UK Public Willing to Pay for Clean Energy: Survey
Half the British public would back coal and gas-fired power stations being built if they also had carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities, according to a new survey by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Imeche) and published September 25. This is despite the fact that the public mistakenly believes UK retail power prices are already above the European Union average.
The survey, which looked at public views on UK electricity generation, found that the public put security of supply and climate change ahead of lower prices: 35% said that the government’s first priority for generating electricity should be ensuring it was adequate to meet all domestic and industrial needs, 32% saying the priority should be generating electricity that had the least impact on climate and just 23% saying that the top priority should be generating electricity which is cheapest for the consumer.
Imeche's head of energy and environment Jenifer Baxter said the government's decision to abandon CCS showed it was not serious about providing a secure and diverse electricity system: “It is also curious that despite much of the public and political debate over electricity centring on the issue of pricing, the public viewed this as a less important issue than security of supply or the impact on climate change."
"Government must therefore act quickly to introduce legislation which ensures that we continue with EU rules on, for example, improving the efficiency of household items as well as reversing the VAT increase on insulation materials introduced in 2015,” she added.
Other findings of the public perceptions study were that 54% would not support a nuclear power station being located within 10 miles of their home, compared with 52% for a coal-fired power station, 38% for a gas-fired power station, 30% for a biomass power station and 16% for a wind or solar farm.
The survey, carried out by ICM Unlimited, polled 2,009 people on 21-23 July 2017.
Attempts to build CCS in the UK have failed to reach development, although the UK government did promise funding through a commercialisation competition. The Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy, successor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, has not updated its relevant page on state funding and support since November 2015.
The UK has the infrastructure in place to do commercial CCS, having anextensive network of pipelines in place to carry carbon dioxide back to depleted gas fields, for permanent storage in the carboniferous rocks. Observers say that the carbon price, as revealed in the European trading scheme, needs to be many times higher to make CCS economic in the UK or elsewhere.
A parliamentary report in June 2016 called on the UK government to act boldly to make CCS work, by taking equity stakes in key related infrastructure and power plant investments.
William Powell