Cost to keep UK’s lights on keeps growing

Bloomberg

A Czech energy company led by billionaire Daniel Kretinsky was the big winner in a UK auction to secure power capacity, procuring a 15-year government
subsidy to build a gas-fired plant.
EP UK Investments Ltd.’s planned units at Eggborough, Yorkshire, were awarded provisional contracts along with a grid-scale battery at the site. That will help secure about $1.8 billion for the company, a subsidiary of Kretinsky’s European energy business, which will add about 1.7 gigawatts of capacity to the country’s grid.
More than two-thirds of the 43 gigawatts of awarded capacity went to gas plants — mostly already built — in a sign of the UK’s continued dependence on a fuel that’s soared in cost since Russia cut flows to Europe after
invading Ukraine.
Britain plans to have a net zero electricity grid by 2035, likely requiring an acceleration of renewables and carbon capture with fossil-fuel generation.
Higher auction prices, which are spread across consumer bills, mean a larger up-front cost for the country to bear, but they also help to secure ample supply, which may ease a strain on future costs. It’s designed to pay plants to be available so operators don’t
rely only on generating during
high-priced hours to make money.