Why renewables alone won’t protect Britain from energy shocks - Chris Hocknell
Every time a global shock hits, a similar chorus rings out: Renewable energy is the best route to energy independence. It’s a story that is as compelling as it is misleading. Perversely, our renewable-heavy grid keeps us dependent on imported gas.
Wind and solar power are, by their nature, variable. This means the British government, and therefore the British consumer, has to spend enormous sums investing in complicated operational gymnastics.
This is where the gas dependence comes in. When the energy provided by renewables isn’t enough to meet demand, the UK has no choice but to burn imported gas in order to meet the shortfall.
Eliminating gas’s primary role in the grid requires grid-scale, long-duration storage. The National Grid's own estimates suggest a genuinely clean grid requires approximately 30 gigawatts of storage. The UK currently has approximately 2.7 gigawatts of storage. Dinorwig, our largest storage facility and the grid's primary emergency reserve, is currently offline for a £1bn refurbishment. The infrastructure site that allows us to balance the grid in real time and protect us from demand shocks is currently a building site. Nuclear power could, in theory, provide the constant energy needed to support a renewable-heavy grid. However, in true British fashion, no new nuclear station has come online since Sizewell B in 1995. Hinkley Point C, was approved in 2016 with an estimated cost of £18bn with a completion target of 2025. However, encumbered by characteristically dysfunctional regulation, it will likely come online in 2031 with a price tag of £49bn (in today’s money), making it the most expensive object on the planet (excluding the International Space Station). The diagnosis isn’t pretty. So what’s the cure? In the short term, filling the energy gap with every single molecule of North Sea gas we can extract makes the most economic and ironically, environmental sense. Domestic gas is less carbon-intensive, even after burning, than the gas we import, even if it might derail our arbitrary, and largely fake, domestic carbon budgets. In the medium term, the UK’s nuclear regulations should be radically streamlined for roll out of existing nuclear technology, and small, modular reactors must be prioritised for the UK to take the lead in a future technology for the first time in decades. Nuclear still remains the only firm, low-carbon, weather-independent baseload the UK has. Finally, the green brigade must refrain from issuing further renewable subsidy commitments when the transmission and storage infrastructure is not there to back it up. Grid-scale storage must be treated as a priority national infrastructure, not a mere afterthought. Of course, every option is expensive. North Sea gas costs political capital. Nuclear costs financial capital. However, true leadership requires politicians to admit mistakes and course-correct. Doubling down on tired arguments and vapid slogans has already incurred the highest price tag, and will continue to. Ultimately, the Iran war is a red herring. The UK’s high energy costs and vulnerability to international supply chains are the result of hair-brained policies, supported by fanciful fairytales. This energy shock does not support the argument for abandoning fossil fuels or renewable energy. Rather, it is an argument for an energy policy that survives contact with physical and financial reality. Renewable energy will only deliver real energy security when paired with robust energy storage. For now Britain still has some world-class engineering capability. Government attention must focus on incentivising companies that can deliver long-duration storage, dispatchable power, and on the technologies that would make a genuinely independent clean energy system possible.
Chris Hocknell is the founder and CEO of Eight Versa.