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The UK government has backed the development of new gas-fired power plants, in the latest move by Rishi Sunak to portray his government as taking a pragmatic approach to tackling climate change.
Outlining the plans on Tuesday to back more electricity generation from fossil fuels, the prime minister said he would “not gamble with [Britain’s] energy security” despite plans to decarbonise the electricity grid by the middle of the next decade.
Referring to the reliance on wind and solar power in the right weather conditions, Sunak added that Britain would reach the government’s 2035 target in a “sustainable way that doesn’t leave people without energy on a cloudy, windless day”.
His remarks will be echoed by Claire Coutinho, the secretary of state for energy security, in a speech at Chatham House on Tuesday when she is expected to warn of “blackouts” unless there is sufficient gas-fired capacity to provide back up for intermittent renewables.
The move to back new gas-fired generating capacity is the latest watering down of green policies by Sunak’s government.
Last September, the government delayed the planned national ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, from 2030 to 2035. It has also delayed the planned ban on oil and LPG-fired boilers, used by off-grid rural homeowners which was due to come into effect by 2026, by nine years.
In contrast, the opposition Labour party, which has a strong lead over the ruling Conservatives in the polls ahead of a general election expected this year, has said it plans to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030 if it wins power.
Labour, which has previously said it plans to keep a “strategic reserve” of gas-fired power stations for security of supply, described the government’s latest move as “desperate nonsense”.
Gas-fired power plants supply almost 40 per cent of the UK’s annual electricity on average. But their contribution is far higher on still days when output from wind turbines is low. Some of the UK’s older gas-fired power stations will have to close in the coming years, potentially leaving Britain short of generating capacity.
The government said it would support further building of gas-fired power plants by allowing their developers to retain access to key subsidy payments to supply back-up power for the grid.
The Climate Change Committee, the government’s advisers, has previously said a small amount of gas-fired capacity was “compatible with a decarbonised power system”.
The announcement is part of a series of planned reforms to the power market to help it adapt to the rise of renewable energy that Coutinho will unveil on Tuesday.
These include proposals to regionalise the national electricity market by splitting it into as many as seven “zones”, with each one setting its own wholesale electricity price.
The move is designed to make the network more efficient and, if implemented, would lead to large variations in price depending on proximity to generation. It is designed to encourage the building of more renewable generating capacity in parts of Britain that have less wind and solar farms.
Under the proposed reforms, households in Scotland could have lower bills because of the abundance of offshore wind farms.