Diversity and Security in UK Electricity Generation: The Influence of Low Carbon Objectives

Michael Grubb, Lucy Butler and Graham Sinden

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: We explore the relationship between low carbon objectives and the strategic security of electricity in the context of the UK Electricity System. We consider diversity of fuel source mix to represent one dimension of security - robustness against interruptions of any one source - and apply two different diversity indices to the range of electricity system scenarios produced by the UK government and independent researchers. Using data on wind generation we also consider whether a second dimension of security - the reliability of generation availability - is compromised by intermittency of renewable generation. Our results show that low carbon objectives are uniformly associated with greater long-term diversity in UK electricity. We discuss reasons for this result, explore sensitivities, and briefly discuss possible policy instruments associated with diversity and their limitations.

Keywords: Diversity; Security; Low Carbon; Wind Generation; Electricity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q40 Q42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42
Date: 2005-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
Note: CMI, IO
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/electricity/publications/wp/ep74.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/electricity/publications/wp/ep74.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/electricity/publications/wp/ep74.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Diversity and security in UK electricity generation: The influence of low-carbon objectives (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:0511

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Dyer (jd419@cam.ac.uk).