gary, in Australia, they'd probably go for solar farms in the outback.
as for UK, here are our options:
fossil fuel conventional power stations
Tidal Hydro
Valley Dam Hydro
Wind
Solar
AGT
Nuclear.
here's how they stack up:
Fossil fuel: massive carbon footprint over 20 to 30 year lifespan, sulphur emmissions
Tidal Hydro: dams across the Wash and Morcame bay, may affect tourism to those areas, could affect tidal activity on the coast, BUT its livable
Valley dam Gydro: Take a river in a valley and block it, flood a few villages, displace wildlife, some endangered, hardly a vote winner as the constituants from the villages that are going to be flooded wont vote for you, clean but political suicide.
Wind: only works best out to sea, and on high peaks such as snowdonia, and sorry but the turbines are ugly and noisy, yes they're clean but they take up a lot of area to generate a small amount of power, and no wind = no power, also spinning blades have a nast habit of knocking birds out of the sky. if winds go to high blades shut down as well to protect turbine.
Solar: when did it get sunny enough to generate megawatts in the uk?
AGT, well we dont live anywhere near an active volcano so deep, (REALLY DEEP) boreholes are needed down to where the rocks are heated. this could actually work.
This leaves Nuclear as the last option. whether we build RBMK reactors or Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors, they can be put inside a mountain, so they dont spoil the local scenery, and besides, they keep their stuff inside, with little in the way of pollutants, even the RBMK has a good safety record, with the only accident being caused by miss handling of the reactor at chernobyl, not a through a flaw in the reactor design, technicians allowed the reactor to boil dry causing it to overheat. CO2 emmissions are very low during the running of the plant, only major problem is the nuclear waste after, and that can be reprocessed. once its gone too far to be reprocessed, it still retains thermal energy in the waste fuel rods, so surely that can be used as well?