By Rebecca MacDonald, Operation Noah Trustee
Rebecca has spent twenty years working in international carbon markets and European renewable electricity markets where she has developed a deep understanding of the wider policy around bringing about net zero.
‘Decarbonise electricity generation first’ has long been the mantra of governments seeking to reduce their carbon emissions. Electricity generation has always been one of the most significant sources of global emissions, but electrification has also been seen as the pathway to decarbonising other sectors of the economy – hence electric vehicles and the need for more electricity generation.
June’s spending review saw the Chancellor commit £14.2bn of investment into Sizewell C, a new 3.2GW nuclear plant proposed to be built in Suffolk. The final investment decision is still to be made by the French owners, EdF, and is expected to be announced at the Anglo-French Summit in July but it seems the UK will get a second large nuclear plant as well as some smaller reactors.
Here in the UK we have come a long way in greening our electricity – we are the only OECD country to no longer to have any coal generation on the grid; we have also pursued an aggressive build-out of offshore wind farms which means that the amount of carbon dioxide produced for every unit of electricity (kWh) has reduced steadily from from 0.499 kgCO2e/kWh in 2010 to 0.151 kgCO2e/kWh in 2023, a reduction of around 70%.
This is all amazing progress and world leading, but there is a need to go further to reach net zero emissions and how to do this is a challenge as there are periods when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, with electricity storage options currently limited to two hours and not the two to four days we might need, such as in January of this year when wind production dropped to around 5.5GW (222.5GW is the maximum ever generated from wind).
Nuclear power is a tricky subject, as whilst it is a low carbon form of electricity generation and so emits no CO2 when electricity is generated, it is both very expensive and takes a long time to build, and crucially creates hazardous waste there is still no solution for. For many environmental groups, nuclear waste is too much of a risk. For many, it is just too dangerous and the human and environmental impact of disasters like Chernobyl, and more recently Fukushima in Japan in 2011, should mean this technology should be consigned to the past.
Nuclear energy takes a very long time to construct which is unpredictable and there is an argument that carbon reductions are needed now therefore nuclear power is a distraction of funds which could be used better. Recent Nuclear projects in Finland and France have been commissioned over a decade late and both took over 15 years to construct, whereas offshore wind farms take 12-24 months depending on size and location and are a lot cheaper to construct.
Sizewell C will not help reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation until the late 2030’s or even 2040’s if Sizewell C is delayed like all the other nuclear projects built since the 1990s. Sizewell C is also subsidised differently to Hinkley Point (the first new nuclear station in the UK since the 1990’s, due to be commissioned in the 2030’s) so energy consumers will start paying for the subsidy this year through their energy bills but will see no benefit from this for decades to come.
Why then do governments like nuclear power? Nuclear power is low carbon and once it is constructed produces a lot of low carbon electricity all the time, as well as providing other services to the grid that help maintain stability which renewables are not yet offering on a wide scale. It can take the place of coal and natural gas and is seen as a tested technology despite all the delays. What other alternatives does the UK have? Whereas Scandinavia has large-scale hydro power, that is not an option here, but there are opportunities in Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES). LDES covers a range of technologies which can store electricity for days, but funding for the first new projects in decades is only just being awarded and some of these like pumped storage do have environmental concerns. The funding applied to these technologies though is only a fraction of that which is being given to large-scale nuclear and seems like a wasted opportunity when they could be delivered far earlier.
Operation Noah acknowledges that, in theory, the low emissions from nuclear energy could serve as a tool in the energy transition, but given the urgency of the climate crisis, we urgently need to focus on renewable energy solutions which are more quickly deployable, whereas investing billions of pounds into nuclear energy will detract from this effort. This is a lot of money now for something that will take a long long time to deliver.
