GHG Daily
1/27/2016
The United Kingdom, in deciding to close all of its coal-fired power plants by 2025, will need to find a way to fill the significant electricity supply gap left as a result, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers said in a new report. According to the report, the U.K. national grid on a typical day requires 38.30 gigawatts of power, met by generation that is 22 percent coal, 27 percent gas, 23 percent nuclear, 13 percent wind, and a small portion of other sources. “The loss of coal by 2025, along with growth in demand and the closure of the majority of our nuclear power stations will therefore be significant, leaving a potential supply gap of 40%–55%, depending on wind levels,” the report says.
There are a number of ways to fill the gap, the report finds, but “while all of these scenarios find some way to ‘square the circle’ of supply and demand, they have radically different impacts on our costs of production and as importantly on the carbon intensity of the electricity produced,” the group said.
Options to fill the gap include building 30 combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power stations, building four new large nuclear power stations or 20 small modular reactors, granting an extension for coal-fired power generation, or increasing government and industry investment in advanced solar, tidal, and wind power and carbon capture and storage. In this final scenario, only 10 new CCGT power stations, with combined heat and power and carbon capture and storage, would need to be built.
