Britain’s policies encouraging renewable-energy use will prevent the country from suffering an electricity crisis leading to blackouts toward the end of the decade, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.
The U.K. will build more than 30 gigawatts of power generation capacity by the end of 2016, two-thirds of it in solar, wind and biomass and the rest largely fired by natural gas, according to forecasts from the research company. That will help the nation cope with closing 19 gigawatts of fossil- fuel and nuclear power stations over this decade.
The findings suggest Prime Minister David Cameron’s government may avoid power shortages that blighted the U.K. during World War II and the 1970s, requiring industry to scale back operations and leaving millions of homes in the dark.
“The U.K. is embarking on an historic shift in its electricity supply, and commentators and critics have continually raised the specter of the lights going out once again,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of New Energy Finance. “Our analysis shows that, barring unforeseen circumstances, it is not going to happen.”
