2030 Electricity System in United Kingdom

This essay discusses the decarbonization of the electricity system in the United Kingdom by 2030. It explores the use of renewable energy sources, carbon capture and storage, and the potential impact on cost and flexibility. The essay concludes that with the rapid growth of technology, renewable energy sources will replace carbon-containing energy sources by 2030, providing numerous advantages for citizens and the environment.

Running Head:2030 ELECTRICITY SYSTEM IN UNITED KINGDOM
2030 ELECTRICITY SYSTEM IN UNITED KINGDOM
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In this essay, the discussion will be related to the electricity system in the UK. The
idea behind this essay is to discuss whether within 2030 the electricity system in the United
Kingdom will be decarbonized or not. To decarbonize the electricity and the choices of
generation the step that needs to be taken is to reduce the rate of decarbonisation and also
allow flexibility in the trajectory of energy supply by 2030. But if such a case occurs that
demand reduction becomes very difficult then progress in decarbonising needs acceleration.
The burning of fossil fuels has several advantages. Coal in the UK and gas resources are
present at a high level which improves energy security. But the key disadvantage is the
emission of a large amount of carbon dioxide. Carbon is capturing, and its storage is
considered as a critical technology which increases the use of low carbon generating option
while maintaining supply which meets variation of demand. The residual carbon emission
from power plants with CCS comes out to be a matter of concern when high level emission is
considered. Most cost-effective ways to gain carbon-neutral electricity from the Carbon
capture and storage is likely to combine increasing capturing level to values that are justified
by carbon cost by relating to the biomass. This technique can be used for any coal plants
having CCS, and it can also be applied to coal gasifier retrofits of CCR. Biomass utilisation
with carbon capture and storage at any power plant region can be used to offset the residual
emission from the NGCC plants after combustion capture firing the natural gas.

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Figure 1
Carbon capture and storage commonly referred to as CCS will prove to be key
technology due to the following reasons. Electricity system which provides generation
capacity provided by renewable and nuclear proves to be very expensive and difficult to run
as well. In the case of fossils, fuel generation with the carbon capture and storage will provide
short-term flexibility in responding to the demand, and it also offers some options for
negative technologies such as burning of biomass with CCS. Therefore the development and
deployment of the CCS is an urgent challenge. Considering the electric generation in the year
2030 it requires an intelligent electrical grid system. To intermittent, the renewable capacity a
paradigm shift will be required where the network will control the shift from the generation
assets and also from the demand side. Using the solar energy for heating is considered to be a
mature technology which already exists in the United Kingdom and is also cost-effective, but
the rate of installation for the glass tubes collectors in very low in this country. But it is
estimated that by 2030 in the household and the south of England could be expected to fulfil
the hot water needs between March and October by the installation of the solar hot watering
system on the roof. To decarbonise within 2030 energy will be required from other sources to
top this rate either when the solar influx is low or in another case if the demand is high. The

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potential to gather solar heating and also to cool in a large building and industrial systems
will remain untapped in the United Kingdom. Biofuels can be used for the production of heat
in the United Kingdom. Development of biofuel for heat production is interdependent for
choices which are made for electricity and transportation fuels and also the time scales proves
to be a difficult task to predict. There also the availability of a large number of sources and
also end products which are used in different aspects. This will help in the production of
useful products at any given time; however certain problems may occur in the development
of this system which includes lack of sufficient microorganisms and also not enough
treatment techniques. According to the analysis, it is predicted that 2nd generation biofuels
plants could spread all over the United Kingdom from 2030 to 2050. In this time gap, it is
expected that there will be rapid development even though technology remains uncertain and
the unknown factor will be algae biofuel production.
In the field of nuclear electric generation, there are two major technologies which are
currently in use for the generation of electricity by nuclear power plants. The techniques or
the methods can be defined as Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor or commonly abbreviated as
AGR and Pressurised Water Reactor or PWR (Zabed et al. 2017). All the current stocks of
the UK current nuclear stock of the nuclear generation capacity, everything is based on AGR
except Sizewell B which follows a different approach. The key difference between these two
technologies is that AGR plants vary the output to meet the fluctuation demand whereas in
case of PWR plants the load flow is limited to a certain extent because the water is
considered to be a neutron moderator. Nuclear plants that are installed in the United Kingdom
is considered to be PWR plants, by the help of it would to possible in the near future to
provide more than just constant base loading supply. However the timescale cannot be
reduced below 1 or 2 hours, limit unlikely to improve without the development of
fundamental new technologies. The generation capacity would fail to respond to steep or

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short-term changes in the demand but would rather significantly reduce the amount of
flexible generation capacity which is needed for meeting the varying demand profile.
Further issues can be the availability of uranium (Lewis 2016.). Sufficient qualities
are available in the United Kingdom to meet its capacity. In the medium term, general
flexibility in technology by the modular construction of the rectors allows in partial updating
and easy maintenance of reactors if parts begin to deteriorate or there is an availability of new
technologies. Microgeneration technologies have matured and are also considered to be a
cost-effective approach for the reduction of demand which is centralised to power sources.
This technology is considered to be cost-effective and can also contribute to carbon dioxide
emission which targets to achieve 30 MW carbon dioxide reduction by 2030 in the United
Kingdom (Gross 2016).
Many technologies which are under consideration are not employed in the United
Kingdom especially heat- pumps and in solar energy collectors. In the year 2008, 5.5 GW
photovoltaic panels were globally installed (Jenkins, Heffron and McCauley 2016). Germany
represented the largest market, and sustained tariff has 2 per cent in the electricity capacity to
meet photovoltaic demand. The photovoltaic cost is gradually decreasing and will reach grid
parties in numerous countries. In the United Kingdom government support will be needed
until 2030 (Bui et al. 2018). It represents technological options for large-scale deployment
that will complement the wind power in terms of seasonal availability in the United Kingdom
(Marsden and Groer 2016). If the electricity demand can be decarbonised completely, there
will be no need for mitigation for the demand to be reduced. There are two ways to reduce
the demand for electricity and heat (Kelemen 2017). The first step includes Technological
improvement either by energy efficiency or by implementing engineering techniques that are
clever or by the use of control system (Cooper and Hammond 2018).

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An example can be taken as in case of fridges there is no need for refrigerating as the
fridges are well insulated and can also be programmed to switch off for a short period during
peak times (Kok and Benli 2017). In public buildings, automatic lighting and other technical
measures can save the loss of energy when they are not in use. Another approach can be
considered as a behavioural change of the end customers. Behavioural change such as seat
belts and smoking inhabits to see that how much energy is consumed by their home have
shown a good response in behaviour. In the case of the transport sector, behavioural change
plays a major role (Dogan 2015). Reduction in the usage of the car can result in non-carbon
social benefits as well which includes a fewer number of accidents, improvement in the air
quality. Reducing the demand in the transport sector is considered to be very difficult in
electricity and heat.
There are several options available to reduce carbon dioxide from the supply of
electricity. The distinct flavour includes electricity generation with inflexible base loading
supply and also intermittent supply which focuses on the wind in the United Kingdom but
also could also include tidal and solar power. According to the research, it has been assumed
that supply of the wind power will be increasing by 10% by 2020, about 20% in the year
2030 and by 35% in the year 2050 (Kannan and Vakeesan 2016.). In 2008, a report was
published that examined the technical feasibility to use the wind energy to meet the 20%
electricity demand within 2030. According to the report of the energy department, the
conclusion came out that to reach 20% demand of wind will require transmission enhancing,
improving the reliability and the operations of wind systems and also increase the United
Kingdom manufacturing capacity. To increase the demand by 20%, it will require the
increased installation of wind turbines approximately ranging from 2000 installation per year
(Dai et al. 2015).

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The green certificate can be defined as a tradable asset which proves that electricity
that is generated by a green energy source. It can also be referred to as the Renewable Energy
Certificate. The green certificate is issued per 1 MWh of renewable power. Green certificated
are issued because of the governmental policies which require the suppliers to gain a certain
percentage of renewable production. The green certificate is opposite to that of the emission
certificate. Its prices depend on the scarcity in the market. The renewables obligation is
designed to encourage the generation of electricity from renewable sources (Leeson et al.
2017). It was introduced in England and a whole different form in Scotland.
In the analysis of the essay, there are certain key finding. Increase in the system
flexibility which brings substantial savings in the cost. The values related to the system
flexibility includes low- carbon powering costs which increase the level of carbon ambition
(Kumar et al. 2016). Saving in terms of cost can be achieved by replacing expensive low-
carbon technologies such as nuclear or CCS. Future development may also affect the volume
of nuclear. New operational techniques such as coordination of the nuclear generation to
reduce the largest creditable loss could results in more attractive in comparison to low-carbon
techniques. In scenarios with lower nuclear capacity and with lower system flexibility it may
turn out to be more cost efficient which contributes to adding a significant amount of CCS
capacity to lower carbon generating mix. If the electrical system is converted to renewable
sources, then the advantage will be like that energy will not run out. It will reduce the
maintenance cost. Renewable resource implementation will save a lot of money, and it will
also benefit the citizen in maintaining their health condition in a better manner. Renewable
resources will also benefit the environment and will also uplift the upfront cost. So, the
conclusion comes that renewable energy has numerous advantages over the non-renewable
source of energy and shortly the government should make efforts to replace the non-
renewable energy sources will renewable energy sources.

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After the analysis of the entire essay the conclusion that the author comes out with is
that with the rapid growth and development of technology renewable energy sources such as
solar energy, wind energy, nuclear energy will be definitely replacing carbon containing
energy sources and also by 2030 implementation of the CCS technique will also increase as it
quite a cheap and easy technique that can be implemented in the electricity system. As
renewable energy sources has numerous advantages over carbon containing energy sources, it
will definitely prove to be advantageous for citizens of UK, as non- renewable energy sources
especially solar and wind energy causes minimum amount of air pollution, and they are also
available in unlimited amount so if the electricity system will be replaced by non-renewable
energy source by 2030 then the problem of energy shortage and power failure will also be
eliminated by a huge extent.

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