Electricity and gas networks trade body the Energy Networks Association (ENA) said the research would include scrutiny of “the practicality of fully electrified domestic heating” and “the role of gas in the future space and water heating scenarios”.
ENA head of press and public affairs Tony Glover said: “There is a policy void in government and this study is going to fill it. The government has indicated that it sees no role for gas in domestic heating in the future. It has over the past one or two years moved to a more realistic position on gas, but the focus is on using it in generation.”
An ENA-commissioned report last year concluded that phasing out gas could cost consumers £700 billion up to 2050. The proposed study, according to Glover, would “drill down into the detail and ask the question: is there a future for domestic gas?”.
Separately, the UK transmission grid operator National Grid last month published a report showing that, in the most optimistic “gone green” scenario, gas use for domestic heating could fall by more than 90 per cent by 2020. National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios showed household gas use eroded by increasing boiler efficiency, better home insulation and loss of market share as domestic heat pump installations reached 1.2 million by 2020.
The ENA’s announcement came as economic think-tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) dismissed the prospects for renewable generation. In its report Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage? it concluded: “There is no prospect of most renewable technologies being competitive with conventional power sources in the foreseeable future.
“Taxpayers’ money would be far better spent on measures to increase energy efficiency, plus investment in proven nuclear and gas generating capacity.”
Wind energy trade body RenewableUK hit back at the claims. In a statement, the lobby group said it would be difficult to see how the UK could afford the volumes of gas the ASI’s preferred option would require.
Spokesman Gordon Edge said the report was not impartial and was the work of the “same little clique of people repeating the same tired old arguments against renewable energy, regardless of
the facts”.
The ASI’s report capped a busy period for RenewableUK, coming days after pictures of a turbine fire in Scotland made the front pages of the national press and gave further ammunition to the anti-wind lobby (see caption story above).
by Trevor Loveday and Brendan Coyne