Future Energy Scenario 2024 – Has Wattage Increased?

not many people know

Paul Homewood

This year's FES is now over, and there are some surprising changes compared to last year:

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios-fes

As always, they offer several scenarios:

.

Since the large-scale rollout of hydrogen still seems unlikely, I will focus again on the middle scenario, “electric participation”. There is zero chance that the public will be willing to participate in the “transformation”, so it must be enforced through heat pumps and electric vehicle directives, etc. Regardless, all three scenarios are very similar in concept.

The report includes this helpful table:

The key point to note is peak demand, which will reach 81GW in 2035. To do this, you need at least 100GW of reliable capacity to allow for a safety margin.

This workbook provides more details on expected power generation:

Excluding I/C, we have 40GW of fixed capacity. During the winter, 48GW of solar would provide us with an average of around 1GW in a 24 hour period, assuming of course there is enough battery storage to spread the load throughout the night.

Every year, wind power generation drops to less than 5%. Even 5% only provides 5GW, and sometimes the number can be much lower.

It is clear that we will not be able to meet the required 100GW of demand. The energy storage capacity is expected to be 112 GWh, which may help meet peak demand for an hour or two, but will be useless for longer power shortages. Also remember, batteries need to be charged – if there's no wind, there's no power available to charge them.

But it’s worth noting that FES realized for the first time that we still needed a lot of thermal power. They say we will need 18GW of unabated gas, plus 8GW of CCS gas power and 6GW of hydrogen-fired power plants. This confirms what DESNZ told me last month that “we will need 30 to 50GW of long-term flexible capacity by 2035”, which they say will only be met by increasing gas. In fact, 50GW is probably the absolute minimum.

Most of the hydrogen will be produced from steam reformed gas; the amount obtained by electrolysis will be small. So it would make more sense, and be cheaper, to continue burning natural gas anyway. Likewise, a natural gas-fired power plant with CCS still requires natural gas, and more gas than would be required to burn it in the first place.

This new analysis is driving coaches and horses to implement the madcap Miliband plan to completely decarbonise the grid by 2030.

related