LONDON (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. needs to invest more in nuclear power and less in natural gas and wind to meet its emission-reduction targets, McKinsey & Co. said in a report for the Confederation of British Industry.

The European Union’s second biggest economy should promote construction of at least 10 new nuclear reactors and get 34 percent of its power from that source by 2030, compared with 20 percent under current policies, said Venkie Shantaram, a London- based McKinsey partner who helped write the group’s new report.
Otherwise, reaching the nation’s emission target for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by from 1990 levels by 2050 will be “next to impossible, if not impossible,” Shantaram told journalists at a July 10 briefing. The nation’s drive to boost wind power risks crowding out investments in rival generation capacity, he said.
Britain can get 83 percent of its energy via low-carbon generation in 2030 under a “balanced pathway” scenario presented by New York-based McKinsey to the London-based business lobby known as CBI. “Business as usual” policies would cost the same and achieve low-carbon generation of about 64 percent, the group said.
The CBI is seeking to keep energy-price inflation to 30 percent by 2030 and keep carbon dioxide output down, which will help keep energy-intensive industry and employment, said John Cridland, the lobby’s deputy director general.
The nation’s utilities will spend about 150 billion pounds ($242 billion) on energy assets through 2030, which risks “leaving us with a mix that’s not sufficiently decarbonized,” Cridland said at the briefing.
-------------Preferred scenario
Wind power is unreliable when the wind doesn’t blow and natural gas is not as secure as nuclear generation as North Sea production drops, he said.
McKinsey’s preferred scenario would keep natural gas generation at 16 percent in 2030, less than the 36 percent under current government policies. It wants wind to account for 20 percent rather than the proposed 24 percent.
The CBI report recommends the U.K. establish a government- industry task force by September to determine whether further steps are needed to boost investment in low-carbon generation.
On July 5, the Observer newspaper reported that Electricite de France SA, Europe’s biggest power producer, will scale down plans to build a new generation of nuclear reactors in the U.K. unless the government fixes the price of carbon. The publication cited Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive officer of the company’s U.K. unit. EDF last week endorsed the CBI report.