A dash for gas — or just hot air?
The Conservatives will keep the lights on by building more gas power plants, while Labour panders to its Just Stop Oil mates.
That’s the government’s message as it seeks to put clear green water between it and Labour on the pathway to Net Zero by 2050.
But does it make sense? Gas power plants, after all, are supposed to last for 40-odd years. Bear with me while I kick the tyres.
To briefly recap: earlier this week the PM announced plans to build new gas-fired power stations as part of “the insurance policy Britain needs to protect our energy security”.
Writing in the Telegraph, Sunak argued that there was consensus on the continued need for gas power generation by 2035 and, because many power plants are reaching the end of their lives, that meant building new ones. And he means “unabated” gas — that is, without any carbon capture technology keeping a lid on the resultant greenhouse gas.
Sunak offered an assurance that the approach was “underpinned by research” published by the government showing a continued need for gas power plants in a decade: “In the short term we will need more unabated gas power capacity.”
He even adduced the support of the Climate Change Committee, the government’s climate advisor, which he said “supports a defined role for gas generation in 2035”.
So what does that research say? Here’s the key table summarising the estimates on how much gas capacity will be needed in 2035 in a net zero trajectory.
But Sunak’s claim runs aground in the very next paragraph, which states that “the above table only includes core Net Zero compliant scenarios from each source” and ignores models “which go beyond the Government’s current Net Zero commitments”.
In other words, the government line is borderline tautological: if you exclude the most ambitious energy mix scenarios, the remainder all include gas. Fancy that. Had the government analysis not excluded the bolder decarbonisation trajectories, the minimum in the table would have been zero.
The government’s position looks even more peculiar when you delve into the detail.
First of all, let’s look at the Committee on Climate Change.
CCC
The CCC, far from being in line with Sunak’s plan for new unabated gas plants, recommended that the government ensures “new gas plants are genuinely CCS- and/or hydrogen-ready as soon as possible and by 2025 at the latest.” [CCS stands for carbon capture and storage.]
Below is the CCC’s central scenario for 2035. You might need a magnifying glass to see it, but unabated gas capacity is pencilled in at just 12GW, down from about 36GW today. So it’s hard to see how the CCC’s modelling can be commandeered to support a new fleet of gas-fired power stations.
National Grid
What about the National Grid, then?
Below is the chart showing unabated gas capacity in National Grid’s four scenarios. The government purposely excluded the “leading the way scenario” because it would reach Net Zero four years ahead of schedule in 2046. Unabated gas capacity hits zero by 2036, so there is clearly no room for new plants
The other Net Zero-compliant scenarios also have gas capacity in steep decline.
National Infrastructure Commission
It is here that the disingenuity of Sunak’s policy becomes clear. The NIC models a range of eleven options, stretching from an outright ban on unabated gas power (and therefore zero gas capacity) to what would be needed in an extreme weather year (for instance, a wind drought).
The vast majority of Britain’s gas-power capacity is provided by combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT). All of the NIC’s scenarios feature a 60 per cent decline in the capacity of CCGT plants, with zero new capacity.
In about half of the scenarios modelled by the NIC, there is a slight increase in the capacity offered by open cycle gas turbines, a cheaper and less efficient type of gas powered plant.
To fill in the gaps for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, the NIC proposes another form of gas power: small-scale generators called gas reciprocating engines, rather than full-sized power stations.
These engines, which use pistons like the motor of a car rather than a turbine, are already being deployed to help smooth the built-in volatility of a renewables-based grid. Where previous government modelling has reckoned on conventional gas power stations having a 25-year life, it has worked on the basis of reciprocating engines sticking around for just 15 years.
Whatever form this reduced gas capacity takes, there is unanimity on one point: it will be used very infrequently as a back up.
So one of two things appears to have happened.
Either the government has distorted the available forecasts to justify a new wave of gas-fired power plants that will soon be redundant.
Or the government is making small-scale grid-balancing technology sound more dramatic than it is, in the hope of duping climate sceptics on the right of the party, while attacking Labour for playing fast and loose with energy security.
Either the government is gaslighting its way to gaspower or spinning more furiously than the most powerful turbine.
