Clean leccy for the UK by 2035

[Mart]

Boris has decided to say what the rest of us have been saying for decades - I guess it suits him now.

UK electricity generation to be fossil fuel free by 2035, says Boris Johnson

The prime minister has confirmed plans to eliminate fossil fuels from UK electricity generation by 2035.

Speaking during the Conservative party conference, Boris Johnson said the proposed shift would help the UK decarbonise, while softening the impact of the kind of gas price fluctuations that have prompted fears of a winter energy crisis in recent weeks.

“What I’m saying is we can do for our entire energy production by 2035 what we’re doing with internal combustion engines in vehicles by 2030,” he said, during a visit to a Network Rail site in Manchester.

Johnson said removing gas from electricity generation would help safeguard against future price surges.

“We will be reliant on our own clean power generation, which will help us also to keep costs down.”

[Mr Gus]

Leader of the "enough of that green crap" party though so the question is what will they bring in to counter any good steps made?

#CallMeCynical

[Bugtownboy]

Realistically, though, the only way we’re going to have a chance of ‘Green’ electricity by 2035, or more likely, not being dependent on imported fuel, is through RE.

Surely nothing else can be deployed in that time ?

The HVDC network looks to be expanding giving a degree of resilience, and also, developing a network of interdependence.

I’m sure one or two new nukes will be in the mix, but these are only replacing existing capacity.

[Stinsy]

More Wind and more solar would reduce the need for gas significantly. But what happens if we have a long windless spell? Grid-scale storage is still an unsolved problem.

If we have a long windless spell in winter currently we deploy 15-20GW of gas. What will replace that?

Again, more nuclear would increase baseload generation and reduce the use of gas too, but it can't do what gas does. I've heard that we can expect some announcements re new nuclear at the Tory conference but I don't see how that would be online by 2035.

Interconnects currently max out at around 6GW, even an increase in these would need to be unrealistically dramatic to solve the problem.

[Bugtownboy]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m dubious/doubtful both of his sincerity and the reality of trying to achieve FF free generation by 2035.

But, if there is a real commitment to get behind RE/remove FF generation it could be Bozo’s “Moon within the decade” moment.

While I wouldn’t trust the guy, believe he only says what people want to hear, and is renowned for disappearing when it gets messy, let’s give him his opportunity to achieve a massive goal.

We do need it.

On past performance, though, he’ll backtrack, waffle and bluster before the years out, trying to sloping shoulder his way out of the commitment.

[Mart]

Just playing with some numbers, I can see how we can be theoretically free of FF's by 2035, but it'll be a lot harder in reality.

We have been deploying roughly 3.5% RE each year for a decade, so 14x3.5% = +49%.
Add that to the roughly 40%+ we now have (I may be lowballing that, but 2020 and 2021 have meant lower energy due to Covid, so higher RE %).
That gives us ~90%, then we have 20% nuclear, but that'll be mostly gone by 2035, but add on 7% for HPC, so close to 100%.

Of course by 2035 the impact of BEV's and heat pumps will become significant, transport could be adding 10% to demand, on it's way to 20%(ish) net. And space heating could be more again, by then.

But ...... crucially RE costs are falling, so no reason why the Gov can't scale up their deployment, even if it's just to 5% pa, or +70% by 2035.


Moving on to balancing supply and demand, and that's a much harder problem, but the massive increase in interconnectors from 5GW last year, to 7.4GW now, and ~16GW by 2025, opens up the possibility to use imported leccy, ideally RE to help out when we need it, and to export some of our excess RE.

Taking me on to the 'cheat' part, which is if we export enough RE, then we can still reach net zero if we have to use the gas fleet burning FF gas, to help out in periods of sustained low RE generation.

After the 'cheat' phase' hopefully we'll be rolling out large amounts of long term storage, such as H2, which could mean running that gas fleet on RE sourced H2.


And before anyone starts shooting the messenger, I'm not suggesting this is easy, I'm simply saying that it's possible based on the technology that exists today, and how it appears to be developing. So the potential is there, and I don't see any really big problems (other than the Gov dragging their heels), just really big tasks - and there is a difference, if we can build out 1GW of wind power economically, then we can build out 10GW or 50GW. If we can deploy 1GWh of intraday storage economically, then we can build out 500GWh. If we can develop 320GWh (underground gas storage) of long term storage, then we can build out 5TWh to fill the gaps in say a week of low RE generation when demand is ~2TWh/day.


Lastly I should have said whether I believe in Boris, and his suggestion. Well to be honest, I think the plan is absolutely fine, and achievable, and always has been, all we really need is for Boris and the post 2015 Tory Governments to get out of the way, and let it happen.

[dan_b]

I may have posted a few thoughts on this in another thread, but this is absolutely about announcing a new funding structure to get new nuclear back in play. It may not be the right strategy given the high cost and long lead times for nuclear plants, and of course you can deploy SWB (solar, wind, batteries) at scale more quickly in the time it takes to build one nuclear plant, but there is definitely a change in the political will about how to pay for nuclear via different means.

[nowty]

I suspect Boris has a hidden caveat, like we will be net zero 90% of the time which is probably achievable by then in an average year. Nowty Towers might even be 90% net zero now over an average year or at least once the Ripple wind turbine starts spinning.

[dan_b]

Looks like we'll be throwing lots of taxpayers cash at Sizewell C pretty soon then

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-fun ... 021-10-17/

[nowty]

Looks like we'll be throwing lots of taxpayers cash at Sizewell C pretty soon then

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-fun ... 021-10-17/

Boris has just mentioned nuclear in a speech on investment this morning, so I suspect its coming, probably be announced during COP26 for political purposes.