The UK needs to urgently remove barriers to the deployment of low-carbon technology and infrastructure, and to increase its commitment to dispatchable, low-carbon generation and long-term storage to meet its 20235 power-system decarbonisation target, government advisory body the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has said.
Decarbonisation of the power system by 2035 will not happen at current deployment rates, the CCC warned, with the removal of barriers to delivery of critical infrastructure required and policy gaps needing to be remedied. Planning, consenting and connections all need urgent reform, while the government should this year publish a comprehensive long-term strategy for delivering a decarbonised power system, it recommended.
"The government has not yet provided a coherent strategy to achieve its goal, nor provided essential details on how it will encourage the necessary investment and infrastructure to be deployed," the CCC said.
Increased commitment on low-carbon, dispatchable generation is needed, the CCC said, mainly pointing to hydrogen-based generation and some gas-fired units with carbon capture and storage (CCS). This will require regulatory frameworks and market design to support investment into these technologies. New types of storage are also required, past batteries, to deal with longer periods of low wind, the body said — again referencing hydrogen as one potential part of the solution.
The possibility of changes to wind conditions were highlighted as a risk to the whole system, with changes to the frequency of "large-scale wind droughts" not able to be ruled out in system design and stress testing. Considering this would increase the need for long-term storage and dispatchable capacity. A greater push for dispatchable technologies would still be required, even with little change to average wind conditions, the CCC said.
If hydrogen demand for power is at the upper end of the CCC's estimates, then current 2030 hydrogen production targets "look insufficient", it said.
But immediate considerations for the future use of hydrogen should be narrowed, the CCC said. The government needs to identify "low-regrets" hydrogen infrastructure developments, as well as where it would be unsuitable, in order to progress electrification or other alternatives for these other sectors. Commitment to other infrastructure will need to be made well ahead of the expected 2026 decision on using hydrogen for domestic heating. The use of hydrogen instead of efficient electrification — such as heat pumps — would be "a much less efficient use of domestic energy resources", the CCC said.
The government also needs to ensure that new, gas-fired plants are genuinely CCS or hydrogen-ready as soon as possible, and by 2025 at the latest, the CCC said. And large-scale biomass-fired plants need to be converted to bioenergy with carbon capture and storage "as early as feasible", with no unabated biomass operations at high load factors beyond 2027, the advisory body said.
Greater flexibility from consumers will also be key as electric vehicles and heat pumps become dominant, in order to smooth demand — both avoiding excessive peaks and to absorb excess supply at lower demand times.
And increased resilience of the power system will be required to deal with climate-related risks in the future — with the effect of supply disruption, both local and system-side, to increase as the country relies increasingly on electricity for heat, transport and industry, the CCC said.
