Britain is set to begin building gas power plants once again, in a move prime minister Rishi Sunak said will stave off blackouts in the push to net zero.
New plants, which will not include any measures to capture carbon emissions, will replace the UK’s ageing gas stations, many of which will be due for decommissioning soon.
According to Sunak, the addition of new 'unabated' plants is a “common sense” approach to net zero.
“We will deliver net zero, but not by piling thousands of pounds worth of costs on to hard-pressed households, and not by imperilling national security by relying on the likes of Russia,” he wrote in The Telegraph.
His comments came ahead of a speech by Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho on Tuesday when she will unveil proposals for the energy market.
“Without gas backing up renewables, we face the genuine prospect of blackouts,” she will say in the speech at Chatham House.
The government has previously pledged to fully decarbonise the UK’s energy grid by 2035, with a parliamentary report last year finding such targets were at risk due to delays in building new nuclear plants, as well as onshore and offshore wind.
Despite the UK hitting 15 gigawatts of installed onshore wind capacity over the weekend, an effective ban meant just one turbine was built in England since early 2023.
Greenpeace said the plan to use gas would simply make the UK “more dependent on the very fossil fuel that sent our bills rocketing and the planet's temperature soaring,”
The government’s plan comes as electricity demand is expected to soar in the coming years, as electric vehicles and heat pumps become more widely used.
New gas plants, which will supposedly not put the 2035 target in jeopardy, will be supported by the capacity market, which ensures supply at times of high demand and is funded by billpayers.