So the Tories have suddenly realised (after 14 years in office) that the UK doesn’t have an energy policy. And that this might be something of a bad thing. So, over a few lines of coke, Boris and co have spaffed together something which they think vaguely resembles an energy plan.
The grand scheme is to increase renewables, but also prioritise the building of 8 nuclear reactors, as well as more oil and gas drilling. However in truth the plan doesn’t add up to anything. It promises much, but without any roadmap for how to achieve its aims (if it was that easy, we’d have solved the energy problem decades ago). It sounds more like the Boris burrow or the garden bridge all over again.
Let’s start with renewables. While it is good to see they’ve finally gotten the message (that renewables are cheaper and actually scalable), in reality there is nothing of substance to this plan. It doesn’t allow for onshore wind (the cheapest of all electricity generating methods these days, cheaper even than fossil fuels now) and doesn’t include much in terms of long term subsidies. It just seems to assume Harry Potter will come along, wave his magic wand and wind turbines/solar panels will start popping up.
Put yourself in the shoes of a renewable energy executive. You are thinking of building a solar panel or wind turbine factory in the UK. While yes the government claims its now pro-renewable, but you are well aware of the fact the Tories have an ingrained hatred for renewables (something which the moratorium on onshore wind demonstrates they aren’t over). You know they have reneged on past subsidy promises for renewables and that they are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry (notably certain middle east governments). You are also aware of the politics behind this announcement (i.e. distract everyone from partygate). Plus the fact that Johnson’s wife Carrie is under the deluded impression that she’s an environmentalist. Hence said policies might only last as long as Johnson is in power…or until he starts chasing after another woman. I think most renewable executives will pass.
As for nuclear, well first of all, in order to get the 24 GW’s of nuclear power by 2050 they talk about, you’d need 15-24 reactors depending on size. It seems unlikely any one company could build more than two reactors at a time. And EDF are already preoccupied with Hinkley C. So you’d likely have to go for other designs which would require reactors types from different suppliers being built at the same time.
The trouble with that is, anything other than an EPR needs to be certified, it needs a fuel cycle fleshed out and developed. And the UK government’s decision to leave Euroatom means that’s going to be a slow and expensive process (unless you plan on becoming hooked on Russian Uranium instead of Russian gas!). Obviously operating reactors built by different suppliers will also create a regulatory nightmare in terms of monitoring and operating these plants. And, as the UK lacks the expertise to build, let alone operate these reactors, post-brexit immigration controls will have to be relaxed (wait till the gammon’s here that one!).
There are also a number of key bottlenecks in the nuclear supply chain. Notably as regards large forgings for the reactor pressure vessels, which will likely have to be sourced from JSW in Japan. Problem is, they’ve gotten burned by past Tory grandiose plans (adding extra capacity for reactors that were never ordered). So they might not be too keen on getting burned again. Meaning the UK will be told to take a number and go to the back of the queue. In short it would likely be decades before the UK sees any of this capacity built. Where do we get the power from in the meantime?
And inevitably SMR’s are touted as the solution. Well, as I’ve pointed out before, SMR’s only look better because of the grass is greener on the other side effect. That is too say, we know everything wrong with the large GW scale light water reactor concept. SMR aren’t as mature a concept and hence we don’t know what the real problems will be. Even the pro-nuclear NNL does not see them as a replacement for large GW scale reactors, as they will lack the economies of scale and be even more expensive again to build and operate (with nuclear already being much more expensive that renewables or fossil fuels).
Furthermore, where are they going to get built? 25 GW’s of SMR’s would mean 100-120 of them, depending on size. It would make sense to spread them around the country, closer to the loads they serve, rather than grouping them on a few remote sites (this is sort of the whole point of SMR’s!). You can then use the waste heat from these reactors for industrial purposes (which for high temperature gas cooled reactors can include making hydrogen via the Sulfur-Iodine process), or to provide district heating to nearby homes.
Of course if you think the regulatory hurdles are bad for large light water reactors, they are going to be ten times worse for SMR’s, designs that are largely untested in civilian service. Noting that experience with military reactors doesn’t count, as they generally run on highly enriched Uranium (unusable in civilian projects) and benefit from essentially an unlimited budget as well as the cloak of military secrecy (so any actual safety issues can be swept under the carpet). You think the NIMBY’s are bad when it comes to wind energy, wait until you see what happens when you propose to build a nuclear reactor (a military design proposed by a company that’s never build a plant like this before) right next to the M25/M1 interchange. Survey’s have shown the vast majority of people will oppose a mini-nuclear reactor on their doorstep. So this would be political poison.
Finally there is the crucial matter of costs. I heard a figure of £120 billion being thrown around…until Sunak heard that too and threw his toy’s out of the pram. Well even if that were true, £120 billion is not far of the expected lifetime costs for Hinkley C. So this is spending that’s already been committed too. Granted Hinkley C is a crap sandwich and its reasonable to assume any other nuclear project won’t be as expensive. However what made it such a mess was the fact the Tories didn’t listen to the critics and painted themselves into a corner on Hinkley C. What’s to say the same thing won’t happen with these new reactors? Hence the £1.7 billion already announced probably won’t be enough to pay for the artwork.
And if we are throwing around sums of money in the hundreds of billions, well with that sort of money you could solve the cost of living crisis by just giving everyone on low income a few thousand every year to pay for heating and subsidise their food costs. By contrast, its been estimated that, given the higher costs of nuclear electricity, Johnson’s plans would likely push up energy prices (at least in the medium term), rather than bring them down.
And this is on top of the Tories essentially becoming loansharks to many low income families, loaning them money to pay for energy. Meanwhile in the rest of Europe countries are simply giving people money to help ease the cost of living crisis. Indeed the Irish government even pointed out that there was little point in making these payments means tested, as this would cost more in administration costs than it would save. Which is the problem – it is against the Tories religion to simply give money to needy people. They’d rather squander it on some boondoggle scheme than give away a penny of it (because everyone living on benefits is a scrounger…except Tory voting pensioners of course!). After all, its only tax payers money. And its not like the Tories pay any taxes.
Or if you want to invest money in energy, for the same money being committed to Hinkley you could add vastly more renewables, with change to spare for energy storage. Which I might add is something we don’t get around with nuclear, as it will need some level of energy storage too in a post-fossil fuel world where there aren’t any gas fired power plants to meet peak demand.
Speaking of which, it would seem that the Tories plan B, of more fossil fuel drilling, is actually the plan A. Which probably explains why there’s not been many objections from the climate denial lobby within the Tories so far. They know that Boris is just going to piss a few billion of taxpayers money against the wall with his nuclear plans. And once that’s failed, they’ll get to ignore the UK’s net zero pledges.
Well actually, even this part of the plan might not work. The problem for the UK is that all the low hanging fruit, the cheap and easily produced fossil fuels are gone. All that’s left are the smaller offshore fields in deeper water, or shale gas reserves, etc. These are going to be much more expensive to drill and produce. Which might seem fine now when oil prices are high, but might not look so good if oil prices drop in a few years time.
And being dependant on fossil fuels when the rest of Europe seems to be planning to move away from them would be problematic. Recall that most of the gas pipelines from Russia run through Europe. So if the Europeans start cutting those up and posting them back to Putin, the UK is kind of screwed. And a bloc as large as the EU will always be able to source deals at a more affordable price than the UK.
Worst of all is what’s not mentioned in the plan. For example energy efficiency. By far the most cost effective way of fighting climate change and reducing dependence on foreign oil and gas is to simply use less of it. The UK has some of the worst homes in Europe for energy efficiency, largely because the Tories have scrapped legislation that would have forced house builders (including many Tory donors) to adopt higher standards of energy efficiency. They also made a pig’s ear of schemes to retrofit existing homes. Noting that such schemes did previously exist under labour and worked fine (of course, that’s the problem, they worked because they gave money to the people who needed it, while the Tories have to construct an extremely wasteful system that funnels the money to Tory donors instead).
One solution to the energy storage conundrum is a smart grid. However, as I’ve discussed before, this would take time to develop. Yet the Tory plan does not include provisions for this. And this is likely due to their ideological opposition to such an idea (as it would involve, god forbid the government doing some central planning!).
In short, this energy plan is just a rehash of previous failed Tory plans. Thus it is fatally flawed, as it must conform to Tory ideology. It will go nowhere fast, after allowing a couple of Tory donors to burn a few billion more of public funds.
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