Britain lacks a clear strategy for how it plans to achieve the goal of decarbonising its electricity system by 2035, which risks undermining efforts to achieve energy security, the country’s climate change advisers said on Thursday.
Britain has set itself a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and is also looking to improve its energy independence in the wake of record energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, requiring a sizeable increase in production renewable energy such as wind power and solar power.
As part of this goal, it has set itself the goal of decarbonising its electricity supply by 2035 to reduce its dependence on gas imports.
“The government has yet to provide a coherent strategy to achieve its goal or key details of how it will foster the investment and infrastructure necessary to implement it over the next 12 years,” says a report by the British commission on climate change (CCC).
Reforms must be made to national systems for planning, authorizing and connecting new projects to the power grid to allow development to scale up and reach the target, according to the report.
With swift reforms, the report estimates Britain could generate around 70% of its electricity from renewable sources, with nuclear power and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage accounting for around 20% by 2035.
The rest of the supply could come from low-carbon supplemental generation, such as hydrogen turbines and some fossil fuel power plants with carbon sequestration technology.
Only 2% of the supply is expected to come from gas-fired power plants without carbon capture technology, which currently account for around 40% of the country’s electricity supply.
The CCC also warned that Britain’s electricity systems were not sufficiently prepared for the risks that climate change could pose to vital infrastructure, and that this should be taken into account in the development of new projects.
“If climate resilience is overlooked in this investment, there is a significant risk of increasing climate vulnerability or incurring additional costs later,” the report says.
Climate risks to power systems could include increased storms or flooding that damage infrastructure or possible changes in wind speeds that affect wind power generation, the report adds.
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