If you'll forgive the personal plug, one of the arresting facts from the Economic Research Council's Digest of Energy Statistics 2008 published today is that whilst the UK is still struggling to get a nuclear replacement programme up and running to build a handful of plants, China has 7 under construction, 24 planned and a further 76 proposed. As reported today, that amounts to a serious competitive challenge for skills and resources that the government has yet to factor in. Not many companies have the know how and strength to build and finance nuclear power plants. Thus far, the UK appears to be putting all its eggs in the EDF-Areva basket. Would that they understood that long-term investment in clean and secure energy supplies requires long-term - at much lower cost to the consumer - incentives for investors. Alas, the government is still mired in a reality distortion field which posits that White Papers and Big Public Announcements rather than stimulating private companies can deliver nuclear power stations.
In the meantime, a few other findings from the Digest . . .
GAS - the most compelling long-term statistic (see table 2) is simply that over 55% of gas reserves are located in the Russian Federation, Iran & Qatar. Worryingly, neither Iran or Russia enjoy cordial relations with the UK at present. And then there's coal - 35% of the total burned in UK power stations came from Russia last year.
RENEWABLES - DBERR's recent renewable prices convey a stark message. All renewables except co-firing, onshore wind and hydroelectric cost way above coal, gas and nuclear plant (see table 27).
ENERGY EFFICIENCY - Contrary to received opinion, the UK - with a world ranking of 7 (see table 8) - is a relatively energy efficient economy, it is ahead of Germany and behind only Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland in Europe. The UK produces a healthy $940 of output per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) input. It is however some way behind the world champion, Hong Kong, who produced $1,554 per boe.
ENERGY PRICES - (see table 25) the lowest electricity prices in the EU are in Bulgaria at EUR 0.068 per KWh and the highest are in Denmark at EUR 0.245 per KWh. The lowest gas prices in the EU are in Lithuania at EUR 0.025 per KWh and highest in Denmark at EUR 0.117 per KWh.
