Professor Jonathan Stern has written a letter to the Guardian about the possibility of the lights going out. Apparently it's not going to happen, a view that tallies with the view from the markets I reported last week. While I'm not entirely convinced that price spikes will be enough to prevent blackouts, I think it's fair to say that forcing people to switch the lights off through pricing and having their lights switched off for them when the grid can't deliver amounts to the same thing anyway, so it's probably not worth arguing about.
There is, however, plenty in Stern's letter that raises eyebrows:
It's quite correct that a great deal of old coal and nuclear capacity will be retired over the next few years. For the rest of this decade, that will be replaced by as much renewables as can be built (mostly wind) and gas. Most of the gas-fired power generation which is needed has already been built; around 4GW is currently not in operation because it is unprofitable and most of the rest is running at far lower load factors than in previous years. If "the lights threaten to go out", existing gas-fired generation will run at higher load factors and more can quickly be built.
I wasn't aware that any gas fired power stations were not in operation because it was unprofitable to run them, although I know this is happening in Germany. I guess this is the double whammy of low coal prices and subsidised wind power. Presumably the plan is that once the coal fired stations are shut down then gas will pick up again. The idea that we have built all the gas-fired capacity we need strikes me as highly suspect, given that wind power needs 1:1 backup for when conditions are still.
Stern's thoughts on shales are little more than wishful thinking though:
Towards the end of the decade, the UK may produce some shale gas if drilling and fracking prove to be environmentally acceptable; the volumes will not be great and are unlikely to be "cheap" in comparison to imports.
Given the likely size of the resource and the thickness of the shales, it is most likely that the volumes will be large, if the country chooses to exploit them.