Samuel OskysThis way they can produce low-carbon electricity and make their 2030 carbon emission targets.
The UK’s incentives and regulations, of course, favour developing more natural gas power plants as they’ve been needing to cut power emissions by a large amount in order to reach the aforementioned targets. The government relied on nuclear power to reach these targets. Yet despite other larger government incentives than those for renewables and clean energy, most private nuclear builders are staying away, having noticed problems with new plants like ones in the US and France.
Nuclear and Renewable Problem
Before Japanese giants Hitachi and Toshiba power plants were being suspended, the Climate Change Committee was saying that the UK needed to build more renewable capacity but there’s a problem.
Back in 2018, some 19% of the UK’s electricity was generated by nuclear plants and now this will decrease to about 10% by 2030 when taking into consideration the new build cancellations.
Solar and wind energy can make up for this and theirs proof of this when you take into consideration the renewables’ share of generation being 30% in 2018 and could potentially reach 35% by 2020. But with only limited incentives of offshore wind, these numbers will not be reached.
The government incentivises renewable energy projects through CFD’s which are auctions where the biggest bidders are granted contracts to supply electricity at fixed prices. In 2019, they are set to auction some offshore wind farm contracts but only a small amount of projects that don’t receive incentives proceed, which means the number of contracts on offer will dictate how much offshore wind capacity will effectively be built. Circumstances show that low-carbon power in the UK is currently at a standstill.
