New Government estimates show Cockenzie, owned by Scottish Power, is likely to have to close completely by April. Kingsnorth, owned by E.ON, is on track to have to shut by March 2013. Meanwhile, Tilbury, which is being converted into a biomass station by RWE, may have to go by July 2013 unless it can convince the European Union (EU) its new fuel is cleaner.
Experts believe more wind on the grid will help to offset the loss of power from coal. On Thursday, it emerged that 10pc of the UK's electricity came from wind for the first time this quarter. However, Simon Cowdroy, of WSP Future Energy, said: "Although the figures show a rise in renewable generation, this may not be enough to prevent a shortfall in UK capacity."
Biomass could replace coal in some power stations. However, a Government announcement on whether biomass will get higher subsidies has been delayed this summer.
In recent weeks, a new warning has come from the EU's European Environment Agency that bioenergy may be no more green than fossil fuels. "
I started out trying to find where the coal for the UK power stations came from.
Now I am a bit doubtful about the above statement that 10% of UK energy came from wind, as Gridwatch isn't showing anywhere near that. If wind peaks at arounf 1GW then at 10% that would be a maximum demand of
10GW. Current (!) demand is between 50 and 60GW. The yearly graphs show that demand hasn't been below 30GW since June. Perhaps there were a few seconds on windy summer night when the wind output just touched the 10%? Even that seems very unlikely.All of which leaves me with the depressing thought that if they are closing coal fired power stations, not building new Carbon Capture ones, not building nukes, and most of our gas will be coming from other countries we are going to be in deep shit relatively soon.
Oh, and
"We will not consent so much gas plant so as to endanger our carbon dioxide goals," he told a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats party conference in Birmingham.
The number of gas-fuelled power plants is increasing rapidly because they are fast and cheap to build compared with alternatives. They also create about half the carbon emissions of coal-powered plants and have been seen as a "transition fuel", helping smooth the path to zero-carbon electricity.
Barry Neville, director of public affairs at Centrica, which owns British Gas, said: "Gas is a critical part of the fuel mix, it's a transition fuel. At this moment in time it is crucial to the UK, as is nuclear and as are renewables.
But climate change campaigners have warned that too much gas capacity is being built, meaning either the carbon budgets intended to help tackle global warming would be broken, or the gas plants would be left as stranded assets.
"The secretary of state's statement is a welcome recognition by the government that there are constraints on the deployment of gas as a climate-effective solution to our future energy needs," said David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF UK. "The government should be looking at the deployment of renewables, that already must be at 30% by 2020, at increasing rates during the 2020s.""
Oh, and what are renewables? One of the claims above is that biomass is no more green than fossil fuels. That probably leaves hydro, solar and wind. The prospect of over 30% of the UK power demand coming reliably from hydro, solar and wind is not looking good, especially on the still winter nights.
Bottom line - if we want to be self sufficient in power generation what alternatives are there to nuclear (and even then I assume we need the fissionables from abroad)?
Cheers
Dave R