Peter McCusker Energy & Climate

WITH 60% of the UK’s 100GW of electricity capacity due to come off line in the next decade the Government is anxiously pressing for new capacity to fill the gap. The Energy Bill sets in place subsidies to support renewables technologies, such as offshore and onshore wind, to help with the transition from fossil fuels to a low carbon network. But at this point in the game there is no hope of renewable technologies filling the looming energy gap – with significant breakthroughs in energy storage still some way off. Hence the Government’s delight at securing the deal with EDF for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, Somerset, which will generate 7% of the UK’s capacity when fully operational by 2020. Nuclear power is a low carbon energy source and unlike intermittent renewables, such as solar and wind, is a reliable base-load option. It therefore ticks two of the three boxes of what many in the industry like to call the ‘energy trilemma’ - it supports the UK’...