Investment in Britain’s electricity infrastructure is stalling. New investment is needed to reduce the risk of a capacity shortfall and to make it possible to meet the UK’s carbon budgets.

Low carbon power will, with gas, make up all of the UK’s electricity generation in 2025, after the phase out of coal. But we show there is a high risk of a significant low carbon gap. Current policy is unlikely to deliver enough low carbon power, due to constraints on the build rate for the very limited range of technologies the government has chosen to support: offshore wind, nuclear and possibly tidal lagoons.

This report proposes measures that would allow the next phase of the levy control framework, via which the government supports low carbon power development, to support deployment of a wider range of low carbon technologies at the least cost to consumers into the 2020s.