On 19^th December 2024, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero produced a paper with the title “Electricity generation and supply in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England, 2019 to 2023”. It explains that the “UK data in this article is taken from chapters 5 and 6 of the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics (DUKES) 2024”. (The more detailed DUKES statistical release of 30^th July 2024 can be found here. The December 2024 paper is a relatively short document and contains some interesting statistics. I’ve highlighted a few below.

Key headlines

The opening key headlines are significant. The first one is to the effect that:

UK total electricity generation in 2023 was 293 TWh, a decrease of 9.9 per cent compared to 2022. This is the lowest electricity generation on the published data series.

That UK electricity generation is in decline won’t surprise many people, though the scale of the decline might do (it surprised me). It’s disappointing that the document doesn’t probe the reasons for this and the implications. No doubt there are several reasons – increasing efficiency of electrical goods; the decline of manufacturing, as the UK exports its manufacturing capacity, wealth, jobs and greenhouse gas emissions abroad; increasing reliance on interconnectors. Where this leaves us as we are expected to electrify our heating, cooking, transport is another matter. Demand for electricity is bound to increase, but UK electricity generation is declining rapidly.

The more detailed DUKES paper provides rather more information:

Overall energy demand dropped to levels last seen in the 1950s due to sustained high temperatures and high energy and other prices. Industrial and household use of energy dropped on last year to the lowest levels in over 50 years. Transport demand grew by 4 per cent driven by growth in aviation fuel sales…

Sustained high temperatures as an explanation (even a partial one) strikes me as a combination of wishful thinking and net zero groupthink propaganda. Of course, high energy prices will drive down demand, but to the lowest levels in over half a century? Colour me unconvinced. I remain of the view that we are simply exporting both our problems and our solutions.

Returning to the December summary paper:

Generation from fossil fuel fell in all four nations of the UK compared to 2022. Scotland -36 per cent, Wales -27 per cent, Northern Ireland -19 per cent, England -18 per cent.

The decline in fossil fuel generations comes as no surprise, given the dash to net zero and “decarbonisation” of the UK’s national grid. However, the massive scale of the decline might be more than most people would expect. Although the paper discusses UK electricity generation over the five years from 2019 to 2023 (inclusive), the percentage declines stated are over between 2022 and 2023 only.

Renewable generation trends were mixed across the nations with decreased renewable generation in Scotland and Northern Ireland but increases for England and Wales. Overall, there were record levels of total UK renewable generation.

Again the headline is stark, but not surprising – record levels of total UK renewables generation. Once more, however, there is a surprise within the detail – decreased renewable generation in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Scotland has been, and continues to be, awash with global rent seekers submitting planning application after planning application for solar, wind and BESS developments. This is nothing new. Sadly, it’s part of a process that has been ongoing for years. Each year Scotland sees more of its wild places given up to industrial scale renewables developments. How, then, did renewable generation of electricity in Scotland (and Northern Ireland) decline between 2022 and 2023?

UK nuclear generation decreased by 14 per cent compared to 2022, to the lowest value on the published data series. Nuclear generation increased by 14 per cent in Scotland and decreased by 20 per cent in England where maintenance and refuelling outages took place.

Maintenance and refuelling outages might or might not reasonably explain what is a significant reduction in nuclear generation of electricity, especially in England. It is potentially worrying that the only reliable source of low greenhouse gas emission electricity generation in the UK is under such strain.

The low carbon shares (renewables + nuclear) of electricity generation were 89.6 per cent in Scotland, 57.2 per cent in England, 50.9 per cent in Northern Ireland and 34 per cent in Wales. Total UK low carbon generation share stood at its second highest value on the time series at 60.3 per cent.

The suggestion that Scotland saw 89.6% of its electricity coming from renewables and nuclear is interesting. The chart forming the backdrop to this article is from the paper, and suggests that Scotland generates more electricity than it uses. The only explanation that I can see for this is that “low carbon” generation and fossil fuel generation within Scotland combined exceed Scotland’s needs. That suggests to me a very inefficient system, one where renewables regularly generate both too much and too little, with reliable fossil fuels stepping in to plug the gap, and renewables generation being exported (to the rest of the UK and to Europe via the interconnectors) some of the time, but also being constrained off much of the time. This is no way to run a 21^st century economy’s electricity needs.

Generation patterns were influenced by record imports from Europe. Net imports totalled 23.8 TWh, this was due to favourable price differentials from interconnectors.

I find this import figure surprisingly low, even if it is a record high. It represents well under 10% of the UK’s electricity needs, yet whenever I look (which I do randomly) I rarely see imports in single percentage figures. As I write (late morning on 23^rd December 2024) net imports via the interconnectors are again running at 15.5%. (Solar, by the way, is producing a risible 0.1% of our electricity needs right now). Perhaps imports are at higher levels during the winter (when our need is greatest), or perhaps our electricity (and therefore our energy) security has continued to decline throughout 2024. Either way, it is greatl discouraging to anyone concerned about such matters, as the UK government ought to be.

I also find the explanation for high imports (“this was due to favourable price differentials from interconnectors”) to be dubious, to say the least. It certainly contradicts David Turver’s detailed analysis, which I cited in Speaking Truth to Power, and which I think bears repetition:

We typically pay more than the market price for buys and accept less than market price for sells. Looking at the detailed data, the maximum purchase price was £6,599.98/MWh on 20^th July 2022 when the reference price was £247.91/MWh. The minimum sale price was £-404.71/MWh on 29^th May 2023 when the reference price was £63/MWh. It is also interesting to note that for the whole of 2023, the average sale price was slightly negative (£-0.22/MWh). These negative sales prices mean we paid others to take this electricity off our hands….Again, referring to the graph accompanying his analysis] we can see the blue buy-prices are generally above the market reference price and the orange sell prices are generally below the reference price. In fact, for part of 1^st December, we had to pay over £700/MWh for interconnector supplies when wind generation was low and demand was high. We also paid over £400/MWh on 6^th December even though wind was generating over 6GW. Whereas, over the Christmas period we were paying people to take surplus generation off our hands…As we can see, most of the electricity sold is from 22:00-06:00. There is also a residual tail of sales from 07:00-14:00, reflecting the demand lull in the middle of the day. Most is bought in the morning peak from 05:00-07:00 and then again during the evening peak from 16:00-21:00…As might be expected we are selling most when demand is low and buying when demand is high, reflecting the fact that we are not really in control of generation and cannot use it to match demand….Even though the volumes sold during sleeping hours are high, the value of that electricity is low. In aggregate, the electricity sold during the middle of the day has negative value, so we pay others to take it off our hands. By contrast, we pay through the nose for the electricity we buy at peak hours.

Generation, consumption, and trade

There isn’t too much to note in addition here, beyond the opening key headlines above, though this snippet is interesting:

Generation has been on a downward trend since 2016, though there was a year-on-year increase in 2022 when nuclear outages in France led to increased UK generation for exports.

If we struggle to import what we need (perhaps because Europe finds it hasn’t much if any electricity to spare for us, whether because of a dunkelflaute or a nuclear outage or shortfall), how will we make up the shortfall when we are virtually entirely reliant on unreliable and unpredictable renewable energy for our needs? Especially if the shortfall in imports is the result of a dunkelflaute affecting not only western Europe but also – as is likely in such a scenario – the UK?

The reduction in generation was in line with reduced demand for electricity, shown in the regional tables by reduced consumption of electricity. This fell 1.2 per cent to 269 TWh, another record low figure in the published data series. This was a smaller decrease than the decrease in generation, with increased electricity imports making up the difference.

Reliance on imports, then, to make up the shortfall. I ask again – how does this enhance the UK’s energy security?

Regarding renewable generation, there is another interesting snippet:

Increased capacity saw higher wind and solar generation despite slightly lower average wind speeds and lower average daily sun hours, while hydro and bioenergy generation both fell.

One swallow does not a summer make, and just as one year’s weather tells us nothing about climate, so it tells us nothing about long-term trends in wind speeds and sunshine hours. However, record renewables capacity produced only a “small increase” in renewables generation, due to these factors. If the trend in reducing wind speeds and sunshine hours were to continue, then increasing our reliance on renewables would like like an extremely foolish strategy, undermining one of the oft-stated rationales of increasing the UK’s energy security.

I think this is also interesting:

The UK returned to being a net importer of electricity in 2023 after the atypical net exports in 2022. This was primarily due to electricity price differentials between interconnected countries making interconnectors a cheaper source of electricity compared to the more expensive types of UK based generation.

With the exception of imports from France (which relies heavily on nuclear power to generate its electricity) and from Norway (which relies heavily on hydro) imports to the UK from other European countries will almost certainly involve importing electricity with a much higher fossil fuel content than if we relied solely on our own highly renewables-dependent electricity. This surely contradicts the message from government at two levels. First, it states categorically that such imported electricity is cheaper than home-produced electricity. Secondly, it implies that our increasing reliance on imported electricity from such sources is increasing our reliance on fossil fuels abroad while reducing them at home. Yet again, we are simply exporting our emissions.

Finally in this section, another very worrying snippet for anyone who cares about the UK’s energy security:

The UK’s overall nuclear generation has been on a downward trend since 2019, although increased by a small amount in 2022. Nuclear generation decreased by 14 per cent to 41 TWh in 2023, with ongoing outages as a result of aging infrastructure. There were fewer outages for Scottish plants compared to 2022, which meant their nuclear generation increased by 14 per cent to 9.1 TWh year-on-year. However, England saw a decrease of 20 per cent compared to 2022’s figure. Since the closure of Wylfa in 2015 there has been no nuclear generation in Wales.

Low carbon and renewable electricity

Renewable electricity generation and capacity has increased dramatically in recent years, as the UK strives towards a cleaner future, working towards its goal to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The House of Commons Library website has a page dedicated to UK domestic energy prices. While this demonstrates a price spike in electricity around the start of the war in Ukraine, it is also true that electricity prices have risen remorselessly in line with the increasing proportion of renewables in the UK’s electricity generation mix. As the Commons Library says:

Electricity prices increased for much of the last decade. Average bills were £769 in 2021 compared to £450 in 2010, a 36% real increase.

Prices have, of course, risen substantially since then.

We are also treated to a repeat of the strange truth that while capacity for wind generation has increased in Scotland, actual generation there has decreased:

Wind power accounted for 53.4 per cent of Scotland’s generation in 2023, the highest wind share for any nation and more than double the proportion of English and Welsh wind generation (22.7 per cent and 22.5 per cent respectively). Wind generation increased in Wales and England but decreased in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

As for the “low carbon” claims about UK electricity generation, it needs to be borne in mind that a substantial proportion of this comes from a source that in any sane accounting system wouldn’t qualify for the title – biomass. Even this, it seems, is in some trouble:

Bioenergy was the second largest category of renewable generation in 2023, at 11.7 per cent of total generation. Since the conversion of coal units at Lynemouth and Drax to biomass in 2018, most bioenergy generation by major power producers takes place at these two sites, which are both in England. Bioenergy generation decreased 5.9 per cent in 2023 across the UK, with outages at key sites reducing the generation. These trends were similar for England (down 5.3 per cent) and Wales (down 7.3 per cent) with generation remaining consistent in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

As for solar, poor Scotland continued to bear the brunt of the onslaught from the subsidy-seekers, though it’s a problem which is increasingly establishing itself in the English countryside too. One wonders why the government is so keen on this, given the worrying statistics:

Solar generation increased in 2023 by 4.1 per cent, compared to a 9.0 per cent increase in capacity. Average daily sun hours were lower than in 2022, and slightly below the 20-year mean.

A 9% increase in capacity produced a 4.1% increase in generation. That doesn’t look good. And hydro is struggling too:

The vast majority of the UK’s hydro generation assets are in Scotland. There were no changes in capacity but lower average monthly rainfall in some months of 2023 meant hydro generation decreased by 2.2 per cent across the UK as a whole, with a decrease of 4.8 per cent in Scotland.

So here we are, increasingly dependent on weather-related sources of electricity generation, at the very time when the Weather Gods are ceasing to smile on them. Brilliant! Surely it’s obvious that enough is enough.