Power cut fears as UK's power stations face early switch-off.

One in ten British power stations could be forced to shut by the spring of 2013, 2 and a half years earlier than expected - a new independent energy consultancy report shows. The news raises fresh concerns that the UK Government has not done enough to avoid a looming energy gap that could lead to blackouts accrosss the country, in addition to the energy security worries caused by Russia's recent threat to cut off Ukraine's gas supplies to Europe.

Under the European Union's Large Combustion Plant Directive four years ago, companies operating old coal and oil-fired plants were given the option to spend hundreds of millions of pounds to upgrade them to comply with tougher pollution standards. Those that “opted out” of the programme - nine plants representing about 15% of UK power supply - were given 20,000 hours to operate, starting from January last year through to the end of 2015.

Based on research from the energy-consultancy group Utilyx, several of these plants have been running at historically high rates that would put them out of commission much sooner than originally thought. The coal-fired plants at Kingsnorth in Kent, owned by Eon, Scottish Power’s Cockenzie plant, RWE-owned Npower’s stations at Tilbury and Didcot, and Scottish & Southern’s Ferrybridge plant will all be decommissioned by the spring of 2013 if current patterns continue.The stations generate some 7.6GW of electricity - 10% of the UK’s total capacity.

The first of them, Scottish Power’s 1.2GW plant at Cockenzie, which generates enough power for 1m homes, will close as early as September 2010 based on current rates. The research was based on analysis of running patterns at the plants from January 1 this year to the end of October.

“It is likely that a significant proportion of the UK’s opted-out coal plant will close earlier than 2015, with the impact felt around 2013,” said Kevin Akhurst, managing director of generation at Npower. When companies decided whether to comply with the EU’s so-called Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) four years ago, those plants that opted out were envisaged as “peaking plants” to be used only at time of maximum consumption and power prices. Most of them, it was thought, would easily last until 2015.

Chris Bowden, chief executive of Utilyx, said that because of the price of coal relative to record high prices of electricity and rising power demand, the opposite has happened. “When companies made the decision to opt out it was a very different world. The idea was that they would be peaking plants but now they are running as base-load providers,” he said. “The technology of some of these power stations would make them like classic cars, but now they are ready for the scrapheap.”

The data will add to fears about UK energy security after the Russian gas giant Gazprom threatened to cut off supplies to Europe due to a row with Ukraine. Next year is critical for the UK energy industry. In January, Ed Miliband, the secretary for energy and climate change, is expected to decide on Eon’s controversial proposal to build a new 2GW plant to replace the Kingsnorth facility. It would be the UK’s first coal-fired power station in more than three decades and is an acid test of the government’s stance on coal and supply security. New energy and planning bills will also come into effect in April, which the industry hopes will pave the way for swifter building and planning permission for new projects, one of the biggest obstacles to the construction of plants.