BRITAIN will be ‘great’ again, the Government says, and what’s more they have told us how this will be achieved. Part 1 casts doubt on their aim for ‘clean energy by 2030’. Part 2 says that doesn’t matter because everything is all right, really.
Clean energy? Surely, you may be thinking, someone in all those thousands of people in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) will have thought about the problem of extracting constant and reliable power from erratic wind and fickle sun? Your assumption is correct. Surprised? Thought so. They have looked into the future, so far into the future that Britain is once again ‘great’, back to its rightful place, leading the world to a new and glorious future. It must be true because the Government has said so. Don’t believe it? Read on.
The story begins in Japan on December 11, 1997, when 192 countries signed up to the Kyoto Protocol committing them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is the reason for the UK this month declaring that at least 95 per cent of our electricity must be ‘clean’, i.e. emission-free, by 2030. We can thus reduce even further our dirty habit: about one tenth of one per cent of global emissions comes from UK electricity generation. Yes really. All this bother, all these billions, to cut another one tenth of one per cent? Unbelievable.
If we are to give up carbon fuels, nuclear is the only way to provide constant power. You might be thinking we should have gone for nuclear instead of 12,000 wind turbines and all those solar panels on green fields. The French did just that. The UK government opinion was summed up in 2010 by Nick Clegg, Lib Dem partner in the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition. He claimed that ‘building new reactors would take too long: they wouldn’t come on stream until about 2021 or 2022’.
Even the Clean Power Action Plan 2030 (April 2025, 47,800 words) says much about turbines and solar farms (more and bigger) but mentions nuclear only to say that it will play an important role beyond 2030. Two months later came the news that the Government had at last understood that perhaps the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun really does rise and set. They had finally realised what everyone else had known all along: only nuclear provides constant and reliable power, regardless of weather conditions. At last.
The Future Energy Scenarios report (July 2025) ‘lays the groundwork for the 2050 net zero horizon’. There will be four waves, it says, ‘which will shape the new era’.
The Foundation Wave is already proceeding. The Acceleration Wave runs from now until 2030, the Growth Wave 2030-2040, and the Horizon Wave from 2040-2050 and beyond. This report sets the pace, it says, for other sectors to follow, but you do wonder at the assumption that the next four parliaments will all say: ‘Yes! This wonderful plan is absolutely the best thing for our country.’
This Government may be incapable of governing, but it has a strong team of unflagging report writers. Another appeared in February this year: Make Britain a Clean Energy Superpower has Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, telling us why we must do as he says: ‘We can only deliver energy security, lower bills and good jobs for today’s generations if we become a clean energy superpower.’ So there. Stop grumbling.
But how much super-powering and clean energy will we have in 2030? There will inevitably be more turbines and solar farms. Hydro-electric (water power) and biomass (burning wood pellets) will produce about 10 per cent of the 40-45 gigawatt (GW) winter peak demand. One evening last winter all the windless turbines and sunless solar farms could generate only another 10 per cent (4GW). The 2030 95 per cent clean energy drive allows 5 per cent gas. We’re now up to only 25 per cent of the total so it’s clear that we need more. Batteries? Some will be available but only for short-term regional back-up. Nuclear must be the answer, surely.
Alas, four of our existing five nuclear plants will have retired by then. We’ll be left with Sizewell B providing constant and reliable power. Useful, but only about 3 per cent of the UK’s total winter evening demand (1.2GW of around 40-45GW). We can borrow maybe up to another 25 per cent (10GW) from our European neighbours but only if they are not suffering from the same calm and cold weather. That leaves expensive and mostly imported gas to fill the gap of around half of what the country needs in winter.
It is surprising, then, that the actual 95 per cent Clean Energy Plan for 2030 allows only 5 per cent gas. Because we have a contradictory admission that ‘over the period to 2030, security of supply will be protected with the maintenance of an expected 35 GW of . . . gas reserve capacity’. That could be up to 80 per cent of peak demand on a winter evening, which means they have at last consulted a meteorologist about wind speeds in the North Sea.
It also surely means that ‘clean energy by 2030’ is a dream, but in Part 2 we uncover the Government’s stirring but possibly optimistic solution.
