We'll probably need to, at least, triple electricity supply in the end to move to 'zero carbon'. Double to move vehicles to electricity. Tripling it will also do away with gas boilers. We can't get to zero carbon. There are no plans for zero carbon ocean: frieght, air traffic, nor heavy industry. Just road traffic and domestic heating.
Some UK stats:
- 2018 UK electricity use = 333 TWh
- Average of 2.5 million new vehicles are sold in UK each year (average for last 10 years)
- UK has 38.36 million licensed vehicles.
- Making the average lifetime of a vehicle ~ 15.4 years
- In 2018, total UK motor vehicle fuel use = 37 million tonnes
- UK vehicles use about 430 TWh/year of fuel.
- Motor vehicle traffic was at a record high in 2019 as 356.5 billion vehicle miles (bvm) were driven on Great Britain’s roads, a 2 per cent increase from the previous year.
Assuming higher electric car efficiency, we need to add about 333/15 TWh per year in electricty generation until we've doubled it after about 15 years. About 22 TWh/year. But we're also banning domestic gas boilers! So make that about 13% more electricy per year (about 44 TWh) for 15 years. This is 5GWe of dispatchable plant per year. Nuclear plants take about 6 years from 1st concrete to finish and another year of testing before they are connected to the grid. At least 7 years. I see no plans to build NPPs from 2023. We begin phasing out the existing nuclear fleet in 2022. It should all be decommissioned by 2030.
If we build more wind turbines we need to build natural gas plants to supply dispatchable electricity in a wind lull.
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