For SSE, that involves its plans to invest around £24bn in the UK this decade, including on building major new wind farms, upgrading its electricity cables and developing hydrogen and carbon capture. It and others want the Government to hurry up with subsidy support for these fledgling technologies, however.
Wind power, for example, has been helped for years by long-term fixed price contracts backed by a levy on consumer bills.
“We need long-term pricing mechanisms to be able to secure that investment,” says Raw, arguing that under current arrangements it “just wouldn’t be economically justified” to add carbon capture onto power stations.
“The returns and the economics of building power stations is challenging,” she adds, noting that Keadby 2 “almost didn’t get built”, given uncertainty over its revenues when decisions were being made, and rising carbon prices.
“The board took a huge risk going ahead with it on the basis that we could anticipate the need for it then given everything [other generators] closing down,” she adds. “It was really a leap of faith in understanding that flexible capacity was going to be needed.”
SSE’s Keadby gas-fired power stations are built on the site of the former Keadby coal-fired power station. Grass-covered ash piles are all that’s left of the former, now surrounded by wind turbines. Its plans to burn hydrogen in power stations are based on the expectation that the future energy system will be dominated by offshore wind.
Burning hydrogen in a power plant makes little sense on its own, as hydrogen needs to first be produced either from natural gas or through electrolysis.
SSE’s planned 100pc hydrogen power station, in partnership with Equinor at Keadby, would be a world first. It and others believe hydrogen production can serve a useful role in “soaking up” excess electricity at times of high wind, effectively storing it to later convert back into power.
Critics question, however, whether there will be so much excess electricity given growing numbers of cables trading power with continent, creating new sources of demand. One major challenge identified by Raw is where to store the hydrogen once it is produced. Much more hydrogen is needed to produce the same energy as natural gas when burned in a power plant.
