Weekend press round-up: What’s in Johnson’s 10-point green plan?

In our latest review of sector coverage across the national newspapers, there is speculation about the contents of this week’s update on the prime minister’s vision for a “green industrial revolution”. There is also analysis of what a Joe Biden presidency will mean for net zero, whether the UK is really investing enough in tackling climate change and National Grid’s recent supply margin warnings.

Biden shift on climate change welcomed by world leaders

President-elect Joe Biden will take office with a plan to adopt tough new climate targets for the US and reverse many of the environmental actions of the Trump administration in a stance that was welcomed by world leaders over the weekend.

Mr Biden, who has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accord on his first day in office, has called climate change an “existential threat to humanity” and pledged a $2tn green stimulus package to help reduce US emissions.

That would be a dramatic reversal from the position of President Donald Trump, who pulled the US out of the Paris climate deal and weakened environmental rules.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson, in a congratulatory tweet, suggested that climate would be an important area of co-operation between the US and UK, alongside trade and security.

“I think now with President Biden in the White House in Washington, we have the real prospect of American global leadership in tackling climate change,” Mr Johnson told the Associated Press.

Mr Biden has pledged to cut US emissions to net zero by 2050, which would significantly slow down the pace of global warming if implemented.

This would put the Paris accord goal — of limiting global warming to 1.5C — within striking distance “for the first time ever”, according to Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, a research group. “This could be an historic tipping point,” he said.

However, Mr Biden’s domestic climate agenda could be challenged if the Republican party retains control of the Senate, which will be decided by two run-off elections in Georgia in January.

Paul Bledsoe, strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute, and a former climate adviser in the Clinton White House, said Mr Biden could lean more on regulatory measures to enact his environmental agenda, if he were unable to pass climate legislation.

“Trump overturned over 100 major environmental regulations. Many of those will be reinstated,” said Mr Bledsoe. Vehicle emissions standards, which were watered down under the Trump administration, could be one of the first areas to be revived.

A Biden administration is also expected to set up the first National Climate Council, a high-level group whose chair would direct policy across the federal government. Among those tipped as contenders to chair the council are John Kerry, a former secretary of state.

Even with a Republican-controlled Senate, a Biden administration might find common ground with Republicans who are willing to include clean energy in broader economic stimulus measures.

“There is some common ground there,” said Nat Keohane, senior vice-president for climate at the Environmental Defense Fund, a US-based advocacy group. Areas of possible agreement included electric vehicles, decarbonisation of the power sector, and preparing the manufacturing sector for low-carbon technologies.

One of the challenges facing a Biden administration will be to determine new climate targets, once it rejoins the Paris accord. Mr Biden has said he will target net zero emissions by 2050, and for all electricity to be emissions-free by 2035.

However, the Paris agreement would also require the US to set climate targets for 2030, a more near-term goal.

The Financial Times

Global experts question UK’s commitment to tackle climate crisis

Boris Johnson’s government is investing only 12% of the funds needed to tackle the climate emergency and the growing threat to nature, according to a new report that will raise fresh international concerns about the UK’s commitment to the green agenda.

The study – released before an expected major speech on the environment by Johnson – says ministers need to commit £33bn each year of this parliament to green causes. So far only £4bn a year has been pledged.

The report by the IPPR thinktank comes as Johnson faces increasing global pressure to act, most notably from the next US president Joe Biden, who is committed to green causes. Donald Trump took the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change, but Biden has promised to rejoin iton 20 January, the day he takes power.

Next year the UK will chair the Glasgow COP26 climate change summit. It is seen by Biden and other leaders as a critical test of the world’s determination to limit global warming. However, experts are concerned by what they see as the UK’s lack of preparation, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, which has placed huge financial burdens on governments. Carsten Jung, IPPR’s senior economist, said: “So far only about a 10th of funds needed for the clean investment revolution has been made available. Scaling up investment and following the 10-point action plan can create up to 1.6 million jobs and bring economic opportunity to every corner of the country while lowering emissions and restoring nature and tackling inequality.”

In addition, the government’s own climate change committee recently warned that the UK is not on track to meet its interim emissions targets for the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets for the periods 2023-2027 and 2028-2032 and identified some critical areas for action. These would include bringing forward the 2035 ban on sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars, an increase in strategic investments in the development of carbon capture and storage for industries, such as steel, and much more investment in zero-carbon alternatives to gas central heating.

Without these measures, analysts warn there is a danger the UK’s net zero carbon target will not look credible, undermining its authority as COP26 host. For his part, Johnson has promised to put a green economic recovery at the heart of his government’s post-Covid planning, with pledges to boost greatly offshore wind investment. But in September it emerged that EU-China climate talks, which were credited with helping to secure a breakthrough from Beijing, were attended by senior politicians from across Europe but not the UK. The European commission has called for the EU to raise its 2030 target for emission cuts from 40% to 55% compared with 1990 levels. China too announced it would set a net zero target for the first time to shift the world’s biggest economy on to a greener path. Taken together these moves have hugely raised expectations for COP26 in Glasgow. Climate scientists have said if enacted, China’s new target alone would reduce global warming levels by 0.3C. By contrast, the UK has not yet announced any new 2030 target, but there are expectations that Johnson may do so soon.

This week, Johnson will announce details of his 10-point plan, including a repeat of his pledge to make the UK the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind. He will also highlight the importance of conserving and expanding forests to cut carbon dioxide and help wildlife. He is also expected to signal more support for the hydrogen economy to replace fossil fuels in steel and chemical manufacturing, and carbon capture and storage technology to capture industrial emissions .

It is also likely that he will call for measures to speed up the development of zero-carbon alternatives to gas central heating and possibly announce the creation of an investment bank to provide public funding to build zero-carbon infrastructure.

The Observer

Boris Johnson to chair nuclear summit

UK prime minister Boris Johnson is to meet with the chancellor and business secretary later to discuss the role of nuclear power in the UK’s future energy strategy.

It comes ahead of a new 10-point plan for the UK to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The report is expected to be published next week.

The government insists it remains committed to the construction of new nuclear power stations.

New nuclear power stations are part of an overall strategy to decarbonise the UK’s electricity supply.

This afternoon’s trilateral meeting between Number 10, Number 11 and the Business Department discussed what form that should take.

Of the six sites originally identified a decade ago, three have seen contractors pull out and only one is under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

The government is not expected to explicitly single out which project will get the go-ahead, but officials told the BBC that Sizewell in Suffolk is the only project ready to go if the government is to hit a target of starting construction of new nuclear within this parliament.

While there is strong union support for the transfer of jobs skills and new opportunities from Somerset to Suffolk, there is considerable local resistance to a massive construction project, which activists say will pose an ecological threat to important local wildlife areas.

The government is also considering bringing forward a ban on petrol and diesel engines from its current official target of 2040, to 2035 or earlier.

It’s thought the new time frame will be somewhere between 2030 and 2034.

The 10-point plan is also expected to include:

New investment in technology to capture carbon at the point fossil fuels are burnt

Research into how hydrogen can replace fossil fuels

A significant expansion of the role of offshore wind

Its also expected that the government will set a new target for heating homes with electricity-powered heat pumps.

The replacement of 25 million gas boilers in UK homes is recognised as one of the hardest parts of the move to net zero carbon by 2050.

Although many energy industry experts remain sceptical that small nuclear reactors can play a significant role, the BBC understands that the government has big ambitions to progress this technology, and that it will form an important part of the government’s long term plans.

A detailed white paper on the future shape of UK energy policy is expected in late November.

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin explores some of the key topics for the prime minister to address in his 10 points, here

BBC News

Boris Johnson woos business by rehiring envoy Andrew Griffith

Boris Johnson is to bring the former finance director of Sky back to front-line politics amid intense anxiety in the business community over the government’s handling of Covid-19 and Brexit.

Andrew Griffith, who left the pay-TV giant in July last year for a six-month stint as Johnson’s business envoy before becoming an MP in December’s election, will return as the government’s net-zero business tsar.

He will focus on encouraging investment in Britain’s green energy, fintech and transport industries, working alongside business secretary Alok Sharma and Alex Hickman, a special adviser to Johnson with a remit for business.

The net-zero role will not be ministerial, though Griffith is likely to serve as an informal conduit between the business community and No 10 at a time when relations between the Conservative Party and industry are at their lowest ebb in memory.

He will be involved in the run-up to the UN climate change conference in Glasgow next year, although Sharma is currently due to be president of the event.

Sunday Times

National Grid faces break-up threat in green drive

National Grid faces the looming prospect of a break-up as politicians and regulators reshape the energy industry to help reach its goal of net zero carbon emissions within thirty years.

As a review by regulator Ofgem draws to a close, support is growing for moving the FTSE 100 energy giant’s work balancing electricity supply and demand into an independent body

Officials are believed to be exploring the practicalities of such a move, including the structure of any independent body and how to compensate National Grid shareholders, who would still own the main electricity transmission system for England and Wales.

It comes as Boris Johnson is expected this week to outline further details on his “10-point plan for a green industrial revolution”, following his commitment last month to quadrupling offshore wind capacity to 40GW by 2030 so it can “power every home”.

An Ofgem spokesman said: “Our review is ongoing and we expect to publish our advice to government soon.”

A National Grid spokesman said: “National Grid continues to work closely with the government, regulator and industry to explore what changes will be needed to achieve net zero, and the role of the ESO is an important part of that discussion.”

National Grid reports interim results on Thursday. Shares closed down 1.6pc at 935p on Friday, compared to 886p at the start of the year, valuing the business at £32.9bn.

A BEIS spokesman said: “Ofgem is reviewing whether existing system operation arrangements can meet the challenge of delivering net zero at the lowest cost to consumers. We will consider Ofgem’s findings when they are presented.”

Daily Telegraph

Blackout alert from National Grid as Britain sails close to wind

The timing could hardly have been worse. Barely a week after Boris Johnson had backed a huge expansion of offshore wind farms to power every home in Britain, National Grid was forced to issue a rare warning.

“Unusually low wind output coinciding with a number of generator outages means the cushion of spare capacity we operate the system with has been reduced,” it said last month, warning of “tight margins” on Britain’s power grid in the days to come.

The alert was catnip to opponents of “windmills” — and there was more to follow. Last week, National Grid issued two electricity margin notices, the most serious security-of-supply alerts since 2016, both citing low wind farm output among the causes and urgently appealing for more power plants. To keep the lights on, Britain burnt coal in polluting old power stations that are due to close within a few years.

“The time has come to pause the blind rush into a renewable energy disaster,” claimed the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate-sceptic group that alleged “the risk of lights going out all over Britain is rising relentlessly”.

Even respected voices who support renewables expressed concern. Jonathan Marshall, of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said the warnings showed that “the rapid transition in Britain’s electricity system is outpacing the changes in governance and regulation needed” to encourage technologies such as batteries, which could save surplus power generated when it’s windy for use when it’s not.

“Slow progress here means that the huge amounts of wind power produced when storms hit earlier in the week could not all be used,” he said, adding that relying on coal “needn’t be the case”.

National Grid, which owns the electricity system operator, or ESO, responsible for keeping the lights on, emphasises that low wind output was only one factor causing the alerts. “If we had more wind, it would have addressed the issue, but there was a range of generator outages as well,” Fintan Slye, director of National Grid ESO, said. “It’s not saying, therefore, that wind is making the system less reliable.” Gas, coal and nuclear plants with enough capacity to have avoided the alerts many times over were offline for maintenance, but many are due back in action for winter. However, Mr Slye, 50, acknowledged that keeping the lights on was becoming “way more complex” as Britain built more intermittent renewables.

More than 10,000 wind turbines are dotted around the countryside and off the coast of Britain, with a theoretical maximum output — if all are spinning full tilt — of 24 gigawatts. Over a typical year, their output averages about third of that level, or equivalent to the annual energy needs of 18 million homes.

But that’s the average. At times recently, their output has been barely a tenth of their maximum. Mr Slye said that when National Grid calculated how much power Britain needed for the winter, it assumed that wind farms may generate only 16 per cent of their maximum. That could rise as more turbines are built further offshore and off Scotland — “as you get more geographically dispersed, the extent to which you can rely on it increases” — but the challenge won’t go away.

“The thing you need to worry about is the low wind scenario of a cold winter’s day,” he said. “Mid-December, or mid-January, really still, so high pressure sitting atop the UK. We are planning such that on those still and cold days, we will have enough supply to meet demand through a combination of traditional generation — nuclear, gas — but also interconnection [subsea power cables to the Continent] and storage helps as well.”

The government’s capacity market scheme, which pays power plants to be available through the winter, is designed to ensure that there are enough such reliable power sources available to provide back-up. It will remain an important accompaniment to plans to support an additional 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

National Grid expects Britain’s total installed power plant capacity to rise from 110 gigawatts today to between 145 and 180 gigawatts by 2030, even though peak winter demand is likely to increase from 60 to nearer 70 gigawatts.

For Steve Jennings, a partner at PWC, it raises the issue of how to secure this back-up and hit climate targets. “In a future net zero world, we cannot rely on the coal and gas that is stepping up now. We will need carbon capture or other forms of low-carbon firm generation, and we don’t really see a long-term strategy on bringing these to the market or how much of each technology is being considered.”

See Utility Week‘s analysis of this topic here

The Times

Steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta offloads Scottish power station

Steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has quietly offloaded a hydro-electric power station in the Scottish Highlands as his empire struggles for cash amid the pandemic.

Investor Equitix took over Kinlochleven power station last month from the Indian-born trader’s Simec subsidiary, filings show.

Gupta has become one of Europe’s biggest steel-makers during a five-year spree.

He bought Kinlochleven from miner Rio Tinto — along with another hydro-electric power station and aluminium smelter in nearby Lochaber — in 2016 for £330m, promising to revive Scottish industry.

Gupta, whose businesses trade under the GFG Alliance umbrella, then used those assets to sell hundreds of millions of pounds of bonds, via the finance firm Greensill, to Swiss fund manager GAM.

The controversial bond sales were lubricated with a 25-year Scottish government guarantee over the smelter’s power purchases — granted in return for bold promises to build a new factory to make two million aluminium wheels a year, creating 2,000 jobs, by 2020. Gupta is now considering opening a water bottle factory instead.

Equitix, which manages more than £6.5bn of funds, is rumoured to have paid £150m for the power station, which converts water stored in a dam into electricity.

Sunday Times

UK energy plant to use liquid air

Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world’s first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air.

It will use surplus electricity from wind farms at night to compress air so hard that it becomes a liquid at -196 Celsius.

Then when there is a peak in demand in a day or a month, the liquid air will be warmed so it expands.

The resulting rush of air will drive a turbine to make electricity, which can be sold back to the grid.

The 50MW facility near Manchester will store enough power for roughly 50,000 homes for five hours.

The system was devised by Peter Dearman, a self-taught backyard inventor from Hertfordshire, and it has been taken to commercial scale with a £10m grant from the UK government.

“It’s very exciting,” he told BBC News. “We need many different forms of energy storage – and I’m confident liquid air will be one of them.”

Mr Dearman said his invention was 60-70% efficient, depending how it is used.

That is less efficient than batteries, but he said the advantage of liquid air is the low cost of the storage tanks – so it can easily be scaled up.

Also, unlike batteries, liquid air storage does not create a demand for minerals which may become increasingly scarce as the world moves towards power systems based on variable renewable electricity.

“Batteries are really great for short-term storage,” Mr Dearman said. “But they are too expensive to do long-term energy storage. That’s where liquid air comes in.”

Mr Dearman had been developing a car run on similar principles with liquid hydrogen when he saw the potential for applying the technology to electricity storage.

He is now a passive shareholder in Highview, one of the firms building the 50MW plant.

Prof John Loughhead, chief scientific adviser at the government’s business and energy department, has previously praised the technology.

BBC News

Utility Week’s weekend press round-up is a curation of articles in the national newspapers relating to the energy and water sector. The views expressed are not those of Utility Week or Faversham House.