GOSSAGE Not lighting the way
Lions, misled by donkeys
At the start of this month the Government launched its ‘Green Homes grant scheme’. Over the next six months, £1.5 billion has been allocated to offer two-thirds of the costs of installing energy saving measures in the residential sector – worth up to £5,000 per household.
Does the electricity regulator Ofgem live in a different world to the rest of us? That seems to be the conclusion reached at the National Grid. The Grid, consistently one of the most impressively run parts of the electricity network, has told the regulator straight out that a significant part of its ‘draft determination’, regarding the company’s proposed investment expenditure over the next five years, is simply ‘unacceptable’.
When in early July Chancellor Rishak announced the grants scheme, briefings were sent out to all the media explaining what products would qualify. In that list, as reproduced endlessly – including in the Sun, the Mirror, the Express, the BBC website and, yes, also Electrical Review – was ‘energy efficient lighting’. But when one month later the Government issued its definitive list of qualifying products, there was no mention of anything to do with lighting. Why? The reason is simple. The overriding objective is to provide registered employment within the construction industry. Tens of thousands of new jobs will be delivered, according to Business Secretary Alok Sharma. And that sadly means that one of the products that has already brought some of the greatest electricity savings of all, but has the potential to deliver so much more, has been unceremoniously disbarred from entry into the entire grants scheme. Although why lighting featured so prominently in the government’s initial eligibility list, is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the old joke should now become: how many civil servants does it take to change an official scheme to exclude lightbulbs?
The Grid has a business plan committed to almost £10 billion of investment over the next five-year RIIO-2 period, but this has to be approved by Ofgem. More than 50% of the proposed electricity network investment and around 40% of the proposed gas network investment has been disallowed in Ofgem’s ‘draft determination’. If such a complete watering-down of ambition is enforced, the regulator’s caution will seriously delay key investment needed for the government’s net zero transition, and will seriously impact upon the long-term resilience of the energy networks. According to the energy system operator, Ofgem instead proposes to subject a large part of the company to wasteful, additional, time-consuming future approvals processes. National Grid calculates the amount it can invest in electricity network reliability will have to be cut by 80%. It reckons the energy regulator’s proposals will increase the risk to network reliability and resilience by 24%, and estimates that the current approach would take around 100 years to replace important electricity network assets. All this would increase the risk both of scuppering the path to net zero carbon emissions, and of substantial outages particularly during severe weather events, according to the National Grid. And who will get the blame for these shortfalls? Sadly, not that dreary grey man running Ofgem, little Jonny Brearley.
Assembly point In January 2020, over 100 randomly selected members of the public met in a secret location to begin taking part in the UK’s first ‘climate assembly’. Lasting five months, the assembly asked citizens to listen to advice from climate experts before coming up with a list of recommendations for how the country should reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Regarding electricity, there was extremely strong support for renewables – particularly offshore wind power. In other areas, however, support was somewhat lower, with assembly members expressing serious doubts over the costs and benefits both of nuclear and of bioenergy, as well as advocating for a conservative (small C!) approach to some cutting-edge clean technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and direct air capture (DAC) systems. But above all, the assembly concluded that the most environmentally-friendly form of electricity occurred when its use was avoided. Well, who would have guessed it?
10 Electrical Review | October 2020
The long and winding road Smack in the middle of this summer’s Covid-19 lockdown, Electricité de France decided to apply for formal permission to build its long-promised third nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk. To be called, with stunning originality, Sizewell C. The company has been spending copious funds, running public exhibitions explaining to residents how they are going to be so super-efficient that the new development would cost a mere £20 billion, making it a snip compared with its – years behind schedule – twin currently being constructed at Hinkley in Somerset. Instead of holding more public meetings, the French firm decided to run a mobile-library bus, on which people could check out the latest propaganda. Alas, nobody thought to check whether local car parks could accommodate the bus (they couldn’t). So, the bus was taken initially to a lay-by just off one of the main roads in the county, where it soon became wedged firmly into the grass verge. It then needed a tow-truck surrounded by TV cameras to drag it out, blocking all traffic either way for several hours. The relevant highways authority is Suffolk County Council. Precisely the same local authority that has to grant planning permission. In the light of this much publicised debacle, it should have come as no surprise when the usually supine County Council decided on September 22 that it really could not give its backing to the proposals. And what reasons did the Council give for this thumbs down? Introducing the formal report, Suffolk’s Cabinet member for the environment and public protection, Richard Rout, complained that, “we remain very disappointed at EDF Energy’s transport strategy… we don’t believe it is a sustainable solution with its massive impact on local communities, with a much higher number of heavy goods vehicles taking to Suffolk’s roads than our existing infrastructure can handle.” Not to mention its lay-bys.
