<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/uk-labour-to-double-onshore-wind-triple-solar-power-and-quadruple-offshore-wind-by-2030/>
"Federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton this week welcomed new UK prime
minister Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory, making a point of the fact that
UK Labour supported nuclear power.
“I take this opportunity to commend Sir Keir Starmer and the UK Labour Party
for their goals to make Britain ‘a clean energy superpower’ and to achieve
‘energy independence’,” Dutton said in a post on X/Twitter.
“The new British Government’s plan includes building new nuclear power stations
and small modular reactors to help the UK ‘achieve energy security and clean
power while securing thousands of good, skilled jobs.’ There is much Australia
can learn from the British experience.”
Indeed there is. For a start, Dutton may also note the part of UK Labour’s
energy policy that he failed to mention, the biggest and most important part,
the fact that it intends to “double onshore wind, triple solar power, and
quadruple offshore wind by 2030.”
In terms of new capacity, that is about double what the federal Labor
government in Australia is seeking to build by 2030, and will take total
offshore wind capacity in the UK to around 55 gigawatts (GW), onshore wind to
30 GW and solar to 50 GW.
Yes, the UK Labour government is interested in building more nuclear plants, it
is after all one of world’s nuclear powers and has a significant nuclear
arsenal. But unlike the Tories it has not set a specific target for nuclear,
and you could bet London to a brick, or even a potato, that none will be built
by 2030.
The reluctance to make a prediction around nuclear is understandable.
When the new energy secretary Ed Milliband was last in the job in 2009, he
promised to deliver 10 nuclear reactors within a decade. Only one started
construction, Hinkley C in Somerset, and likely won’t be completed until 2031,
and could end up costing more than $A90 billion, three times its original
estimate."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
