Time and tide won’t wait as lights go off
THE lifting of the price cap on electricity has not come as a surprise. The cost of producing electricity continues to rise as demand increases and, conversely, generating plants disappear.
The green lobby wants us to travel using electric power in the future, but Hitachi pulled out of the Wylfa Newydd power station on Anglesey at the beginning of January, and additional capacity in the short term is not immediately apparent.
Just to add to the pressure on costs is the fact that Hinkley Point C station, in North Somerset, will not come on stream until 2025 and when it does, our Government has already contracted to buy the product at just about twice the present price.
Just to add to difficulties is the fact there are no prospective builders for the replacement station for Sellafield which closed in 2013 and is currently being decommissioned.
It is now essential Government loosens up the planning regulations surrounding further wind-farms and encourages developers to use land unfit for agriculture to produce power from solar panels.
If the technical problems associated with tidal generation can be overcome, then there is no reason why all our power could not be produced from the elements plus natural gas. There is already a precedent in place, for South Australia runs entirely on such a combination.
By using such environmental methods, the huge risks relating to the running of nuclear stations, remember Chernobyl and Fukushima, would vanish. So would the horrendous costs of decommissioning such plants.
A barrage across the Severn Estuary would not only provide ten per cent of UK power demands, but would bring many benefits to the upstream coastal holiday spots. Sadly, successive Governments have considered the idea and then rejected it.
The latest setback has been the Swansea barrage recently being given the thumbs down.
Sadly, it looks as if energy prices will continue on an everupward path.
Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings firm
AE Harris