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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the UK needs to build new gas-fired power stations to back up renewables and “keep the lights on”.
In 2019, the UK government made a commitment to cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. In July 2022, it introduced new measures in the energy sector designed to boost green technologies, including extra support for the deployment of low-carbon technologies at scale such as carbon capture, usage and storage.
Following the announcement today, it seems there has been some back-pedalling. In what the UK energy secretary Clare Coutinho calls a “common-sense decision”, the government will now support the building of new gas power stations to maintain a safe and reliable energy source as the nation transitions to net zero.
The government claims this plan keeps the UK on track to meet its net zero targets but does so in a sustainable, pragmatic way that rids the UK of the need to rely on foreign dictators such as Vladimir Putin.
“We need to reach our 2035 goals in a sustainable way that doesn’t leave people without energy on a cloudy, windless day,” said Sunak.
“I will not gamble with our energy security. I will make the tough decisions so that no matter what scenario we face, we can always power Britain from Britain.”
Coutinho said: “There are no easy solutions in energy, only trade-offs. If countries are forced to choose between clean energy and keeping citizens safe and warm, believe me they’ll choose to keep the lights on.”
To bring this plan to fruition and boost gas power capacity, new stations will replace existing plants, many of which are ageing and will soon be retired.
However, the government says the law will be changed to ensure the new plants will “net-zero ready” in that they will be capable of being retrofitted to burn hydrogen or to be fitted with carbon capture and storage technologies in the future.
The government did not give any details about when, where and who will build the new power stations. The plan also did not include measures for climate-change-limiting carbon capture.
This announcement from government has elicited much criticism from green campaigners. For instance, the Green Alliance think tank said it “flies in the face” of the government's promise to reach zero-carbon electricity by 2035.
Shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband said in The Guardian: “The reason the Tories cannot deliver the lower bills and energy security we need is that they are specialists in failure when it comes to our clean energy future.”
Others in the renewable energy industry are similarly denouncing this government plan to build new gas-fired power stations.
“Building new power plants fuelled by ’natural gas’ is the wrong approach to balancing supply and demand in a decarbonised power sector,” said Jim Watson, professor of energy policy and director at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resources.
“Instead, the focus should be on retrofitting some of the newer plants to run green hydrogen (produced by renewables), or fitting them with carbon capture and storage technologies. Both options are technically possible now. Requiring new gas plants to be ‘net zero ready’ as the government proposes is meaningless.”
Sam Hampton, environmental geographer at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, said: “Building new fossil-fuelled power stations in the UK will make it harder to meet our climate goals.
“The government is already committed to having a zero-emission electricity grid by 2035, and yet new power stations have a typical lifespan of more than 20 years. Declaring that these will be ‘capture ready’ just means the government is crossing its fingers that carbon capture technology will come to save us. But the reality is that it remains a distant illusion.”
