Future Energy Scenarios 2024 – Watts Up With That?

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

This year’s FES is now out, and there are some surprising changes from last year’s:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios-fes

As always, they offer several scenarios:

.

As mass rollout of hydrogen still seems unlikely, I will again concentrate on the middle scenario, “Electric Engagement”. There is zero chance that the public will willingly engage in the “transition”, so it will have to be enforced via heat pump and EV mandates, and so on. The three scenarios are all pretty similar anyway in concept.

The report includes this useful table:

The key point to note is Peak Demand, which in 2035 would be 81GW. For that you would need at least 100GW of reliable capacity, to allow for a safety margin.

The Work Book gives further detail on projected generating capacity:

Excluding I/Cs, we have 40GW of firm capacity. In winter that 48GW of solar power might give us about 1GW averaged over 24 hours, which of course assumes that there is sufficient battery storage to spread the load throughout the night.

There will be times every year when wind power drops to less than 5% of capacity. Even 5% would only provide 5GW, and on occasions this could drop much lower.

It is immediately apparent that we will have nothing like the 100GW needed. Storage is projected at 112 GWh, which might help to meet peak demand for an hour or two, but useless for longer power shortages. Remember too that batteries need to be recharged – if the wind is not blowing, there will be no electricity available to enable that.

But what is noteworthy is that for the first time, the FES recognises that we will still need a lot of thermal generation. They say we will need 18GW of unabated gas, plus 8GW of gas power with CCS and 6GW of hydrogen burning power stations. This backs up what the DESNZ told me last month, that we will need 30 to 50GW of “long duration flexible capacity by 2035”, which they said could only be met by unabated gas. Indeed 50GW is probably the absolute minimum.

Most of the hydrogen will be produced by steam reforming gas; the amount available from electrolysis will small. It would therefore make much more sense, and be much cheaper, to continue burning gas anyway. Similarly gas power stations with CCS will still need gas, and more of it than if you just burnt the gas in the first place.

This new analysis drives a coach and horses through the demented Miliband’s plan to fully decarbonise the grid completely by 2030.