UK Needs New Gas-Fired Power Plants Quick – Centrica

Britain needs to quickly build several gas-fired power plants to meet growing demand for power over the next decade, Jake Ulrich, the managing director of Centrica Energy, told Reuters in an interview.

“We see the need in the short term for more gas plant,” he said. “There clearly needs to be more plants built.”
Ulrich, who runs the power generation and gas sourcing arm of Britain’s largest energy supplier, said Centrica was looking at several sites for new gas units but had not decided on any.

The company gets about 58 percent of its power from gas, mostly from its fleet of seven gas-fired plants and plans to increase that share through new build.

Ulrich said nuclear power and renewables should also play a role in Britain’s future energy supply, and Centrica might even be a partner in the next generation of nuclear power plants expected in the UK.

But the reactors can not be built quickly enough to plug the 12-15 gigawatt gap between power demand and generation that Centrica sees looming in 2015.

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