Power generation is a £100billion industry in the UK. The industry employs around 17 million people and operates around 1000 power stations. It can be split into four sectors, electricity generation, transmission, distribution and retailing. It is undergoing massive changes to the way we generate electricity and the way electricity is sold to the customer.

Since the first civilisation, we have burned things to help us to keep warm or to cook. First it was wood, then with the advent of the industrial revolution, coal became our staple fuel to provide heat and energy. Oil and gas followed as the main fuel sources for our growing needs and have until recently been the accepted fuels of choice.

Then global warming became recognised as a serious problem to our civilisation and the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas were highlighted as being one of the main contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions which were a major contributing factor to the problem. Our attitude to power generation started to change and pressure is now been exerted on governments of the industrialised world to switch from fossil fuelled energy generation to renewables such as wind and solar power.

However, this change of emphasis will be an evolution rather than a revolution with fossil fuel fired generation being phased out as renewables technology is being introduced. There are four distinct phases to delivering a new wind farm; Project development, including the planning process, Construction, Installation and Commissioning. The time taken to complete an onshore wind farm can vary between 4 and 8 years, taking into account all of these phases. The construction of an offshore wind farm is estimated to take between 7 and 11 years, because of the extra installation work and more advanced technology in use. 

For reasons of planning, it is foreseen that the majority of large wind farm projects will continue to be offshore. Offshore wind farms are expensive to build but are relatively low cost to maintain. There have also been around 83,000 miles of new cable being installed to provide connections to the national grid. All of the cost issues around, particularly offshore wind means that although the end product will be carbon free, it will not be cheap at this stage.

Large solar panel installations are meeting very negative reactions at the planning stage of the project. They are not popular and are often refused planning permission with applications going to appeal, stalling the project at that early stage, otherwise it could be constructed in 12 to 18 months.

At the moment, we are still generating some of our electricity through conventional coal and gas fired power stations but around 43% is now from renewable sources. Wind energy accounts for 25% of Britain’s requirement. Of the non-renewables very little is generated from burning coal , which generated only 1.6% of the electricity mix in 2020. This is due to most of the coal burning stations now converting to biomass, mostly in the form of wood pellets, which some include as renewable as it comes from trees which can be replanted. The power stations, however, use more wood pellets than they did coal so unfortunately produce more CO2, not less. The last piece of this particular jigsaw is to capture this carbon and store it in empty, offshore oil or gas reservoirs rather than release it into the atmosphere.

Coal is used to generate electricity much less than it has historically been used. Some of our existing coal fired stations have been converted to biomass and the use of coal to fire power stations in the UK will be banned as of 2025, but biomass is not a truly green alternative to coal. That means that we may need to make up the balance of coal generated electricity in the short term, relying more on gas.

Gas, however is neither renewable or carbon free and if the UK’s ambition to reach net zero by 2050 is to be met, it does need to be a short term solution and we need to increase our capacity on other renewable fuels as soon as possible to meet the demands of the consumer.

The UK currently produces around 50% of the gas it uses, mostly from reservoirs in the North Sea, the rest it imports. In 2021 the UK imported;

• 1,440,000 metric tonnes from Norway
• 93,000 metric tonnes from the US
• 45,000 metric tonnes from Denmark
• 45,000 metric tonnes from Belgium
• 9,000 metric tonnes from Russia
• 8.000 metric tonnes from France

While the main driver to reduce then eliminate gas as a generation fuel is environmental, there is also an economic imperative. The cost of the UKs imported gas from Norway alone was estimated at £14.5 billion in 2022. As we use less gas and this amount lessens, the balance of the spend could be used to install some of the infrastructure we would need to bring in more wind and solar power.

The main drawback of both wind and solar is that they do not generate electricity at a constant and predictable rate. This makes it important that we have other means of power generation to take up any slack in the national grid demand. Nuclear, which currently provides around 16% of our electricity can do that. While there has always been an argument against nuclear because of decommissioning concerns, it is a zero emissions fuel, which has two large new power stations being constructed in the UK.

Hydro is another excellent source of zero emission power generation which is an efficient alternative for use as a top up generator. A pumped storage hydro scheme is able to store the electricity generated by other power sources, like solar, wind, and nuclear, for later use. This is done by pumping water from a reservoir at a lower level to a reservoir at a higher elevation, storing the water there until demand for electricity increases then releasing the water to run through turbines back to the lower level, generating the required electricity.

Replacing fossil fuels for the generation of electricity is a given and that transition is already underway to enable us to lower our carbon emissions to nett zero. Coal fired facilities are to cease as of 2025, with gas being replaced with zero emissions renewables by 2050, but all of this needs to take place in a fashion that allows us to maintain the steady supply of electricity that our world requires for it to function effectively.

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