摘要
The recent UK Energy White Paper suggested that the Government should aim to secure 20%of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. A number of estimates of the extra cost of such a commitment have been made, but these have not necessarily included all the relevant cost components. This analysis sets out to identify these and to calculate the extra cost to the electricity consumer, assuming all the renewable electricity is sourced from wind energy. This enables one of the more controversial issues—the implications of wind intermittency—to be addressed. The basis of the assumptions associated with generating costs, extra balancing costs and distribution and transmission system reinforcement costs are all clearly identified and the total costs of a “20%wind” scenario are compared with a scenario where a similar amount of energy is generated by gas-fired plant. This enables the extra costs of the renewables scenario to be determined.