High Energy Public Engagement

"Energy and persistence conquer all things" - Benjamin Franklin

Muddy boots, leaking tents, and a home-made power station firing ping-pong balls at delighted festival goers as the heavens opened somewhere deep in the Welsh Black Mountains - this was public engagement at its most extreme!

It all started very sedately around a warm and dry meeting table where PhD students from the Doctoral Training Centre in Low Carbon Technologies at the University of Leeds as well as representatives from the University of Bristol and University College London learned of RCUK’s plan to fund an ambitious public engagement project with the theme of Energy at the Green Man music festival in Wales.

The Low Carbon Carrot - contracts for difference

"Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world." - Thomas Carlyle 

Contracts for difference, or to give them their full name FIT CfD (Feed in tariff with contract for difference) are the UK government's proposed mechanism for providing incentives for future investment in low carbon electricity generation.

Why are they important?

FIT CfD is part of the wider proposals contained within the Electricity Market Reform White paper published in 2011 and further refined in the Draft Energy Bill in 2012. An overhaul of the UK electricity market is urgently required for several reasons:

1. Expected loss of around 25% of UK generating capacity in next ten years as older plants close.
2. Commitment to 15% energy from renewables by 2020.
3. Legally binding target of 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050.

A Low Carbon Economy – absorbing the shock

'Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.' - Thomas Huxley 

In many countries, including the UK, there is a very fortunate synergy between climate change policy and economic stability.

The UK is a net importer of fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas, making it vulnerable to price shocks caused by events which may be completely out of the control of UK policy. This is precisely why we hear so much talk about energy security.

A volatile world

In addition to the pressing climate change issues, reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels is vital in achieving economic stability in a volatile world. Policies which encourage energy efficiency and increase capacity of ‘home grown’ energy such as solar, wind and to some extent nuclear, can thus be seen to be beneficial on more than one level.

DECC recently commissioned a study by Oxford Economics on this very subject. The report ‘Fossil fuel price shocks and a low carbon economy’ can be accessed here.

The focus of the study was the effect on the UK economy of an oil and gas price shock (i.e. a sudden and unexpected rise in the import cost of these commodities). A quick look at a graph of oil prices over the last few decades demonstrates that there is a clear historical precedent for such shocks.