The focus of this submission is on the risks of disruption to electricity supplies, or power outages, where UKERC research provides insights.
Electricity supply in the UK is among the most reliable in the world. This has continued to be the case as the power systems in both Great Britain and on the island of Ireland have been progressively decarbonised with growth of wind and solar power, and a 50% reduction in the emissions intensity of electricity in Britain in less than 10 years. Indeed, by some metrics – ‘customer interruptions’ and ‘customer minutes lost’ – reliability has improved in that time.
Looking forward, the share of traditional fossil fuels in electricity supply will continue to decline and the use of electricity will increase as cars and home heating are electrified. Changes to electricity production technology, if not properly managed, may bring new risks while an increase in the dependence on electricity increases the impacts of outages (i.e. loss of power to homes or businesses). However, there is no particular reason why, given serious attention, we cannot improve system reliability and the ability to recover from disturbances compared with the present day. This will come in part from getting the engineering right and in part from better understanding of impacts that can help us to put measures in places to improve societal resilience.
This response addresses questions 2, 4, 8, 9, 10 and 12, and covers the following issues: