Wednesday 21 January 2009

Who owns the MegaWatts?



There was a comment on Old Holborn today, perhaps, where a correspondent remarked that Germany “owned” our generating capacity. Sadly, I didn’t make a note of the reference and can’t find it now.

So, does Germany own our generating capacity? Have a look at the table:

The answer is: not exactly.





























































































OwnershipTotal MW
UK18,263
UK/Eire1,348
/UK/France32
UK/FRG16
UK/Japan550
UK/Spain6,354
UK/FRG/Bahrain392






















Australia103
Canada1512
Canada/India1,608
Cayman Islands162
Denmark9
Eire/USA96
FRG20,510
FRG/Eire401
France19,259
Norway168
Sweden90
USA1876






Power stations wholly-owned by Germany (FRG) have the biggest output (20,510 MW), followed by those belonging to France (19,259 MW) and then the UK (18,263 MW). However, by splitting hairs, and without any knowledge of the proportional share ownership, if we add in the capacity of jointly-owned UK/foreign capacity, the UK probably has its nose in front.

But is that cause for celebration. Not really. The devil is in the detail. The really big power stations are almost all foreign-owned, nuclear, coal and gas. The smaller ones, and the innovative ones like wind, biomass, are mostly UK-owned. So that’s OK, in 300 years we will be leading he world ….. or maybe not.

Upcoming: who owned what type of power station

No comments:

Post a Comment

Input, clarification, insider news, all welcome.