Turning all cars electric in Britain needs boost in power supply

Switching all cars in the country to electric would drain the National Grid of nearly a fifth of its capacity unless the equivalent of another six new nuclear power stations are built, claims a report.

The Royal Academy of Engineering said that to convert the countries fleet of 30 million vehicles would increase current demand by 16 per cent or an extra 10 gigawatts of power.

With the 70 GW grid currently running at near full capacity that would mean building the equivalent of six large nuclear power stations or 2,000 wind turbines to meet demand.

It would also mean that it will have to be controlled by a "smart grid" of millions of charging points in order to deal with increase and wild fluctuations in demand.

The findings came from the academy's latest report titled Electric Vehicles: charged with potential which outlines what needs to be done if our cars are to go green.

The organisation said that in order to reduce our carbon footprint then the sources for the National Grid will have to change to sustainable supplies.

Professor Phil Blythe, professor of intelligent transport systems at Newcastle University, said: "It is do-able but if we want to have electric transport you have to ensure that you have the overall supply strategy in place."

Professor Roger Kemp of Lancaster University, chair of the Electric Vehicles working group, said that unless we moved away from coal and gas fired power stations then there would be no point.

"Swapping gas guzzlers for electric vehicles will not solve our carbon emissions problem on its own," said the professor of engineering at Lancaster University.

"When most electricity in Britain is still generated by burning gas and coal, the difference between an electric car and a small low emission petrol or diesel car is negligible."

However the report concluded that by converting to low emission power generation such as nuclear, wind and water then it could be a great contributor to targets of reducing the country's carbon footprint by 80 per cent by 2050.

The report believes that conversion to green cars will be gradual with many people preferring hybrid cars at first until the electric infrastructure is in place.