Ed Miliband, Energy and Climate Secretary of the UK has laid draft texts before parliament setting out the national need for a low carbon secure energy mix. In addition, ten of the eleven sites nominated by industry in March have been assessed as potentially suitable for new nuclear deployment by the end of 2025.
The draft National Policy Statements (NPSs) are expected to be a crucial part of reforms that will remove unnecessary planning delays facing large energy proposals. They will also serve as the basis to make individual planning decisions from next March by the new Infrastructure Planning Commission.
Six NPSs have been published, one overarching and one for each of the areas such as fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables, transmission networks and oil and gas pipelines. Under the new system, decisions on proposals bigger than 50MW (or 100MW for offshore wind) will be reduced to one year. Up to GBP300m a year is expected be saved in unnecessary expense incurred by UK industry.
The draft Nuclear NPS sets out why new nuclear power is needed, and that the government is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced by new nuclear power stations.
The ten new nuclear sites that have been identified include: Bradwell, Braystones, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Kirksanton, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa.
Alongside the NPSs, a Framework for the Development of Clean Coal has also been published for transition to clean coal. According to the new policy, all new coal plant will have to show that they will demonstrate the full CCS chain from the outset on at least 300MW net of their total output.
A programme of up to four commercial-scale CCS demonstrations, including both pre-combustion and post-combustion capture technologies, will be funded by a new CCS Incentive. Legislation to introduce this has been proposed for the forthcoming parliamentary session.
The government has received two bids – from E.ON and Scottish Power – to proceed to the next stage of the current CCS demonstration competition. It is expected that contracts for the detailed design stage will be concluded early next year.
In addition, the European Commission has provisionally selected Powerfuels to receive EUR180m to develop a pre-combustion CCS power station at Hatfield. The commission and Powerfuels are now negotiating the terms of the funding.