The Energy Department has not finished plans to consolidate storage of nuclear bomb fuel and other high-risk materials now spread among numerous sites, even though the department said in 2005 that it would do so within about a year, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report.
As a result, the department is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defend additional sites.
The G.A.O. had reported that the Energy Department was putting off making security improvements at some of the storage sites because the sites were due to be phased out. But the new report makes clear that the goal of shutting down some obsolete weapons and research centers, and simplifying the security job by centralizing “special nuclear material,” as bomb fuel is called, has yet to advance from concept to plan, let alone to finished project.
The Energy Department “has completed only two of the eight implementation plans for consolidating and disposing of special nuclear material,” the new report found, and it cited problems with those two plans.
Representative Joe L. Barton, the Texas Republican who is the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and who requested the study, said in a statement: “We’re just trying to get to the point where the D.O.E. has a plan. Two years have passed by since we asked about a plan, and still no plan.”
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Energy Department, did not dispute that planning was moving more slowly than anticipated but said that shipments of some radioactive materials had begun. The spokesman, Bryan Wilkes, said the department had to acquire certification of the storage and shipping containers, institute security and safety requirements, and address legal and environmental impacts.
“Whenever special nuclear materials are moved, a lot of unforeseen challenges arise,” he said in an e-mail message. “When planning an operation of this size and sensitivity, key issues of security, safety, environmental responsibility and public input take precedence over schedules.”
On Oct. 7, 2005, Charles E. Anderson, the principal deputy assistant secretary of environmental management, testified before Mr. Barton, who was then the chairman of the committee, and said he wanted to finish the planning “within a year or two,” and recognized “the urgency to make that closer to a year.” Asked if the department needed more money or other help from Congress to wrap up the planning, Mr. Anderson said no.
The concept is to remove plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in a part of California that is now largely suburban; surplus plutonium from the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State, a site that is mostly being decommissioned; and plutonium-238, used to generate heat for space probes, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Highly enriched uranium from Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, and plutonium and uranium-233 from Los Alamos, also in New Mexico, would also be moved. Uranium-233 was manufactured decades ago from thorium, and can be used in weapons but is now considered impractical for that purpose.
The various materials would go to another Tennessee site, Y-12; the Savannah River Site, in South Carolina; Pantex, near Amarillo, Tex.; the Nevada Test Site; and the Idaho National Laboratory.
The report says that one problem is poor coordination among different parts of the department, including the divisions of environmental management, defense programs and nuclear energy. It said that terrorists might invade one of the sites and detonate a weapon, assemble an improvised nuclear explosive from the materials at hand or steal a weapon for use elsewhere.
A Republican staff member on the committee said that some of the plans might face local opposition at some point, but that so little had been done that so far there was little to which to object.
The G.A.O. said the Energy DepartmentÂ’s goal was to finish consolidating the material by 2008, but that this was unlikely.
FPL Rate Increase Proposal 2026-2029 outlines $9B base-rate hikes as Florida grows, citing residential demand, grid infrastructure investments, energy mix diversification, and Florida PSC review impacting customer bills, reliability, and fuel price volatility mitigation.
Key Points
A $9B base-rate plan FPL filed with the Florida PSC to fund growth, grid upgrades, and energy diversification through 2029.
✅ Adds 275k since 2021; +335k customers projected by 2029.
✅ Monthly bills rise to about $157 by 2029, up ~22% total.
✅ Investments in poles, wires, transformers, substations, renewables.
Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state's largest utility provider, has submitted a proposal to the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) seeking a substantial increase in customer base rates over the next four years, amid ongoing scrutiny, including a recent hurricane surcharge controversy that heightened public attention.
Rationale Behind the Rate Increase
FPL's request is primarily influenced by Florida's robust population growth. Since 2021, the utility has added about 275,000 customers and projects an additional 335,000 by the end of 2029. This surge necessitates significant investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure, including poles, wires, transformers, and substations, to maintain reliable service. Moreover, FPL aims to diversify its energy mix to shield customers from fuel price volatility, even as the state declined federal solar incentives that could influence renewable adoption, ensuring a stable and sustainable power supply.
Impact on Customer Bills
If approved, the proposed rate increases would affect residential customers as follows:
2026: An estimated increase of $11.52 per month, raising the typical bill to $145.66.
2027: An additional $6.05 per month, bringing the bill to $151.71.
2028: A further increase of $3.64 per month, totaling $155.35.
2029: An extra $2.06 per month, resulting in a final bill of $157.41.
These adjustments represent a cumulative increase of approximately 22% over the four-year period, while in other regions some customers face sharper spikes, such as Pennsylvania's winter price increases this season.
Comparison with Previous Rate Hikes
This proposal follows a series of rate increases approved in recent years, as California electricity bills have soared and prompted calls for action in that state. For instance, Tampa Electric Co. (TECO) received approval for rate hikes totaling $287.9 million in 2025, with additional increases planned for 2026 and 2027. Consumer groups have expressed intentions to challenge these rate hikes, indicating a trend of growing scrutiny over utility rate adjustments.
Regulatory Review Process
The PSC is scheduled to review FPL's rate increase proposal in the coming months. A staff recommendation is expected by March 14, 2025, with a final decision anticipated at a commission conference on March 20, 2025. This process allows for public input and thorough evaluation of the proposed rate changes, while elsewhere some utilities anticipate stabilization, such as PG&E's 2025 outlook in California.
Customer and Consumer Advocacy Responses
The proposed rate hikes have elicited concerns from consumer advocacy groups. Organizations like Food & Water Watch have criticized the scale of the increase, labeling it as the largest rate hike request in U.S. history, amid mixed signals such as Gulf Power's one-time 40% bill decrease earlier this year. They argue that such substantial increases could place undue financial strain on households, especially those with fixed incomes.
Additionally, the Florida Public Service Commission has faced challenges in approving rate hikes for other utilities, such as TECO, and a recent Florida court decision on electricity monopolies that may influence the policy landscape, with consumer groups planning to appeal these decisions. This backdrop of heightened scrutiny suggests that FPL's proposal will undergo rigorous examination.
As Florida continues to experience rapid growth, balancing the need for infrastructure development and reliable energy services with the financial impact on consumers remains a critical challenge. The PSC's forthcoming decisions will play a pivotal role in shaping the state's energy landscape, influencing both the economy and the daily lives of Floridians.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Germany Industrial Electricity Price Subsidy weighs subsidies for energy-intensive industries to bolster competitiveness as Germany shifts to renewables, expands grid capacity, and debates free-market tax cuts versus targeted relief and long-term policies.
Key Points
Policy to subsidize power for energy-intensive industry, preserving competitiveness during the energy transition.
✅ SPD backs 5-7 cents per kWh for 10-15 years
✅ FDP prefers tax cuts and free-market pricing
✅ Scholz urges cheap renewables and grid expansion first
Germany’s three-party coalition is debating whether electricity prices for energy-intensive industries should be subsidised in a market where rolling back European electricity prices can be tougher than it appears, to prevent companies from moving production abroad.
Calls to reduce the electricity bill for big industrial producers are being made by leading politicians, who, like others in Germany, fear the country could lose its position as an industrial powerhouse as it gradually shifts away from fossil fuel-based production, amid historic low energy demand and economic stagnation concerns.
“It is in the interest of all of us that this strong industry, which we undoubtedly have in Germany, is preserved,” Lars Klingbeil, head of Germany’s leading government party SPD (S&D), told Bayrischer Rundfunk on Wednesday.
To achieve this, Klingbeil is advocating a reduced electricity price for the industry of about 5 to 7 cents per Kilowatt hour, which the federal government would subsidise. This should be introduced within the next year and last for about 10 to 15 years, he said.
Under the current support scheme, which was financed as part of the €200 billion “rescue shield” against the energy crisis, energy-intensive industries already pay 13 cents per Kilowatt hour (KWh) for 70% of their previous electricity needs, which is substantially lower than the 30 to 40 cents per KWh that private consumers pay.
“We see that the Americans, for example, are spending $450 billion on the Inflation Reduction Act, and we see what China is doing in terms of economic policy,” Klingbeil said.
“If we find out in 10 years that we have let all the large industrial companies slip away because the investments are not being made here in Germany or Europe, and jobs and prosperity and growth are being lost here, then we will lose as a country,” he added.
However, not everyone in the German coalition favours subsidising electricity prices.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the liberal FDP (Renew), for example, has argued against such a step, instead promoting free-market principles and, amid rising household energy costs, reducing taxes on electricity for all.
“Privileging industrial companies would only be feasible at the expense of other electricity consumers and taxpayers, for example, private households or the small trade sector,” Lindner wrote in an op-ed for Handelsblatt on Tuesday.
“Increasing competitiveness for some would mean a loss of competitiveness for others,” he added.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, himself a member of SPD, was more careful with his words, amid ongoing EU electricity reform debates in Brussels.
Asked about a subsidised electricity price for the industry at a town hall event on Monday, Scholz said he does not “want to make any promises now”.
“First of all, we have to make sure that we have cheap electricity in Germany in the first place,” Scholz said, promoting the expansion of renewable energy such as wind and solar, as local utilities cry for help, as well as more electricity grid infrastructure.
“What we will not be able to do as an economy, even as France’s new electricity pricing scheme advances, is to subsidise everything that takes place in normal economic activity,” Scholz said. “We should not get into the habit of doing that,” he added.
Germany Nuclear Power Extension debated as Olaf Scholz weighs energy crisis, gas shortages from Russia, slow grid expansion in Bavaria, and renewables delays; stress test results may guide policy alongside coal plant reactivations.
Key Points
A proposal to delay Germany's nuclear phaseout to stabilize power supply amid gas cuts and slow grid upgrades.
✅ Driven by Russia gas cuts and Nord Stream 1 curtailment
The German chancellor on Wednesday said it might make sense to extend the lifetime of Germany's three remaining nuclear power plants.
Germany famously decided to stop using atomic energy in 2011, and the last remaining plants were set to close at the end of this year.
However, an increasing number of politicians have been arguing for the postponement of the closures amid energy concerns arising from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The issue divides members of Scholz's ruling traffic-light coalition.
What did the chancellor say? Visiting a factory in western Germany, where a vital gas turbine is being stored, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was responding to a question about extending the lifetime of the power stations.
He said the nuclear power plants in question were only relevant for a small proportion of electricity production. "Nevertheless, that can make sense," he said.
The German government has previously said that renewable energy alternatives are the key to solving the country's energy problems.
However, Scholz said this was not happening quickly enough in some parts of Germany, such as Bavaria.
"The expansion of power line capacities, of the transmission grid in the south, has not progressed as quickly as was planned," the chancellor said.
"We will act for the whole of Germany, we will support all regions of Germany in the best possible way so that the energy supply for all citizens and all companies can be guaranteed as best as possible."
The phaseout has been planned for a long time. Germany's Social Democrat government, under Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schröder, had announced that Germany would stop using nuclear power by 2022 as planned.
Schröder's successor Angela Merkel — herself a former physicist — had initially sought to extend to life of existing nuclear plants to as late as 2037. She viewed nuclear power as a bridging technology to sustain the country until new alternatives could be found.
However, Merkel decided to ditch atomic energy in 2011, after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, setting Germany on a path to become the first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear in tandem.
Nuclear power accounted for 13.3% of German electricity supply in 2021. This was generated by six power plants, of which three were switched off at the end of 2021. The remaining three — Emsland, Isar and Neckarwestheim — were due to shut down at the end of 2022.
Germany's energy mix 1st half of 2022 The need to fill an energy gap has emerged after Russia dramatically reduced gas deliveries to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, though nuclear power would do little to solve the gas issue according to some officials. Officials in Berlin say the Kremlin is seeking to punish the country — which is heavily reliant on Moscow's gas — for its support of Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.
Germany has already said it will temporarily fire up mothballed coal and oil power plants in a bid to solve the looming power crisis.
Social Democrat Scholz and Germany's energy minister, Robert Habeck, from the Green Party, a junior partner in the three-way coalition government, had previously ruled out any postponement of the nuclear phasout, despite debate over a possible resurgence of nuclear energy among some lawmakers. The third member of Scholz's coalition, the neoliberal Free Democrats, has voiced support for the extension, as has the opposition conservative CDU-CSU bloc.
Berlin has said it will await the outcome of a new "stress test" of Germany's electric grid before deciding on the phaseout.
Air-gen Protein Nanowire Generator delivers clean energy by harvesting ambient humidity via Geobacter-derived conductive nanowires, generating continuous hydrovoltaic electricity through moisture gradients, electrodes, and proton diffusion for sustainable, low-waste power in diverse climates.
Key Points
A device using Geobacter protein nanowires to harvest humidity, producing continuous DC power via proton diffusion.
✅ 7 micrometer film between electrodes adsorbs water vapor.
✅ Output: ~0.5 V, 17 uA/cm2; stack units to scale power.
✅ Geobacter optimized via engineered E. coli for mass nanowires.
They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange "sediment organism" that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria.
This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the absence of oxygen, but with time scientists found it could make other things too, like bacterial nanowires that conduct electricity.
For years, researchers have been trying to figure out ways to usefully exploit that natural gift, and they might have just hit pay-dirt with a device they're calling the Air-gen. According to the team, their device can create electricity out of… well, almost nothing, similar to power from falling snow reported elsewhere.
"We are literally making electricity out of thin air," says electrical engineer Jun Yao from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "The Air-gen generates clean energy 24/7."
The claim may sound like an overstatement, but a new study by Yao and his team describes how the air-powered generator can indeed create electricity with nothing but the presence of air around it. It's all thanks to the electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by Geobacter (G. sulfurreducens, in this instance).
The Air-gen consists of a thin film of the protein nanowires measuring just 7 micrometres thick, positioned between two electrodes, referencing advances in near light-speed conduction in materials science, but also exposed to the air.
Because of that exposure, the nanowire film is able to adsorb water vapour that exists in the atmosphere, offering a contrast to legacy hydropower models, enabling the device to generate a continuous electrical current conducted between the two electrodes.
The team says the charge is likely created by a moisture gradient that creates a diffusion of protons in the nanowire material.
"This charge diffusion is expected to induce a counterbalancing electrical field or potential analogous to the resting membrane potential in biological systems," the authors explain in their study.
"A maintained moisture gradient, which is fundamentally different to anything seen in previous systems, explains the continuous voltage output from our nanowire device."
The discovery was made almost by accident, when Yao noticed devices he was experimenting with were conducting electricity seemingly all by themselves.
"I saw that when the nanowires were contacted with electrodes in a specific way the devices generated a current," Yao says.
"I found that exposure to atmospheric humidity was essential and that protein nanowires adsorbed water, producing a voltage gradient across the device."
Previous research has demonstrated hydrovoltaic power generation using other kinds of nanomaterials – such as graphene-based systems now under study – but those attempts have largely produced only short bursts of electricity, lasting perhaps only seconds.
By contrast, the Air-gen produces a sustained voltage of around 0.5 volts, with a current density of about 17 microamperes per square centimetre, and complementary fuel cell solutions can help keep batteries energized, with a current density of about 17 microamperes per square centimetre. That's not much energy, but the team says that connecting multiple devices could generate enough power to charge small devices like smartphones and other personal electronics – concepts akin to virtual power plants that aggregate distributed resources – all with no waste, and using nothing but ambient humidity (even in regions as dry as the Sahara Desert).
"The ultimate goal is to make large-scale systems," Yao says, explaining that future efforts could use the technology to power homes via nanowire incorporated into wall paint, supported by energy storage for microgrids to balance supply and demand.
"Once we get to an industrial scale for wire production, I fully expect that we can make large systems that will make a major contribution to sustainable energy production."
If there is a hold-up to realising this seemingly incredible potential, it's the limited amount of nanowire G. sulfurreducens produces.
Related research by one of the team – microbiologist Derek Lovley, who first identified Geobacter microbes back in the 1980s – could have a fix for that: genetically engineering other bugs, like E. coli, to perform the same trick in massive supplies.
"We turned E. coli into a protein nanowire factory," Lovley says.
"With this new scalable process, protein nanowire supply will no longer be a bottleneck to developing these applications."
UK Peak Power Prices surged as low wind speeds forced National Grid to rely on gas-fired plants and coal generation, amid soaring wholesale gas prices and weak wind generation during the energy crisis.
Key Points
UK Peak Power Prices are electricity costs at peak hours, driven by wind output, gas reliance, and market dynamics.
✅ Spikes when wind generation drops and demand rises.
✅ Driven by gas-fired plants, coal backup, and wholesale gas prices.
✅ Moderate as wind output recovers and interconnectors supply.
Low wind speeds pushed peak hour power prices to the second highest level for at least three years on Monday, a move consistent with UK electricity prices hitting a 10-year high earlier this year, as Britain’s grid was forced to increase its reliance on gas-fired power plants and draw on coal generation.
Calm weather this year has exacerbated the energy price crisis in the UK, as gas-fired power stations have had to pick up the slack from wind farms. Energy demand has surged as countries open up from pandemic restrictions, which together with lower supplies from Russia to western Europe, has sent wholesale gas prices soaring.
Power prices in the UK for the peak evening period between 5pm and 6pm on Monday surpassed £2,000 per megawatt hour, only the second time they have exceeded that level in recent years.
This was still below the levels reached at the height of the gas price crisis in mid-September, when they hit £2,500/MWh, according to the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight, whose records date back to 2018.
Low wind speeds were the main driver behind Monday’s price spike, although expectations of a pick-up in wind generation on Tuesday, after recent record wind generation days, should push them back down to similar levels seen in recent weeks, analysts said.
Despite the expansion of renewables, such as wind and solar, over the past decade, with instances of wind leading the power mix in recent months, gas remains the single biggest source of electricity generation in Britain, typically accounting for nearly 40 per cent of output.
At lunchtime on Monday, gas-fired power plants were producing nearly 55 per cent of electricity, while coal accounted for 3 per cent, reflecting more power from wind than coal in 2016 milestones. Britain’s wind farms were contributing 1.67 gigawatts or just over 4 per cent, according to data from the Drax Electrics Insights website. Over the past 12 months, wind farms have produced 21 per cent of the UK’s electricity on average.
National Grid, which manages the UK’s electricity grid, has been forced on a number of occasions in recent months to ask coal plants to fire up to help offset the loss of wind generation, after issuing a National Grid short supply warning to the market. The government announced in June that it planned to bring forward the closure of the remaining coal stations to the end of September 2024.
Ministers also committed this year to making Britain’s electricity grid “net zero carbon” by 2035, and milestones such as when wind was the main source underline the transition, although some analysts have pointed out that would not signal the end of gas generation.
Since the start of the energy crisis in August, 20 energy suppliers have gone bust as they have struggled to secure the electricity and gas needed to supply customers at record wholesale prices, with further failures expected in coming weeks.
Phil Hewitt, director of the consultancy EnAppSys, said Monday’s high prices would further exacerbate pressures on those energy suppliers that do not have adequate hedging strategies. “This winter is a good time to be a generator,” he added.
Energy companies including Orsted of Denmark and SSE of the UK have reported some of the lowest wind speeds for at least two decades this year, even though record output during Storm Malik highlighted the system's volatility.
According to weather modelling group Vortex, the strength of the wind blowing across northern Europe has fallen by as much as 15 per cent on average in places this year, which some scientists suggest could be due to climate change.
