Local energy production

A report released today announced that adding new nuclear power stations will lead to higher carbon emissions, more reliance on gas and will be more expensive when compared to producing energy locally.

The report, called Decentralising UK Energy, concluded that 'decentralising' power - generating heat and electricity close to where it is needed will negate any need for nuclear power, as well as being cheaper, less of a pollutant and will decrease the UK's reliance on gas.

Decentralised energy is able to provide benefits because it produces power close to where it is needed whereas the current UK system is centralised, and it relies on a small number of large power stations that can create electricity miles away from the point of consumption; this method, developed in the 1930s, is so inefficient that two-thirds of the energy in the fuel is wasted before it reaches homes and workplaces.

This huge loss of energy, enough to provide central heating and hot water to all the buildings in the UK, occurs because large power stations away from towns and cities discard heat through cooling towers and cooling water, and lose more power transporting the energy long distances through power lines.

A decentralised system would not transport electricity long distances and as such there would be less wasted.