“The £200 billion generation game: Can the electricity market deliver our energy policy goals?”

To which of course, my answer was an emphatic no. The money is just not there. And no one in the audience seemed to register even a flicker of disagreement.  A real shame then that none of this politicians are giving it a mention during the general election, less still the leaders TV debate last night.

However where I respectfully disagreed with my fellow panellsts and some in the audience was on the security  of future UK gas supplies and the implication of the non-delivery of renewables targets around the middle of the next decade when the energy gap is forecast to kick in. It seems to me fairly obvious that the coal fired power stations due to close down in 2015 thanks to the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive will have to remain open for a few more years until cleaner plant becomes available and the 2020 target will have to be renegotiated.

However some of those in the gas industry would disagree. Their view is that because plenty of CCGT and LNG terminal capacity is being installed, the gas will be also there.  But I would have much more confidence in their rosy predictions if I didn’t know that the UK will have to compete in the spot market for LNG cargoes, which last year were 87% sewn up in long-term supply contracts and destined mostly for the Pacific Basin.

Thanks to the West’s recession, US shale gas discoveries and a consequent LNG supply surge, there’s no denying that there is a global gas glut at the moment. Yet as it is not yet a truly fungible commodity, it’s a very long way from solving local and pricey shortages which the UK is overexposed to. We are still at the wrong end of European  gas pipelines, a long way from the LNG target market of the Pacific Basin and demand is going to rise, not fall, especially with a population destined to reach 70m by 2030.

That’s why I fear, due to our own mismanagement, the UK’s power supply just might be at the mercy of external events over which we have little control from 2015/16.

And read my article here;

Dan Lewis: More energy efficiency will ultimately increase, not reduce, demand for energy

It just shocks me sometimes how much our political class has been so blindingly taken in by the energy efficiency lobby . . .

Download here.

In the launch paper of a new think tank, the Economic Policy Centre, a radical overhaul is called for in UK Energy Policy, as featured today in The Engineer and in an op-ed by Dan Lewis in the Yorkshire Post.

The paper calls for;

i) A return to basics – putting energy security first

ii) Scrapping of wasteful programmes – smart meters, carbon capture levy, government-financed R&D

iii) Creation of Clean and Secure Energy Obligation – based on Renewables Obigation but with 100% target by 2060 at a much lower buyout price and the inclusion of big impact technologies nuclear, large hydro, interconnectors and Severn Tidal Barrage / tidal lagoons

iv) Keeping coal-fired stations open beyond 2015 until new clean and secure plants come onstream

v) A new annual ranking system that keeps track of the energy security footprint and to create a competitive merit order

vi) Creation of clear lines of political responsibility for energy security

Says author and Chief Executive of the Economic Policy Centre, Dan Lewis;

“Britain has too much energy policy and it is back to front – it’s crazy to go on over-rewarding low impact, intermittent technologies while failing to secure investment for big impact, long lifespan, clean and secure technologies like large hydro, nuclear, interconnectors and a Severn Tidal Barrage or Tidal Lagoons. This will only lead to even greater future dependence on expensive, tight supplies of imported gas and very possibly, power cuts from the middle of the next decade. All this because government has failed to prioritise and factor in the energy security footprint of its own policy“.