Wake up call for UK energy planners – Watts Up With That?

Bill Ponton

Magical thinking about energy may not hold up much longer in the UK.  Disagreements between European nations may scuttle plans for an integrated energy policy and with it the UK fantasy of attaining net zero.  Central to the thinking of energy planners in the UK is the hope that an affordable solution to energy storage will magically appear. Batteries, green hydrogen storage and pumped hydropower storage are all hopelessly impractical and uneconomical. As a result, planners have eyed the vast hydropower potential of Norway. Its hydropower installed capacity is 32 gigawatts (GW). Hydropower accounts for 97% of Norway’s electricity generation. Its hydropower reservoirs have a storage capacity of approximately 85 terawatt-hours (TWh).

UK energy planners look on with envy at Norway’s holdings and have negotiated an agreement to import electricity from Norway via an interconnector. UK planners hoped that Norway would provide the UK with all the electricity that it needed during periods when UK wind and solar generation slackened. They assumed that Norway would take one for the team, so to speak, if the UK got into difficulties with its energy experiment. Afterall, didn’t Norway want to save the planet and reduce the UK carbon footprint. Apparently, not as much as one would have thought. Norway’s electorate has just said no to a scheme for further European grid integration.

This does not bode well for UK planners. They have been increasing their reliance on imported electricity from Norway. The UK’s percentage of imported electricity over interconnects has climbed steadily from 6% in 2022 to 14% in 2024. At a time when natural gas generation has diminished from 39% in 2022 to 26% in 2024 (see figure below).

Natural gas generation compensates for vacillations in wind and solar generation. Imported electricity over interconnects from Norway is now playing a greater role in compensating for those fluctuations. One would think that Norway’s vast hydropower storage capacity would allow it to provide the UK with electricity and not hinder its ability to provide electricity at a consistent, affordable rate to its own citizens, but that is not what has happened.  The UK power fluctuations have led to an increase in electricity price volatility in Norway and the voters don’t like it. They want to quarantine themselves from high electricity prices that inflict the UK and Germany, which also has an interconnector with Norway.

In 2023, Norway turned down a British request for a submarine cable to Scotland, an event which could foreshadow future reluctance to expand interconnect capacity beyond the current design. The UK is facing a dilemma. Scaling back natural gas generation to meet 2030 green electricity targets means becoming more dependent on electricity imports. However, that import strategy depends on the UK being ability to strike a deal with Norway that will not have Norwegians subsidizing the UK green energy experiment.

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