A new analysis shows that Britain can cut gas use from the power sector by 2030 (5 years early compared to current targets) and that this would save large amounts of money.
How much do you say? it is thought to amount to £93 billion saved, by avoiding fossil gas consumption.
Already in 2023, it is cheaper to produce power from onshore wind by 6 times than it is by gas. Now of course, it needs to be remembered that, with the British government placating wealthy land owners, by refusing almost all planning permission for onshore wind, that at the current rate this would not be realized.
If the UK is to be able to turn off gas power plants completely, we are going to need roughly 90 GW capacity of wind and large scale solar by 2030. Insanely, there are enough wind and solar projects in the pipeline to meet this need, if all are given approval and are then constructed.
It could be argued after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that this move would be required from a security point of view (not to mention the fact that it seems very foolish to supply large amounts of money to a country that is our biggest threat. Roughly a 1 gigawatt solar farm would cost around up to 2 billion pounds, which means enough solar to cut out our need for gas would cost around £60 billion.
How much cheaper would it be for the power companies, once the solar (and probable batteries) investments have been made? I would suggest close to 100%, as while there will be some maintenance costs, these will probably be lower than the costs of maintaining a large complicated gas power plant.
In the UK the power plant giving the largest amount of gas to the grid is Pembroke B Power Station, which is rated at 2.2 gigawatts of electricity. As 1 gigawatt of solar takes up about 2.8 acres (1.1 hectaires), even if you said, that as it would only create electricity during the day, it would have to be doubled, you are only talking about under 5 hectares – smaller than what is needed for a gas power plant.
So what does this tell us? Abandoning gas 5 years early
- will save money on peoples bills
- will save land, if gas power plants were replaced by solar
- will avoid funding Russia’s attacks on Europe
- will lead to genuine power security, as we will be producing our own, without needing power from abroad.
This list of reasons beg the question, why is the government helping fund this transition?
