Exploring the potential impact of carbon, capture and storage technologies on the diversity of the UK electricity system to 2050

Creating a diverse and flexible energy system to ensure security of supply is at the heart of UK energy policy. However, despite the apparent interest in the idea of securing supply in this way and the term ‘diversity’ becoming more frequently used in this context in government White Papers, policy discourse and the academic literature relatively little attention has been given to exploring what diversity means, how it can be measured, what contribution it can make to different policy objectives and the specific implications for the UK electricity system. Furthermore CCS technologies which are becoming increasingly important to decarbonisation of the power sector in order to meet legally binding greenhouse gas targets set out in the Climate Change Act which raises the question, what are the potential impacts of these technologies on the diversity of the future UK electricity system? To answer this question a mixed methodology of quantitative energy-economic modelling (using MARKAL), scenario analysis and diversity analysis is combined with qualitative semi-structured stakeholder interviews. Data analysis is carried out in two parts. The first assesses the diversity (with a specific focus on the effect of different input assumptions on CCS technologies) of the scenarios generated using Stirling’s Diversity Heuristic and creates a set of ‘diversity profiles’ which map changes in diversity across each scenario. The second part uses stakeholder perspectives to inform the quantification of diversity across the same set of scenarios providing evidence of the impact of different stakeholder perspectives on the overall diversity of the electricity system.