It seems as though Ministers can’t make up their mind about how many new gas-fired power stations they want built.
The Financial Times’ political supremo Jim Pickard blogs this morning, pointing out that quietly – almost as if they didn’t want people to notice – DECC has quadrupled the amount of gas-fired power in their planning scenarios for the next couple of decades from eight new gas plants to at least 28.
8 new gas-fired power stations?
As Pickard points out, in the DECC “central scenario” from October 2011 it’s clear that the Government planned for 7.5GW of new gas capacity by 2030.
According to Bloomberg, at least 10 new gas stations are already through the planning system, and three of them are in construction already. See a list of them here.
Or 20 new gas-fired power stations?
But back in September, The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey reported comments from Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey, in which he said he wanted to see about 20 new gas-fired power stations built in the UK.
This followed a joint statement he made with the Chancellor back in March, when he made clear new gas stations would be exempted from new emissions controls until 2045, saying, “We can’t take our foot off the gas for some time yet".
In October, Ed Davey’s call for 20 new plants was repeated in The Telegraph and picked up by BusinessGreen, which reported comments the Energy Secretary made to a gas industry conference in October. “I see unabated gas playing a very significant role throughout the 2020s, and, increasingly as back-up or with carbon capture and storage, through the 2030s and 2040s," said Mr Davey.
This is a line he repeated in a letter to the Financial Times on 20th September but this time he added, “We expect new gas capacity of up to 20GW to be built between now and 2030.” (That’s equivalent to between 10 and 20 new gas-fired power stations.)
Last week as he launched his new Energy Bill, Ed Davey reiterated his backing for new gas stations - without even putting a number on it - telling Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme he thought the UK would “need a lot more new unabated gas plants over the next two decades".
Davey has repeatedly claimed that 20 new gas stations would be consistent with the UK’s legally binding carbon targets, but this has been strongly disputed by the Government’s own climate advisers, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
Carbon Brief notes that DECC has never published any supporting modelling to show how 20 new gas stations would be consistent with carbon goals – despite claiming to have done so.
Yet the Secretary of State proceeded to flirt with the idea of building even more.
He suggested in a piece for PoliticsHome in September, “Our numbers show that we can accommodate around 30 to 45GW of unabated gas over the next twenty years and still hit our carbon targets, but any further fossil fuels will need CCS, which is not yet commercially viable.” (Under this scenario there would be 30 new gas stations.)
As I suggested at the time, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests these new gas plants would need to be operating for only about 15% of the time (and all coal stations in Britain would need to be shut down or operating with full CCS) for the UK to have a chance of keeping within carbon budgets.
Or 30+ new gas-fired power stations?
Today we learn from the front page of the Financial Times that this notion is now policy. The Government wants to see approximately 30 new gas-fired power stations built between now and 2030.
The newspaper reports:
“The Chancellor believes the country will need up to 30 new gas-fired power stations to produce 26 gigawatts… Under one scenario – if Britain’s carbon reduction plan in the mid-2020s is reined back – there could be 37GW of new gas plants in the UK by 2030, accounting for half of the UK’s generation capacity.”
This would also explain why – as Friends of the Earth’s Guy Shrubsole first spotted last week – the Energy Bill contains a scenario in which emissions in the power sector are as high as 200g/Co2/Kwh in 2030. (Remember, the Committee on Climate Change has said we need them to be no higher than 50g by that date to hit carbon targets.)
And it could help under understand why – as The Observer first reported - DECC quietly upped the amount of gas in their 2012 scenario documents.
We now know that the Government is openly planning for a scenario in which the UK has an energy system that is so gas-heavy that it is incompatible with existing carbon targets.
