Last week an energy bill was published in the UK, which aims to support the government's plans to reorganize the electricity market and attract £110 billion investment in low carbon energy sources. The bill’s essential element is the new financial mechanism for supporting energy sources with low emissions of carbon dioxide which will replace the existing system in 2017. Unlike the existing mechanism, the new one will support low-carbon and non-renewable resources as well, including nuclear power and carbon capture systems (CCS). Critics of the bill fear that the renewables sector could lose out to nuclear.
According to the British Minister of Energy, the new bill will provide investors with "transparency, longevity and certainty" in the construction of low-carbon infrastructure that is needed to compensate for approximately one fifth of production capacity, which must be replaced in the next decade due to end of service life of some large power plants.
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