However, that role will increasingly be as contingency/backup for times of scarcity rather than as a continuous baseload. They will only be used during demand peaks that correspond with unfavourable weather conditions, or other unusual scenarios.
This is similar to the current role of the UK's few remaining coal plants.
(I should also note that natural gas use is already in decline in the UK, as is gas turbine generating capacity)
Notice how the gas usage cycles up and down, tracking the inverse of solar and wind. But add another 10GW of wind and solar, which is likely by the mid 2020s, and gas won't be used at all pretty often. But it isn't going away completely unless storage gets much cheaper.
The biggest challenge now is to start moving residential heating from gas to electric heat pumps. That's a large fraction of our CO2 emissions, and it requires individuals to spend money.
The current plan is to maintain about 30% of the grid as gas, to provide backup, and then to deal with the carbon emissions using carbon capture and storage. The target is for a net zero electricity grid by 2030.
It's more like 2050 according to National Grid's forecasts. Carbon capture and storage is still a pipe-dream, really. The technology exists (arguably - not proven at scale) but not in an economically viable way.
To put it another way, it's cheaper to avoid emitting carbon in the first place than to try and capture and store it.
30% of the power usage or 30% of the capacity? A nation that has three times the capacity compared to power usage could produce 100% of the energy on gas and still claim a 33% capacity being based on gas.
2030 sounds good, but the average expected life time of a natural gas power plant is 50 years. I would hazard a guess that the most common type of new power plants being built in the UK (in terms of costs) is natural gas power plants. Is the expectation here that all that investment currently being poured into natural gas will just have to give it up in 10 years?
Absolutely not. There have been almost no new gas power plants built in the UK since 2010 (the only new one is Carrington in 2016, a CCGT which replaced a closed coal plant and which had been under construction since 2008). Since several old gas power plants have closed, there has been a net decrease in gas capacity. And as far as I know, there are currently no gas power plants actively under construction anywhere in the UK.
All new capacity in the UK is coming from:
- Renewables
- Nuclear (although this will probably be a net decrease, as old plants will close. Currently only Hinkley C is under construction, with several other projects on hold or cancelled)
- Inter-connectors
Just a random google gave this: https://www.smart-energy.com/industry-sectors/business-finan...
But I have no numbers to compare £700 million (possible times 3) with wind/solar investment for 2019.
"Historically the Site accommodated a 1,875 MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power station (the former Teesside Power Station) with the ability to generate steam for utilisation within the wider Wilton International site. The Teesside Power Station ceased generation in 2013 and was demolished between 2013 and 2015."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teesside_power_station
https://www.tccpp.co.uk/pdfs/changeConsultationDocuments/NMC...
Yeah, that's disappointing. But development consent approval doesn't necessarily mean they will be built. There are some other CCGT projects that have been approved for a number of years, but construction hasn't started because the economics don't stack up right now.
With the cancellation of several nuclear plants, others being retired over the next 5-15 years, and the ban on coal by 2025, there may indeed be a future deficit of gas generation capacity. It may be that these projects are being developed speculatively in anticipation of that.
What's that? Supply from a grid overseas?
On average GB imports more from europe than exports. It exports more to Ireland than imports.
Doesn't really help with the troughs in wind - when it's calm in the north sea for the UK, it is calm for Denmark too.
Maybe if europe puts a lot of production in Biscay and the Med it will smooth things out - but there's only so much capacity on the interconnects (2GW from France, 1GW from Netherlands, 1GW from Belgium, 500MW to Northern Ireland, 500MW to ROI)
That said, planned interconnects bring it up to 10GW from mainland, 1.5GW to Ireland
It looks like they're all hoping for CCS to become a reality. You're right that it looks infeasible to just turn them all off by 2030. Currently the CCS is getting nowhere either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-201374...
Looking at that I get a very different view of UK electricity grid, one where natural gas plays its very very common role when wind/solar is not at its peak production.
Would be very interesting to see the UK pledge to get rid of the natural gas plants at some date in the future, rather than say build more of them.