Britain: With so many of its power plants getting older, Britain has a tough choice to make over whether to build new ones or renovate the old ones with modern technology. The nation aims to use gas as a backup fossil fuel source while promoting the use of renewable energy sources like nuclear and wind power to meet its need for 5 gigawatts (GW) of power plants. Blackouts might occur in Britain without gas, and by 2050, the nation hopes to have zero net carbon emissions.
To mitigate its carbon emissions, Britain is turning to hybrid power plants that use gas as a backup supply. These facilities will be equipped with carbon capture systems. Experts, however, not persuaded by the gas option because the UK’s cost of living crisis is partly due to the high cost of gas, which has an impact on electricity bills. The zonal market is the suggested remedy, in which the cost of electricity would differ from region to region and not remain at the national peak.
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According to Britain’s Energy Minister Claire Coutinho, blackouts are a real possibility, If gas not used to support renewable energy sources. Greenpeace’s policy director in the UK, Dr Dough Parr, voiced his concerns about the government plan, saying that it would increase Britain’s reliance on the very fossil fuel that drove up prices and raised global temperatures.
The British government pledges to use technology to reduce carbon emissions and develop more effective means of obtaining a steady supply of electricity from renewable sources alone. The best course of action would be to phase out fossil fuels and entirely transition to renewable energy sources, but this sounds like a utopian goal. Increasing the percentage of renewable energy sources while proportionately lowering the percentage of fossil fuels would be a compromise. The shift to a more environmentally friendly energy system would go more smoothly if methods discovered to make renewable energy a practical and dependable source of energy.
