For energy geeks like me, the Energy and Emissions projections are the gift that keeps on giving. It's a bit like the end of the Wizard of Oz: you get to tear back the curtain of rhetoric to discover what the mandarins really think will happen.
We've already covered gas and nuclear, so let's turn to the stats on renewables deployment. Here's how DECC sees the rollout of new renewables capacity over the next two decades:
As you can see, they envisage a sustained programme of new capacity between 2012 and 2020. Here's those data expressed as annual build:
Between 2012 and 2020, the government expects between three and five gigawatts of new capacity to come online each and every year. After 2020, deployment is expected to slow markedly, with less than one gigawatt each year for seven of out the ten years.
It may be possible to make these numbers stack up, but this seems totally divorced from the political reality. It takes no account of the policies that would be needed to deliver the first decade's deployment and the impact that would have on deployment into the 2020s.
If we want to deliver 35GW of new renewables capacity by the end of the decade at least cost and with the greatest GDP gain, then government will need to develop an industrial strategy that focused on moving as much of the supply chain to the UK as possible.
(That's exactly what they are trying to do with nuclear power, which is why the government has published a Nuclear Supply Chain Action Strategy.)
Yet the implicit assumption behind these data is that having established a manufacturing base in the UK, and successfully delivered between three and five GW every year for eight years, the renewables industry will shut up its shop in 2021.
The government's numbers are based on the preposterous idea that we should build just enough new capacity to meet our 2020 renewable energy targets, and not a turbine more. That's not a policy: it's an attempt to appease two diametrically opposed factions within a coalition.
I can only think of two real-world deployment scenarios that are likely to arise - and they're mutually exclusive.
The first is that the renewables industry establishes a manufacturing base in the UK, we deploy a lot of capacity by the end of the decade and build on that experience to deploy at a slower-but-sustained rate into the 2020s.
The other outcome is that the renewables industry decides not to invest in the UK. As a result, we get limited deployment - far less than the 35GW government is planning for - and what capacity we do get is expensive and manufactured overseas.
It's not yet clear which of these two scenarios is actually going to arise, although it should by now be clear which one I'd prefer.
Failure to resolve the government faction fights over climate and renewables policy could result in the worst of all worlds - not tackling climate change, expensive renewables and expensive renewable built overseas.
Viewpoint pieces reflect the view of the author and/or his or her organisation.
The Energydesk team is away over Christmas so whilst the magic of technology allows these stories to be published in our absence we won't be able to respond to comments until 7 January - however we will then do our utmost to get up to speed. Many apologies in advance, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.
