UK’s Net Zero Grid Plans: Ambitious or Harmful?

The UK Government have been very clear in their ambition. The want to shift to a net zero electricity system by 2030. It is important to note that this only electricity and not total energy (so not heating or transport) but still a pretty ambitious target considering on various days in January, over 60% of UK electricity has been powered by gas and on one memorable day, 22^nd January, less than 1% came from wind or solar.

You can read how this is to be achieved in the National Energy System Operator’s (NESO) clean pathways plan.  https://www.neso.energy/document/346651/download

To reach net zero by 2030 the well meaning people at NESO say two things have got to happen within 5 years, Firstly the amount of renewable generating capacity on the UK grid needs to increase  by roughly 81 GW  and this can be achieved by growing by onshore wind capacity from from14 GW to 27 GW, offshore wind capacity from 15 GW to 50 GW and finally solar capacity from 14 GW to 47 GW.

The second big assumption in the NESO plan is that demand flexibility grows to 12 GW. To put it another way this is 12,000 MW of consumption that shifts away from peak times to off peak times. The NESO report talks excitedly of smart technologies and consumers reacting instantly to pricing signals but does somewhat begrudgingly admit that this assumption relies on consumers making the choice to turn off their tumble dryer in the evening and “some commentators think the levels of assumed demand reduction in our pathways are too ambitious” .

I hate to be the one to break this to NESO, but  a lot of us in the renewable energy industry think that all of the assumptions underpinning all of the pathways in their plan are all too ambitious.

Going back to the generation part of the plan, NESO are assuming  81 GW of new renewable generation by the end of 2030 so roughly 16,200 MW per year or to make it meaningful about 44 MW being installed per day. Every day for the next 5 years , 7 days a week including Christmas and bank holidays. Last year the rate of installation of renewable energy in the UK was about 2.8 GW or 7.67 MW a day and it has taken us 20 years to grow from 5 GW to 48 GW so historically the average rate of installation has been about 5.89 MW per day. NESO’s plan assumes the rate of daily installation will somehow grow by a factor of 6 to 44 MW per day almost overnight mainly because of relaxation in the planning laws and improvements in the grid queuing system. That’s all they think is needed, a bit less of that pesky bureaucracy and suddenly the UK becomes an enormous building site of wind and solar farms. This seems to me unlikely at best and of course every day we fall short of that target the daily rate for the remaining period until 2030 goes up from 44 MW.

But why does it matter? Like my weight loss, you may reasonably argue that arbitrary time-based targets for renewable capacity installation aren’t really necessary as long as things are going in the right direction and even 7 MW of new installs a day adds up in the long run. However, I don’t think we can be that relaxed. Those of us who believe in the energy revolution face 2 regular challenges every time we disclose our job to strangers in the pub, “global warning isn’t happening”(yes it is) and “the Chinese are building coal fired powers stations so what the point ?” (they are also world leaders in installing renewables at an astonishing 758 MW per day in 2024) and now NESO are opening the door to a new challenge of “well of course it can’t be done in the West anyway”.

We need to keep doing the right things, but we need to treat the British public like grownups at the same time. Promising them stuff that we know is unachievable doesn’t do our industry any favours, it actively undermines what we are trying to achieve. Yes, set ambitious targets but keep them achievable knowing what we know about building infrastructure in the UK. Go for maybe 10 – 15 MW of installed capacity per day compared to the 7.67 we achieved in 2023 but seriously, don’t make it 44. Even 20 MW being installed every day for the next 5 years is a delusional fantasy that has never been achieved in any of the last 20 years of trying despite the Government spending billions on Contracts for Difference, ROCS and FITs.

Nothing really bad would have happened if the UK hadn’t set a target of 81 GW of new capacity by 2030.  On a global scale, the UK contributes less than 1% of all Co2 emissions so the Government of a small rainy island off the coast of Europe setting a less ambitious target for renewable energy was hardly going to move the global political dial very much.

But a government setting a very public high profile ambitious target then falling short does matter much more. The UK risks becoming a global case study of green policy failure, politicians in ivory towers having big lofty ideas that don’t survive contact with reality. As the Soviet scientist Valery Legasov said at the Chernobyl trial “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later this debt is paid.” It’s the proverbial thread in the jumper, if we pull it by misleading the public about the idea of 44 MW versus the reality of 7 MW per day then where does the thread stop unravelling? If we knowingly overstate how much capacity can be installed that quickly then maybe we are overstating the scale of the climate change problem as well.  We in the industry live and breathe this stuff everyday but your average voter on the street doesn’t. It comes up occasionally and he/she probably doesn’t engage in the details. If we get to 2030 and, as seems likely, fall a long way short of a net zero grid in the UK, the global critics may use this as ammunition to say the whole revolution is an unachievable fantasy, a publicly funded chimera. As we have already seen with Trump, the political wind can turn against renewables very quickly and once you lose the public’s trust you never get it back. Its too late now to put the 81 GW by 2030 genie back in the NESO bottle but it would be helpful if we were more honest about how really hard this will be.