of demand on the GB system.

Data published last week by the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as part of the latest iteration of its Updated Energy Emissions Projections shows that interconnection must rise to 20 GW as soon as 2024, and net imports must rise to 77 TWh in the following year, 24% of requirements, if expected demand for electricity is to be met.

BEIS’s own chart (5.1 in the UEEP itself) is not particularly helpful in appreciating the overall picture, so I here redraw that data in two figures, the first showing electrical energy generation in terawatt hours by fuel type from 2016 to 2035, and the second re-expressing that data in percentage terms.

Figure 1. UK Electricity Generation (TWh) from 2016 to 2035. Source: Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2016 (March 2017). See Web Figures.

The salient facts are:

1. The quantity of electrical generated from gas-fired generators is expected to fall sharply in 2017, and to decline, though with some short term increases, thereafter.
2. Nuclear output is expected to expand significantly after 2025.
3. Renewable output roughly doubles over the period.
4. Imports grow very sharply in the middle of the next decade, and then decline in volume towards the end of the period.

The percentages bring this into sharper focus:

Figure 2: UK Electricity Generation (%) from 2016 to 2035. Source: Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2016 (March 2017). See Web Figures.

As can be seen in 2025 the UK is nearly 25% reliant on imported electricity in spite of renewables contributing upwards of 35% of demand in that year.

The evolution of generating capacity behind this phenomenon can also be charted from BEIS’ projections:

Figure 3. UK Electricity Capacity 2016 to 2035 (GW). Source: Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2016 (March 2017). See Annex L: Total Electricity Generating Capacity.

The salient features of this chart are:

1. Total capacity increases by about 40% in the period.
2. Natural gas capacity does not grow significantly, indeed it falls from a peak in 2018 of 39 GW to 31 GW in 2035.
3. Nuclear capacity declines to a low of 5 GW in 2024 and then climbs to 17 GW in 2035.
4. Renewables grow steadily from 37 GW in 2016 to 63 GW in 2035. This is by no means implausible; the government’s own Renewable Energy Planning Database, records 55.2 GW of consented renewable capacity.
5. Interconnection rises rapidly from about 6 GW in 2016 to 20 GW in 2024.

The rapid, major increase in import capacity and in electricity imports is far and away the most important single feature of these charts, and not, it must be emphasised, because imports are to be feared in themselves, but because of what this tells us about the way that BEIS has constructed the estimates. In many circumstances imports are to be welcomed, as economic, but the BEIS projections have little or nothing to do with comparative advantage. They are not grounded in economic analyses suggesting that within a few years it will be the best use of resources for UK consumers to buy over 20% of their electricity from overseas suppliers. On the contrary, it seems clear that what BEIS has done is use imports simply as a free parameter. Where their models of new generation and output fail to meet projected demand they have assumed that imports will make up the balance. That is why the net imports fade away both in absolute quantity and in proportion after the mid-2020s, when new nuclear generation starts to be built

In one sense we can take comfort from the fact that these are not realistic scenarios; importing in distressed circumstances is clearly not an attractive prospect, and BEIS itself remarks that “The results do not indicate a preferred alternative and should be treated as illustrative” (UEEP, p. 31). But illustrative of what? Departmental despair? It is, at the very least, disconcerting to learn that in spite of having assumed all but complete responsibility for the supply of electricity the UK government has in 2017 little or no idea how it is going to meet demand in the early and mid 2020s other than ad hoc assumptions with regard to imports of electricity over interconnectors the vast majority of which are not yet built and from markets that may not be able, let alone willing to supply the UK’s needs.

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 18, 2017 at 06:08AM

Potsdam PIK Climate Director Says We Will Have To Go Back To Mud Huts By 2040

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Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) here presents a commentary by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of German ultra-alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Professor Schellnhuber fears that the planet could warm even as much as 12°C if man does not act quickly to totally eliminate greenhouse gases. He adds that he “has all the evidence” and that climate scientists “are only trying to do a job” for us.

Hat-tip: Reader Dennis A.

With the US Administration pledging to back out of the Paris climate treaty, Schellnhuber is now calling on scientists “to take to the streets to counter climate denial“.

If we want to hold the 1.5 degrees [Celsius; 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit] line, which is the ambitious goal of the Paris agreement, we have maybe 300 billion tons left – more or less the budget of 10 years – if we do business as usual. If we want to hold the 2 degrees line, which is more realistic, we have another 20 to 30 years to go, but no more actually. So it’s a very tight budget.

It’s quite mind-boggling – for example, by 2030, we have to phase out the combustion engine. And we have to completely phase out the use of coal for producing power. By 2040 we will probably have to replace concrete and steel for construction by wood, clay and stone.

We are at the crossroads now: We either say: this thing is too big for us, this task cannot be done. [Then] we will be transformed by nature, because we will end up with a planet warming by 4, 5, 6 or even 12 degrees. It would be the end of the world as we know it, and I have all the evidence.”

In short, the eccentric professor from Potsdam is essentially claiming that unless we return to living in mud huts and forego the fundamental amenities of modern life, our great grandchildren will end up living in super tropical hot-house conditions.

Fortunately Schellnhuber’s view is a rare one that is out on the remote fringe. Other climate scientists hold a far more sober view, like Prof Judith Curry. Interestingly, climate hardly seems to be a concern for Schellnhuber’s boss, Angela Merkel, who yesterday did not mention climate change once during her press conference with President Trump. In fact much of the discussion was about trade, economy …along with a little fake news and wire-tapping.

 

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March 18, 2017 at 05:38AM