20120429_R4
Source: BBC Radio 4: The World This Weekend
URL: N/A
Date: 29/04/2012
Event: Professor Sue Ion on the UK's energy strategy - a reality check
People:
- Professor Sue Ion: Non-Executive Board Member at the UK government's Health and Safety Laboratory
- Shaun Ley: BBC journalist
Shaun Ley: MPs get a respite, of sorts, this week with the Prorogation of Parliament, when the Queen's Speech is read out, in just over a week's time. At the beginning of the new session, we'll know what new laws the government is hoping to enact. An energy bill is expected, not least because a quarter of Britain's generating capacity is set to disappear in the next decade, and the government needs to find ways to cover the shortfall. The Royal Academy of Engineering commissioned a report to see how this could be achieved, at the same time as meeting the existing obligation to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050. Professor Sue Ion, one of the authors, explained first our current energy mix.
Sue Ion: Currently, gas provides about 46%, 47% of our electricity needs, coal about 28%, nuclear 16, 17% and renewables 7%-ish, and we import electricity from France, around 1%, and that's nuclear electricity, obviously. The rest is odds and sods.
Shaun Ley: And of those sources of electricity at the moment, how is that balance likely to change, and what will be driving those changes?
Sue Ion: The government has targets to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. And in order to do that, you have to decarbonise your electricity sector. Interestingly, the government's targets have really been - and this wasn't just this government, it's previous administrations as well, have had similar aspirations - have really been set, absent any consideration of the engineering challenge required to deliver them. We actually looked at what we considered would be feasible, what you could actually build. So that meant 38 London Arrays of offshore wind, a thousand miles of Pelamis wave machine, over 10,000 land-based wind turbines, 25 million solar panels. We assumed we'd have to have a Severn Barrage. Marine turbines, which are actually quite promising technology, but we've only got a few test units and you'd need over 2,000 of those. And then when you do the sums, you still need 40 nuclear new power stations or 40 large fossil plants with carbon capture. So the sums, kind of, don't add up when you do a reality check.
Shaun Ley: Do you think, at the moment, the country has an energy strategy?
Sue Ion: Well, it might have a strategy, in terms of aspirations, but it doesn't have a plan. I mean, the energy industry is one where you require certainty over a 20, 30-year period, not a 5 to 8-year period. It has to be something that is, you know, not political, you know, cross-party so that investors can be confident that what one administration says isn't going to be turned over by another.
Shaun Ley: What is the risk of it not having a plan? What are the consequences of the government just saying: "Look, we will pretty much leave it to the market, we'll research and investigate and we'll encourage and we'll exhort. But we won't interfere."
Sue Ion: Well, if you just leave it to the markets, then the default position is probably we'll see at least a sustaining of the level of gas to create electricity, or possibly an increase. Because by far and away the easiest investment to make is the one in gas, because the capital outlay for the stations is relatively low. The bigger risk is shortage of gas on the international marketplace and hence the lights going out.
[To be continued.]