Will The Lights Go Off For Britain?
Updated: 1:05pm UK, Tuesday 19 February 2013
With the head of Ofgem issuing a warning about Britain's future energy reserve capacity, Datamonitor's director of energy and utilities research and analysis, Neil Atkinson, gives Sky News an industry insider's view of the coming decade:
Today, Ofgem's chief executive Alistair Buchanan repeated warnings that the UK faces a power supply capacity crunch. His message was first delivered to City analysts in July 2012 and it is stark: within three years the spare capacity margin for UK power generation capacity will fall from today's comfortable 14% to a distinctly uncomfortable 5%.
How worried should we be about this and if this looming capacity crunch is to be avoided how much will it cost us all?
In the next few weeks, according to Mr Buchanan, about 10% of the UK's current capacity shuts down as older coal and oil-fired plants reach the end of their lives. (The EU Large Combustion Plant Directive mandates the closure of these plants after they reach 20,000 hours of operation.)
Datamonitor Energy forecasts that by 2020, UK residential power demand will be 4% higher than it is today with other increases expected in power used in the commercial sector and in transport - more hybrid and electric cars - outweighing lower demand from industry.
In that time frame there will be nothing like enough improvement in energy efficiency via initiatives (like the Green Deal) and the Government's hopes for new nuclear capacity are looking more and more doomed as time goes by.
In practice, the lights will stay on in the UK. Tighter capacity doesn't mean we will all be using candles. It just means that if several extreme events happen at once the lights could go out, but even if they did industrial customers would be cut off first to spare households.
The UK would need prolonged severe winter conditions (that is, like in 1963) alongside an interruption to supplies from somewhere such as Norway or the unavailability of liquefied natural gas supplies for there to be power cut offs to households.
However, what is unavoidable is that for the foreseeable future the UK will need to use more gas and this means higher prices.
Mr Buchanan is right to point out that other parts of the world are competing for tighter gas supplies and prices in Asia are far higher, by some 60%, than here in Europe. Also, the almost complete lack of action on developing the Britain's own supply of shale gas means that UK consumers will see no help from that quarter in the next five years at least. In comparision, US natural gas prices are one-third of their level five years ago.
Still, it could be worse - households in 12 EU countries pay far more for their electricity than here in the UK.
Today, demonstrators blocked the street outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change protesting about fuel poverty.
As long as the Government remains committed to greening our power supply and faces up to subsidies for new nuclear capacity, it is hard to see that prices will come down.
This picture would be slightly more palatable if UK households thought their suppliers are doing a good job. But they don't and that's another story.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Energy Bills 'Set To Rise' Ofgem Warns
Dengan url
http://serverkecil.blogspot.com/2013/02/energy-bills-set-to-rise-ofgem-warns.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Energy Bills 'Set To Rise' Ofgem Warns
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Energy Bills 'Set To Rise' Ofgem Warns
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar