UK energy minister Amber Rudd said yesterday she wants a new nuclear power station built by 2025 and offshore wind competing with other renewables, and “unabated coal a thing of the past”

However, Rudd appeared to have ruled out rolling out ultra-supercritical low-emission power plant technology that is proliferating across population-dense Asia.

About 30% of the UK’s electricity still comes from unabated coal despite 20 years of climate action, and Rudd figures the biggest potential for carbon cuts, “swiftly and cheaply”, are to be seen in the already under siege coal sector.

“One of the greatest and most cost-effective contributions we can make to emission reductions in electricity is by replacing coal fired power stations with gas,” she said.

“For centuries coal has played a central role in our energy system; but it’s the most carbon intensive fossil fuel and damages air quality. Gas produces half the carbon emissions of coal when used for power generation.

“Unabated coal is simply not sustainable in the longer term. In an ideal world, the carbon price provided by the ETS would phase out coal for us using market signals. But it’s not there yet. So I want to take action now.”

Rudd announced that the government would be launching a consultation in the UK Spring on when to close all unabated coal-fired power stations, with consultation to set out proposals to close coal by 2025 – and restrict its use from 2023.

“If we take this step, we will be one of the first developed countries to deliver on a commitment to take coal off the system,” Rudd said.

“But let me be clear, we’ll only proceed if we’re confident that the shift to new gas can be achieved within these timescales.”

The trick now is where it’ll get all that gas from, as activists and local councils are stalling critical shale development, North Sea gas production is declining and a new geopolitical world is evolving that has threatened gas supplies from Russia.

While the Russian issue is an analysis for another day, the UK’s energy and climate change minister Amber Rudd this week committed the UK to ramp up the construction of new gas-fired power stations over the next decade, phase out old coal-fired ones and pledged “no more blank cheques” for the still-too costly wind sector.

Speaking at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London yesterday, she also backed nuclear, while dissing those who fear it.

Both gas and nuclear are central to the UK’s “secure energy future”, Rudd said, adding that “opponents of nuclear misread the science. It is safe and reliable”

“The challenge, as with other low carbon technologies, is to deliver nuclear power which is low cost as well. Green energy must be cheap energy,” she added.

Her comments provide some interesting context to the debate currently going on in Australia as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his resources minister Josh Frydenberg have both voiced similar sentiments over the past week, even as a Royal Commission investigates the possibility separately for South Australia.

With an underlying premise that climate change is the biggest threat to the UK’s economic security, the priority for the Old Dart is clearly energy security, and Rudd yesterday spelled out how the government would build its energy mix in the context of current global financial conditions and ailing commodity prices.

Wind woes

Rudd said the UK’s huge growth in renewables has not reduced its dependence on coal since former Prime Minister Tony Blair signed the Renewable Energy Target in 2007, as a higher proportion of the country’s electricity came from “the dirtiest fuel” last year than even 1999.

However, the government, which has been criticised for scaling back subsidies for renewables, will not be deterred in this regard, with Rudd reserving her strongest words for the wind sector.

Rudd warned that wind was “still too expensive” despite innovation driving contract costs down by 20% over the past two years.

“So our approach will be different - we will not support offshore wind at any cost,” she said.

“Further support will be strictly conditional on the cost reductions we have seen already accelerating. The technology needs to move quickly to cost-competitiveness.”

If that happens, the government expects to see 10 gigawatts of offshore wind installed by 2020.

“The [wind] industry tells us they can meet that challenge, and we will hold them to it,” Rudd said.

“If they don’t there will be no subsidy. No more blank cheques.”

She also announce that – “if, and only if” the government’s conditions on cost reduction are met – the government would make funding available for three auctions in this Parliament, and intends to hold the first of these auctions by the end of 2016.

“Investors have a right to clarity on our objectives – and that is what I am providing today,” she said.

While government intervention was inevitable to an extent, Rudd made it clear she wanted the government “out of the way as much as possible” in energy policy by 2025, with a consumer-led, competition-focused energy system that will ideally keep costs low and deliver a “clean and reliable” energy system.

The UK currently imports half its gas needs, and this could rise to 75% by 2030, which is why the government is pushing home-grown shale development so hard.

Rudd said there’s plenty of new energy infrastructure already in the pipeline, including a plant at Carrington, a projected large increase in renewables over the next five years and a sure place for new nuclear in the longer-term.

Nuclear will also be a key focus of a renewed effort in what Rudd admitted had been a neglected field –energy research and development – to scale up and compete in a global market without subsidy.

DECC funding for innovation is already supporting the development of transformative technologies in the UK in energy storage, low carbon transport fuels and more efficient lighting.

These and many more examples, such as CCS, point to the creation of new industries and new jobs in the UK, Rudd said.

“We must also build on our rich nuclear heritage and become a centre for global nuclear innovation,” she added.

“This means exploiting our world leading technical expertise at centres of excellence at universities in Manchester, Sheffield and Lancaster.

“It also means exploring new opportunities like small modular reactors, which hold the promise of low cost, low carbon energy.”