UK Energy

We've been counting down to this for years now and we're finally on the other side of coal power. Great! 🥳

Update: it produced its last energy on 30th Sept and now the uk is officially coal-free :D

Energy customers are being short-changed by “perverse” government targets to install electronic smart meters in homes across the UK, according to the consumer campaigner Martin Lewis.

Lewis, the founder and chair of MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE), has written to Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, warning that installations are being prioritised over repairs, leaving thousands of households facing shock bills because their meters have malfunctioned.

Last December, the artist Grayson Perry reported that his monthly electricity charge had soared from £300 to £39,000 because of a faulty smart meter. Lewis wants suppliers to be incentivised to fix faulty meters as well as installing new ones.

“I am writing to you […] to warn of the brand damage that risks making the government’s targets framework perverse,” Lewis said in his letter. “A rethink is needed – specifically I’d suggest shifting firms’ targets from smart meter installations to the overall number of ‘working’ smart meters, which would incentivise firms to do both installations and repairs.”

The UK’s first new deep coalmine in 30 years will not be allowed to go ahead after a ruling in the high court.

On Friday morning, Justice Holgate ruled that plans to build the facility in Whitehaven, Cumbria, would not proceed, in what campaigners called a “victory for the environment”.

New fossil fuel projects are thought to be on shakier legal ground after the precedent set by a landmark supreme court decision that quashed planning permission granted for an oil drilling well at Horse Hill on the Weald in Surrey. The judgment found the climate impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects. This was the first court decision on plans for a new fossil fuel development since the Horse Hill ruling.

Holgate agreed with Friends of the Earth that Michael Gove, when he was secretary of state for levelling up, acted unlawfully in accepting a claim by West Cumbria Mining (WCM) that the mine would be “net zero” and have no impact on the country’s ability to meet the emissions cuts required under the Climate Change Act 2008, because it was relying on offsetting through purchasing carbon credits from abroad. UK government policy does not allow for reliance on international offsets to meet carbon budgets.

The new Labour government this year withdrew its support from the Whitehaven mine in the Cumbria legal case. Lawyers acting for Angela Rayner, the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, said there had been an “error in law” in the decision to grant planning permission for the mine in December 2022.

The UK government has agreed to take control of the National Grid unit tasked with keeping the lights on in a £630m deal that takes effect from next month.

Great Britain’s electricity system operator (ESO) will be transferred into public ownership to create a new national energy system operator (Neso), which will also oversee the gas system.

The government hopes that by bringing together the separate units involved in planning Great Britain’s electricity and gas networks under one publicly owned company, the system operator can adopt a more strategic approach to achieving a net zero energy system by 2030.

[...]

The decision to remove the ESO from National Grid’s ownership was made under the previous Conservative government because of concerns over a conflict of interest relating to the operator’s role providing strategic advice to government officials. The deal was expected to take place in July this year but it was delayed until 1 October because of the general election.

So this was going to happen anyway?

Councillors have narrowly approved the construction of an electricity substation which one described as a "monstrosity".

The substation in Runcorn, Cheshire, has been designed to provide power to about 850 homes on the Sandymoor South and Wharford Farm estates being built by government agency Homes England.

The agency’s application had been previously criticised with local politicians citing concerns that the substation would impose on existing homes in the area.

...

The developments attached to the substation are part of a wider scheme, which has seen about 1,500 homes either built or proposed.

However, the structure itself will stand in neighbouring Norton, close to existing homes that will not be powered by it, and lead to the loss of green space and trees.

...

Other councillors expressed concerns over the choice of site, which was designated as green space in the authority’s delivery and allocations local plan, a blueprint which sets out the borough’s planning policy up to 2037.

A total of nine offshore wind farm contracts have been awarded by the government after last year's auction failed to attract any bidders at all.

The contracts are part of a wider slate of green energy projects that also include tidal and solar power, and will provide enough electricity to fuel the equivalent of 11 million UK homes, the government said.

However, while the new offshore wind projects have been broadly welcomed, some experts questioned whether they would generate enough capacity to meet renewable energy targets set for 2030.

...

On Tuesday, a total of 131 contracts have been awarded to firms for projects which will generate 9.6 gigawatts (GWs) of renewable energy.

The new offshore projects include what will be Europe's largest and second-largest wind farms, Hornsea 3 and Hornsea 4, which will be built off the Yorkshire coast by Ørsted, the Danish energy giant that is majority-owned by the state.

The Labour government is aiming to produce 60GW of energy through offshore wind farms by 2030.

The offshore wind farm projects announced on Tuesday provide capacity of 4.9GW.

Pranav Menon, a research associate at Aurora Energy Research, said the government still has some way to go to meet its goal.

"It still falls short of the pace required to meet its ambitious targets," he said.

The UK Government will not fight a legal challenge against plans to develop two North Sea oil fields.

Environmental groups Greenpeace and Uplift had brought legal claims to stop drilling in the untapped oil sites of Rosebank and Jackdaw.

It comes after the Supreme Court ruled that the environmental impact of new oil fields should be considered when granting licences.

The Government said its decision not to fight the challenge will "save the taxpayer money".

Rosebank is 80 miles to the west of Shetland and contains around 300 million barrels of oil, making it the UK's last major undeveloped oil site. Jackdaw is 150 miles east of Aberdeen.

The licences for the two fields have not been withdrawn. Energy giants Shell and Equinor - who are the developers hoping to drill at the sites - can still fight the challenge.

Plans to build a solar farm the size of 86 football fields in Kent have been rejected as "insane".

Developers of the installation on "high-grade" farmland near Sittingbourne were told by a councillor the panels should instead be placed on roofs and car parks.

Supporters pointed out the site - sitting either side of Vigo Lane and Wrens Road near Borden - would have provided clean energy for 11,500 homes.

Developers Industria Solar said they were "disappointed" by the decision, but would review their application and consider "further steps".

...

Building the sprawling solar farm near the boundary of the Kent Downs National Landscape was criticised by Green Party councillor Terry Thompson, who pointed out it took up Grade 1 farmland.

As a farmer, he said it was "insane" to build on such fertile land, reported the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

“It isn’t an industrial landscape, it’s the garden of England.”

“We really seriously need to think about security of food production," he added.

The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0.5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report.

The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember.

The figures show that Drax, which has received billions in subsidies since it began switching from coal to biomass in 2012, was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO2 last year, or nearly 3% of the UK’s total carbon emissions.

Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report.

Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Burning wood pellets can be as bad for the environment as coal; supporting biomass with subsidies is a costly mistake.”

The company has claimed almost £7bn from British energy bills to support its biomass generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions for each unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal, according to Ember and many scientists. In 2023, the period covered by the Ember report, it received £539m.

...

The government’s own spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that ministers have handed a total of £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood for electricity despite being unable to prove the industry meets sustainability standards.

Mayo said: “Burning wood for power is an expensive risk that limits UK energy independence and has no place in the journey to net zero. True energy security comes from homegrown wind and solar, a healthy grid and robust planning for how to make the power system flexible and efficient.”

The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.

More than half of the world’s population lives under an energy system that its advocates say can tackle fuel poverty, improve crumbling housing stock and reduce energy demand. And to cap it off – when properly designed – it would not cost the taxpayer anything.

The so-called rising block tariff or national energy guarantee system (NEG) are almost unknown in Europe but operate successfully in many other countries and regions – from Japan, South Korea and China to Bangladesh, India and California.

Tucked away beyond the industrial landscapes of north-east Derbyshire and the M1 corridor, the Amber Valley is an oasis of greenery: ancient trees, listed buildings and public footpaths that are increasingly popular with tourists.

But Katie Hirst, a local resident, fears that appreciative visitors will vanish along with the unspoilt landscape if a route of 50-metre-high pylons is brought down the valley as National Grid intends.

“People come here for wonderful walks and the unspoilt landscape, and that would be gone, and the economy would really suffer,” said Hirst, a co-founder of Save Amber Valley Environment (Save), one of a growing number of grassroots groups opposed to pylon schemes across the country.

...

More than 600,000km of power lines will have to be unrolled across the UK over the next few years for the country to properly decarbonise. But the pylons and the renewable infrastructure that will carry them are already causing anxiety and resistance.

There were forceful statements from Keir Starmer last week, saying he would take the “tough decisions” necessary to get pylons built. The next day Ed Miliband was a little more emollient, promising to consider benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms.

So how is this going to work? For the government to meet the ambitious target of decarbonising electricity generation by 2030, new infrastructure – including wind turbines, on and offshore; solar farms; and new transmission systems such as pylons – will be essential.

But the other parliamentary parties either oppose pylons, or allow MPs in certain constituencies to oppose them. Local groups in some areas are also organising.

...

The Labour party says it can meet its ambition of being a “clean energy superpower” only by building the new infrastructure necessary. The decarbonising electricity target is likely to require a doubling of onshore wind capacity, a quadrupling of offshore wind and a tripling of solar power by 2030. This will require what transmission companies have described as a “colossal” investment in power grid upgrades, which will cost billions of pounds and is likely to make the country’s electricity infrastructure more visible than ever before.

The UK will need to install five times as many pylons and underground lines in the six years to 2030 as it has in the past 30 years – and four times more undersea cables than there are now, according to estimates from National Grid. Existing pylons and ageing cables will also need to be replaced. More than 600,000km of lines will need to be added or replaced by 2040 based on the age of existing transmission and distribution lines, the rollout of renewables and growing electricity demand, according to data from the International Energy Agency. This means cables will need to be rolled out at a pace of almost 100km every day for 17 years.

Looks like an extension of existing schemes, but more of them is definitely a good thing.

Keir Starmer’s Labour government unveils plans for a “rooftop revolution” today that will see millions more homes fitted with solar panels in order to bring down domestic energy bills and tackle the climate crisis.

The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, also took the hugely controversial decision this weekend to approve three massive solar farms in the east of England that had been blocked by Tory ministers.

The three sites alone – Gate Burton in Lincolnshire, Sunnica’s energy farm on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border and Mallard Pass on the border between Lincolnshire and Rutland – will deliver about two-thirds of the solar energy installed on rooftops and on the ground in the whole of last year.

Now, before Wednesday’s king’s speech, which will include legislation for setting up the new publicly owned energy company GB Energy, ministers are working with the building industry to make it easier to buy new homes with panels installed, or instal them on existing ones.

Ministers are looking at bringing in solar-related standards for new-build properties from next year.

At present, while formal planning permission is not required, there are restrictions on where and how high up on buildings they can be placed. There are also restrictions in conservation areas and on listed buildings. These may also be re-examined.

In an unusual move, the Energy Secretary – a committed opponent of oil and gas – has told regulators not to approve a new round of drilling that was slated for confirmation in the coming weeks.

It means companies have potentially wasted millions on preparing their bids, with experts warning legal action is likely.

The decision follows crisis meetings held this week between Miliband and his aides after questions were asked by journalists about outstanding drilling applications.

Applications were submitted by 76 oil and gas companies as part of the 33rd offshore oil and gas licensing round initiated by the last government in autumn 2023.

Bids for up to 35 areas of the North Sea were still awaiting a decision from the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) when the election was called.

In a statement late on Wednesday, Miliband's spokesman said: “We will not issue new licences to explore new fields, and will not revoke existing oil and gas licences. We will manage existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan.”

Labour has appointed one of the country’s foremost climate experts to lead a “mission control centre” on clean energy.

Chris Stark, the former head of the UK’s climate watchdog, will head a Covid vaccine-style taskforce aimed at delivering clean and cheaper power by 2030.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said the centre would work with energy companies and regulators and would be the first of its kind in Whitehall, following Keir Starmer’s plan for mission-driven government.

According to this model, ministers will focus on tackling five of the biggest challenges facing the country, one of which is clean energy.

Stark said: “Tackling the climate crisis and accelerating the transition to clean power is the country’s biggest challenge, and its greatest opportunity. By taking action now, we can put the UK at the forefront of the global race to net zero.”

Heat pumps are designed to be installed outside the home to extract warmth from the air, ground or water. In densely populated areas, this could mean scores of heat pump fans humming within a small area.

One device typically emits a constant hum of between 40 and 60 decibels – about the same as a fridge or dishwasher – but could millions of heat pumps amount to a noise nuisance?

The claim

Concerns about heat pump noise began to take hold in the British press late last year after the Conservative government commissioned an independent review into noise emissions from air source heat pumps.

Research submitted included a report by three experts presented at the Institute of Acoustics conference last October. It was seized on by the Daily Telegraph, which reported that it had found heat pumps were “too noisy for millions of homes in the UK”.

The report contained a claim that heat pumps installed in flats or terraced houses would break the noise limits set by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), an accreditation body, which stipulate that a heat pump should be no louder than 42 decibels within one metre of a neighbour’s door or window.

The Daily Mail and Daily Express repeated the story a day later. Concerns about the issue appeared in the Guardian, too, with one reader’s letter complaining that a summer stay in a development where all eight properties had heat pumps was marred by the devices. “If you sat in the garden in the evening, it was an annoying, continual source of noise,” the writer said.

...

The verdict

Heat pumps are quieter than they used to be, and getting quieter still. But better consumer information could go further in mitigating the overall impact of noise by choosing the best model for the home and using it correctly.

“I believe that many people in the UK try to operate their heat pumps the way they operate gas boilers – turning them on and off – but they can’t heat houses as quickly as gas boilers, so they need to run constantly to do that,” said Harvie-Clark.

Turning heat pumps on after a period of being off will require the machine to work harder and therefore create more noise. So taking a slow and steady approach to home heating can make heat pumps more efficient, and quieter, too.

“In colder European countries they accept that this is how to run heating systems. Our temperate climate means people have different control expectations,” Harvie-Clark said.

“While the potential noise impact of air source heat pumps should be considered, it is important to balance this with the significant environmental benefits of transitioning away from fossil fuel heating systems. Gas boilers also make a noise.”

Campaigners have warned that building England’s largest onshore wind farm on protected peatland would be “catastrophic for carbon storage, wildlife and flood risk”. Saudi-backed developer World Wide Renewable Energy Global Ltd wants to construct the farm on more than 2,300 hectares at Walshaw Moor, between Hebden Bridge and Haworth.

Consisting of up to 65 wind turbines, it would be capable of generating up to 302MW of energy.

The developer said last September that it would establish a £75m community benefit fund and also pledged to end grouse shooting if it was granted planning permission.

However, campaigners say it would impact endangered birds, like curlew, lapwing, skylark and merlin, and exacerbate already serious local flooding.

The huge development would need 22 miles of access roads and 160 tonnes of reinforced concrete for each of the gigantic turbines.

At 200m tall (655ft), the turbines would be 20m higher than London’s 41-storey Gherkin building.

Campaigners say turbine construction and the associated infrastructure will affect hydrology, causing peatlands to dry out to such an extent that they will become a net emitter of carbon rather than a carbon sink.

Britain's fourth-biggest household energy supplier is lining up bankers to explore options including bringing in a new investor or a sale, 15 years after it launched in a bid to challenge the industry's oligopoly.

Sky News has learnt that OVO Group, which was founded by Stephen Fitzpatrick, is close to hiring Rothschild to assist with a strategic review of the business.

City sources said this weekend that a range of possibilities would be considered during the process, which is expected to take several months.

These are likely to include a refinancing - with talks already underway about OVO's existing borrowings - as well as issuing new shares to prospective investors, or a partial or full sale by some of the company's shareholders.

An outright sale of the business is considered by insiders to be unlikely at this point, but is expected to be explored as part of the strategic review.

...

Key to OVO's valuation will be the growth of its technology platform, Kaluza, which was set up to license its software to other energy suppliers, and provides customers with smart electric vehicle charging and heat pumps.

OVO recently announced that AGL Energy, one of Australia's biggest energy suppliers, had bought a 20% stake in Kaluza at a $500m (£395m) valuation.

Kaluza is understood to be exploring further expansion opportunities in Europe, Japan and the US.

OVO has also entered the electric vehicle car charging sector under the brand Charge Anywhere, adding 34,000 public charging points across the UK.

In 2022, OVO Group made an unadjusted loss of £1.3bn, which it blamed on a decline in the value of energy it had bought in advance to meet future supply commitments.

It said this had "no cash impact" in a corporate filing, and that this value would rise as customers used the energy it had bought.

The electricity system operator has confirmed that the demand flexibility service will reward UK households with financial incentives for reducing their electricity consumption at any time of the year

SSE Thermal's £350m to £400m 50MW project would see hydrogen produced and stored at a site near Aldbrough on Yorkshire's coast before being used to power a turbine to create electricity to feed into the grid at times of peak demand.

One of the main challenges with intermittent renewables like offshore wind is how to store the excess energy - hydrogen is an alternative to batteries.

Hydrogen would be manufactured using "low carbon" electricity, delivered via an existing substation at the site, to split water into its component parts.

It would then be stored in an underground cavern 1.8 kilometres down in a layer of rock salt, previously used to store natural gas.

...

Residents at an event at Aldbrough on Thursday were told it would be the "first power station at this scale in the UK and pretty much the world".

Attendees were able to see what the site will look like from any chosen viewpoint nearby using an interactive tool.

Some were dismayed by its size and concerned by creeping industrialisation of the coastline - it will have a 30m high stack and the turbine will be 14m high.

One resident said it will "look like a chemical factory" and was a "lot bigger" than she'd anticipated.

A small community of similarly minded folks had also settled in Scoraig, and he would bring a particular skill: Cambridge University educated with a background in maths and physics, he was about to become Scotland’s wind power pioneer.

Today, largely thanks to Hugh, Scoraig’s 70 or so residents are in the enviable position of never having to fear the electricity bill: they rely on wind and solar power for their energy needs, topped up when there’s really no alternative using wood, bottled gas and oil.

But that’s few and far between, says Hugh, pointing out that his 20-year-old bungalow has been so efficiently insulated and heated using hot water powered by his renewables system, that even in the depths of winter there’s no real need to resort to wood, coal or any other heating source.

Indeed, he can usually comfortably run all the electrical goods he needs, cost free.

“I have never had an electricity bill since I lived here and that’s 50 years ago,” he says. “I have all the mod cons; I have a dishwasher, all the normal appliances and they work great.

Archive

The boss of British Gas has called for households to face mandatory smart meter installations weeks after government figures showed that almost 4m meters are not working.

Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of the British Gas owner Centrica, told a committee of MPs that smart meters should be installed in all homes through a “street by street” programme, in order to cut the costs of creating a smart grid.

The energy boss, who has come under fire after British Gas was revealed to have used debt collectors to force-fit prepayment meters in vulnerable customers’ homes, said the company would be willing to install smart meters on behalf of other energy suppliers.

...

The government launched its smart meter programme in 2011 and had hoped to install smart meters in households across the UK before 2020 to help reach its net zero ambitions. About 60% of homes have a smart meter, according to government data.

Smart meters are considered a key tool in helping households reduce their energy use. They use real-time data to make better use of renewable energy when it is available and cut the need for fossil fuels, as well as relaying instant data on households’ energy use.

But the programme, which is being carried out by energy suppliers, has been dogged by delays and technical faults. The government’s recent data suggested that customers with smart meters may have been overcharged on their gas and electricity bills.

A growing number of small businesses are complaining of vastly inflated standing charges on top of their standard energy bills, some as much as 13 times the level of three years ago.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has written to Ofgem, urging it to act over fast-growing standing charges paid by small companies, particularly those in rural areas.

One business owner got in touch with the group to report an increased standing charge, from 70.94p per day in July 2021 to 969.64p per day in September 2023, more than 13 times higher.

Standing charges are applied daily, regardless of how much energy the customer uses, and are used to cover the cost of supplying energy to homes and businesses.

They also cover the costs of building new network infrastructure and keeping the power on when energy suppliers go bust.

While consumers’ bills are limited by the energy price cap, small businesses’ are not.

Tina McKenzie, FSB policy chairwoman, said: “We want Ofgem to do a thorough review of standing charges for businesses as well as consumers, for better transparency and to discern whether energy companies are behaving fairly towards their small firm clients.