Forward View
Could renewable energy stop your lights going out?
With time fast running out to stabilise energy costs, could now be the moment for taking renewable energy more seriously? Rob Hill reports.
Rob Hill informa si, en la actualidad, con el tiempo para estabilizar los costes energéticos a punto de acabarse, es el momento de tomarse más en serio el uso de energías renovables. Rob Hill reports.
Es bleibt kaum noch Zeit zur Stabilisierung der Energiekosten. Ist nun der richtige Zeitpunkt, um sich ernsthafter erneuerbaren Energien zu widmen? Rob Hill berichtet.
R
ising fuel bills and security of energy supply are on the management agenda as never before. Te recent media coverage about the very real risk of UK lights going out
in 2016 brings an added urgency. At worst, manufacturing industry has less than three years to take more control by finding new ways of stabilising energy costs and securing supplies that don’t rely on the grid. It may not feel like it, but UK energy costs
have up to now been relatively low. A survey of the first six months of 2012 shows that industrial electricity prices were more expensive in both Germany and Italy. And for industrial gas prices, only Romania was cheaper than the UK over the same period. Gas cost more in all other 25 EU countries. We have reaped the benefits of North Sea gas for years - but that’s now in decline. Back in 2000 it was virtually our sole source of supply. Today, more than half of the gas we use in the UK comes from Norway, the Continent and internationally traded LNG.
Just as worryingly, we only have the capacity to store the equivalent of 4 per cent of our annual gas consumption - about fourteen days’ supply. Tat is less in relative terms than any other major European economy. Current generating capacity is also set to
reduce. Te effect of the Large Combustion Plant Directive is that 8.4GW of coal fired and 3.6GW of oil fired capacity needs to be replaced by 2016 as power stations are closed. A further 7GW of nuclear capacity will also be decommissioned by 2020. At the same time, prices are rising fast. UK gas price increases recently reached a peak of 23.9 per cent. Demand has declined during the recession but bills will inevitably go up significantly further as the economy recovers and imported energy sources come under increasing pressure.
Alistair Buchanan, chairman of Ofgem
(which regulates the electricity and gas markets in Great Britain), recently commented that gas was already 60 per cent more expensive in
Fig. 1. The cost of solar panels has come down thanks to increasing capacity and competition between manufacturers..
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