As Energy Crisis Looms, UK Delays Closure of Coal Plants, Looks to Fast Track New Nuclear

SIZEWELL, ENGLAND - AUGUST 20: A woman walks her dogs along the beach next to the Sizewell
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Oliver JJ Lane

With a potential decade of “terrible winters” and years of economic pain ahead, European nations are looking to ease the pain, with the United Kingdom arranging for coal power stations to no longer shut down to meet green goals, and calls within government to fast-track new nuclear.

The British government could change planning rules to allow itself to fast-track new energy generation, minister Greg Clark has said, previewing potential medium-to-long term fixes being eyed by the government to mitigate the predicted years of annual energy shortages under the coming new government.

Green-revolution fixated Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has overseen the running down of legacy power generation and blocking of new, traditional power in favour of his preferred outcome of chasing radical decarbonisation is due to leave government this coming Monday, ousted by his own party over a series of scandals.

Liz Truss, the Conservative politician widely expected to replace Johnson, has signalled that she could overturn bans on fracking and drill for more oil in British waters to boost energy security. It is even suggested that long-shuttered British coal mines could reopen as watchers in Europe predict a decade of “terrible” shortages in winters to come, and years of inflation.

Another way to boost energy production in the medium-to-long term now mooted by the outgoing government is to follow the Boris Johnson plan, but just do more of it. Clark said, so reports the Daily Telegraph, that the rules could be tweaked to allow fast-tracked approval for new nuclear plants and offshore wind fields — both favoured by Johnson as green alternatives to burning fossil fuels — which he has claimed deliver energy quicker and cheaper.

Clark is said to have remarked: “Particularly in a time of high inflation, things need to be done more quickly or costs of major infrastructure projects will rise… These changes will help deliver new infrastructure more quickly by speeding up the planning process, which often moves too slowly.”

No matter how quickly new nuclear is approved, it will be too late for this winter, and likely several winters to follow. But other short-term methods are also in the pipeline with the government now telling coal power stations, whom it has spent years closing down to meet climate targets, to now stay open a little later to keep the lights on this winter. As Reuters noted at the weekend, the UK’s environment agency said: “it has been directed by the government to temporarily relax permitting conditions for coal-fired power stations in England during the winter period”.

One of the coal power plants set to stay open was due to shut down permanently as soon as September, The Guardian reports. The Johnson government has committed to ending all coal burning for energy in the UK by 2024, but the next government would not be bound by such promises, even if Boris Johnson will — as he has vowed to — lobby the government from the outside in his retirement to stick to his climate goals.

Despite the moves to preserve coal, drill for more oil, and build more nuclear plants, it remains the case that the grid in the United Kingdom is reliant on burning natural gas for the considerable plurality of all energy produced and that natural gas is piped to many homes for domestic heating and hot water. While Russia’s war in Ukraine is widely cited as the reason for present energy spikes, long-term mismanagement of energy policy by governments has exposed the west to this shock.

The United Kingdom has one of the smallest gas storage infrastructures in Europe, an essential facility that allows nations to bunker natural gas in the summer when it is cheap, and then release it to the market domestically in the winter when demand is at its highest. While gas storage has never been enough, especially given how important gas is to the UK economy, the crisis-low levels of storage available were seriously exacerbated by the closure of the Rough storage site in 2017, depriving the country in one blow of 70 per cent of its gas holding capacity.

Months too late to fill it ready in time for the coming winter, Rough — a massive, depleted gas field under the sea which can have compressed natural gas pumped back into it for storage –has now been given permission by the government to work again. Liz Truss — predicted to be Britain’s next Prime Minister from next Monday —  has been accused of being the government minister responsible when Rough was closed down in 2017.

All of these problems — like Germany’s massive over-reliance on imported energy from belligerent Russia, to Britain’s closure of it’s largest gas storage facility — were easily foreseeable before the present crisis, but concerns were brushed aside and even laughed at by political and energy leaders who believed they knew better.

Regardless, western governments are now in fire-fighting mode, making huge tax money giveaways to defray home energy bills — necessary perhaps now those government’s own long-term bad decisions on energy have come home to roost, but doing absolutely nothing for soaring inflation anyway — to prevent suffering, if not outright rioting this coming winter. While Truss’s promises of further spending have been less profligate than her final remaining rival for the leadership, Rishi Sunak, her team claimed this month that “nothing has been taken off the table” to deal with the burgeoning cost of living crisis.

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