Comments on: Energy sector reacts to government’s clean growth strategy https://www.newpower.info/2017/10/energy-sector-reacts-to-governments-clean-growth-strategy/ Expert information for all those invested in the UK's energy future Fri, 20 Feb 2026 08:08:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6 By: Mark Howitt https://www.newpower.info/2017/10/energy-sector-reacts-to-governments-clean-growth-strategy/#comment-14980 Mark Howitt Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:49:31 +0000 http://www.newpower.info/?p=4033#comment-14980 Putting CCS back onto the agenda is one of the main things that makes this Clean Energy Plan totally incredible and impracticable. When the two CCS projects were ongoing I multiplied out some figures from the DECC website (they since disowned them) which showed that to capture 80% of the CO2 from just our 8GW (then) of coal-fired power stations would cost £27bn p.a. regardless of capital costs and regardless of the inefficiencies that such equipment impose on the power station. For a one-off capital cost of £27bn we could build ~50GW electricity storage, 5-12 hours’ average duration, zero emissions; and for a little more we could greatly increase duration while only adding minimally to emissions. Moreover, we can operate these profitably without requiring a penny in subsidy or in increased total system costs, provided we compete on a level playing field.

The clean energy plan also expects a huge amount of nuclear. Regardless of the merits of the technology, Hiinkley Point C has been going on since the late 1980s, due to cook our 1997 Christmas turkeys …. Now, offshore wind CfD prices are just above half of nuclear. Do we really think that we’ll build that much, that soon?

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