Measuring the progress and impacts of decarbonising British electricity

The pace of decarbonisation is impressive, but raises both engineering and economic challenges. Falling peak demand has delayed fears of capacity shortage, but minimum net demand is instead becoming a problem. The headroom between inflexible nuclear and intermittent renewables is rapidly shrinking, with controllable output reaching a minimum of just 5.9 GW as solar output peaked at 7.1 GW. 2015 also saw Britain's first negative power prices, the highest winter peak prices for six years, and the highest balancing costs.