Lord Deben and his team have issued a response to Owen Paterson's speech last night. There's plenty to take issue with. For example, readers will recall my amusement over their scientific travails over future rainfall, so it's fun to see that they are having similar problems with the temperature trends: they are touting a 0.05 degrees per decade rise as showing that surface temperatures have not stopped. Given that the error in the record appears to be considerably larger than 0.05 degrees in a single year, I think it's fair to say that the trend is indistinguishable from zero.
But perhaps of greater interest is the CCC's response to Paterson's central point, namely that we face a risk that the lights will go out. Here's what Lord D has come up with:
Claim 3: The lights will go out because of decarbonisation
There is no fundamental conflict between decarbonising and keeping the lights on. Keeping the lights on depends on having enough capacity available to meet demand at all times; decarbonisation depends on the bulk of generation coming from low-carbon sources. There are challenges relating to increased penetration of intermittent technologies on the grid, but these can be met given an appropriate response.
CCC, DECC, academia and many others have published many scenarios that decarbonise while maintaining system security. DECC have also introduced a capacity market to ensure sufficient capacity at all times – the first phase of that scheme qualified far more capacity than needed to keep the lights on (over 60GW compared to a 51GW requirement).
STATUS: Rejected. Building low-carbon capacity can help to keep the lights on, supported by capacity incentivised through the capacity market.
It's fair to say that if you flooded every valley in the country and carpeted the oceans and the remaining land with wind turbines, you might be able to generate enough renewable energy to meet demand.
But what the CCC doesn't seem to dispute is that we face a real risk of the lights going out.