The National Energy System Operator (NESO) has published its Clean Power 2030 (CP30) report, advising the government on the steps it should take to achieve its 2030 targets.
The advice was formally requested by secretary of state for the department of clean energy and net zero, Ed Miliband, and CP30 has been formulated with input from industry stakeholders.
CP30 concludes that while it will be a “huge challenge,” clean power by 2030 is possible. The government will now consider the advice in developing its clean power action plan later this year.
NESO uses ‘clean power’ to describe a scenario in which at least as much power is generated from clean sources as Great Britain consumes across the year, and when unabated gas generation makes up less than 5% of Great Britain’s generation in a typical weather year.
The report suggests several necessary system, market and infrastructure changes in line with two primary pathways that deliver clean power developed by NESO. It also offers two wider sensitivities, which offer more stretching levels of deployment of key technologies.
The pathways “push the limits of what is feasibly deliverable” but allow flexibility at their margins: onshore wind and solar could substitute for offshore wind; more demand-side response could substitute for batteries; more hydrogen or carbon capture and storage (CCS) could substitute for most other supply options.
Both ‘paths’ to clean power see a doubling of onshore wind capacity from 13GW in 2023 to 27GW by 2030 and a trebling of solar from 15GW to 47GW by 2030. NESO’s analysis also suggests that battery energy storage capacity must increase from 5GW in 2023 to 23-27GW in 2030.
Long-duration energy storage (LDES) is also key and grows from 3GW in 2023 to 5 – 8GW in the pathways.
Further reporting on CP30 can be found on our sister site, Current±.
Solar Energy UK: CP30 shows “concerning lack of ambition” for solar
Although the operator’s suggestions have been broadly welcomed by industry figures such as National Grid chief executive John Pettigrew, who called the report an “immensely helpful milestone”, the solar and storage sectors are critical.
Trade association Solar Energy UK said that it does agree with NESO’s conclusion that clean power by 2030 is both achievable and beneficial, and that it will hinge on accelerating new transmission infrastructure, reforming planning and consenting processes and reforming electricity market structures “while ensuring a stable and attractive investment environment”.
However, the trade body argues that CP30 betrays a “limited understanding” of solar generation and battery energy storage leading to a “concerning lack of ambition” for the technologies. The analysis is not of the depth the trade association expected and it states SEUK had little opportunity to contribute to it.
“Solar Energy UK is very concerned that the potential for solar and energy storage has been underplayed in NESO’s Clean Power 30 scenarios and urges the Government to ask some searching questions about the assumptions used. It is impossible to see how the growth of rooftop solar and batteries, on homes, factories and warehouses has been taken into account”, said Solar Energy UK Chief Executive Chris Hewett.
Hewett continued: “Solar farms are the lowest cost and fastest to deploy power generation in the country, many with co-located batteries. Yet the NESO scenarios have no deployment range for solar at all and a conservative range for batteries. This betrays, at best, an oversight, at worst, a fundamental misunderstanding of their potential.”
The practical measures that are needed to further accelerate the growth of the solar industry will be outlined early next year, in the Solar Taskforce’s Solar Roadmap. Miliband recently reconvened the Solar Taskforce, with Hewett at the helm; Solar Energy UK said it looks forward to working with NESO, the government and other stakeholders to make clean power by 2030 a reality.
NESO also sees at least 22.6GW of battery energy storage in 2030, rising to 27.4GW in its ‘Further Flex and Renewables’ pathway, up from 4.7GW in 2023.
Commenting on the report, Oliver Petterson, connections manager at battery storage firm BalancePower, said CP30’s publication was “great to see”.
He continued: “Questions, however, are raised as to whether we are putting too many resources into a single set of technologies in the hope that it will remove the need for gas in the future – yesterday, we saw gas peak at nearly 23GW of our generation, nearly 60% with solar and wind massively struggling due to low wind speeds and low temperatures.”
CP30 does acknowledge the fact that gas tends to be used at times when solar and wind generation are low, meaning deployment of those generational technologies will not directly affect the use of unabated gas.
Petterson suggested that more focus “once again” needs to be placed on energy storage systems of both long and short duration “if we are to achieve grid stability”.
