Britain must act now or face power shortages within a decade

The Academy study, GB electricity capacity margin, was undertaken at the request of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology (CST) to explore whether the capacity margin of the electricity system could reach unacceptably low levels within this decade.

The Academy working group concluded that although electricity supply will most likely be able to meet demand, it is also likely to stretch the system close to its limits, notably during the winter of 2014-15, increasing the chances of power outages if several adverse events (low wind, cold weather, unplanned plant outages) were to happen at the same time.

To avert these risks, major investment is needed in the UK's electricity system to achieve a modern, sustainable and secure service — however this will come at a cost of higher electricity bills, according to the Academy.

The system is under stress as a number of coal and oil fired power stations face closure unless they take steps to meet European pollution emissions regulations. In addition, four nuclear plants are scheduled to close by 2019, further reducing available capacity.

Dr John Roberts FREng, Chair of the study working group, says:

"Although the combined closures are not expected to bring the total available electricity capacity below the predicted peak demand, a reduced margin in the power available at any given time would reduce the flexibility of the system and increase the chances that otherwise manageable failures could jeopardise the country's power supply."

While the demand for energy is expected to remain fairly constant over the next five years, the generating capacity is likely to fall if energy firms do not reinvest in the UK to modernise or build new plants. There is currently a hiatus in investment, a result mainly of uncertainties over the reform of the electricity market and the current low profitability of gas plant.

The report advises that steps should be taken to prevent further mothballing of gas-fired plant, and to bring forward more demand-side response, both of which could be critical to maintaining an adequate capacity margin.