Utility Week

"I don't think that disruption to society and the economy is ever a good thing" Fintan Slye, director of National Grid's Electricity System Operator, says the technology exists now to run the electricity grid without carbon emissions, but it is not advanced enough yet to be deployed at a commercial scale. UTILITY WEEK | 25TH - 31ST OCTOBER 2019 | 5 ELECTRICITY Ofgem turns down SSEN's cable link Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has said it is "urgently reviewing" Ofgem's deci- sion to refuse its £30 million fund- ing request for the Pentland Firth subsea cable replacement project. The decision was part of £258 million in funding rejected by Ofgem under the RIIO-ED1 network price control. Ofgem said the projects were either not justified or were poor value for money. SSEN said it was surprised at the decision and would be reviewing its options for the link. PAN-UTILITY CCC: UK could face civil unrest over net zero costs The government should look to the gilets jaunes movement in France as evidence of the importance of a fair distribution of costs when setting decarbonisation polices. That was the warning from Committee on Climate Change (CCC) chairman Lord Deben, who has written to the Treasury outlining considerations for its review of how a transition to a net zero economy should be funded. In the letter, he also announced that the CCC was bringing forward its sixth carbon budget by three months. The advice, which will guide ministers on the volume of greenhouse gases the UK should be allowed to emit during the period 2033-37, will now be published in September 2020. Lord Deben urged the Treasury to closely examine the distribu- tion of costs between businesses, households and the Exchequer. He said this was vital to "enable decarbonisation to be delivered while minimising negative impacts on society, particularly the most vulnerable". He also said the review should consider the near-term as well as long-term decarbonisation funding needs and policy implications. Book your table Table bookings have opened for this year's Utility Week Awards. The full shortlist (see p15) is available at: https://utilityweekawards.co.uk GLOBAL GDP GROWTH MIRRORS RISING EMISSIONS Boris Johnson is taking personal charge of a heavyweight new cabinet committee that will oversee efforts to tackle climate change across government. He will chair the committee, which will include as members foreign secretary Dominic Raab, chancellor Sajid Javid, business secretary Andrea Leadsom, environment secretary Theresa Villiers, transport secretary Grant Shapps and communities secretary Robert Jenrick. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal that while UK carbon emissions continue to fall despite increas- ing GDP per head, this has been achieved at the cost of exporting emissions, particularly to China. Globally, the rise in emissions is tied closely to growth (see graph). When looking at the UK's directly produced emissions, which continue to fall, the genera- tion (negative 67 per cent), manu- facturing (negative 43 per cent), water supply (negative 38 per cent), and transport (negative 33 per cent) sectors saw the biggest falls between 1990 and 2017. Source: World Bank 2019, World Resources Institute 2017 Real GDP per capita (2010 prices) $0 $2,000 $4,000 $6,000 $8,000 $10,000 $12,000 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 Correlation between GDP per head and CO2 emissions, 1960-2014 CO2 emissions (million tonnes) Emissions GDP per head

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