Renewable realism, vision and courage

I was in the UK recently visiting with energy officials as part of a clean energy tour arranged by UK Trade & Investment. I was impressed and encouraged by the level of commitment and political courage that government officials are displaying as thet approach the challenges of climate change. I had opportunities to speak with representatives from the UK Trade and Investment Office, The Crown Estate, UK National Grid and Members of Parliament. To a person they cited the absolute need to pursue an aggressive strategy to install an additional 25 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

They clearly understand that this will not be easy. They also understand that this is their best sustainable option.

Realism, vision and courage. What a refreshing and hopeful combination. (GW)

Renewable optimism

Thousands of turbines, millions of electric cars: a wind of change has swept through energy policy

By Fred Pearce

Guardian UK

June 26, 2008

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Britain's renewable energy policies are in a mess. Last year the government "obligated" power companies to make 6.7% of their electricity renewable; the industry could manage only 4.7%. We lag ever further behind Germany, Denmark and many others. Something had to be done. And this time, just maybe, the government is serious with its new consultation document on renewables, published today.

There are plenty of reasons to be cynical. Twenty years ago Chris Patten, the then Tory environment secretary, promised a renewable Britain. A decade ago Labour's Michael Meacher pledged 10% renewable electricity by 2010.

So why the optimism this time? Why should we believe ministers' promises to deliver 15% of all our energy (not just electricity) from renewables by 2020, and to construct7,000 wind turbines – an enterprise they say will cost £10bn?

Three reasons. First, the announcement comes from the business department, which is in charge of keeping the lights on, and not the environment ministry. Second, there are signs of joined-up thinking, for example in how to connect all those turbines to our homes. Earlier this week ministers announced plans for a new offshore national grid, costing £3bn, to collect the 10%-15% of our power they say will be generated by offshore wind turbines by 2020.

And third, as John Hutton, the business secretary, puts it, there is no alternative. Britain is committed, as a downpayment on decarbonising the EU, to that 15% target. And with transport mired in biofuels controversy, the strategy document suggests 30%-35% of our electricity generation will have to come from renewables: mostly wind, but with walk-on parts for solar and perhaps tidal and wave power.

Does the government have the guts for the job? There will certainly be opposition. The Daily Mail is already complaining that the fleet of wind turbines "will cost each home £4,000". And for all the talk of offshore wind power, the government is still planning a sixfold increase in onshore turbines, mostly in Scotland, which will create a formidable new army of tartan nimbys.

The energy industry says the main reason it has failed to hit its renewable targets is that thousands of wind turbines are mired in planning delays. So this week the government spun its plans for streamlining planning as a green initiative. But short-circuiting planning inquiries will create a lot of enemies among the very people it needs to back its plans.

Might locally generated power be easier? Germany has solar panels on hundreds of thousands of roofs, generating power for homes and selling spare to the grid. Some dream of an entirely "distributed" energy generation system, with a mini power plant in every backyard, and big power stations redundant.

The government's strategy is notably cautious here, and that makes sense. The economies of scale in large electricity production are considerable. Big is beautiful, small is costly and inefficient.

Though one question is: how big? Ministerial enthusiasm extends to reviving a decades-old scheme to tap the phenomenal tidal range of the Severn estuary, which some see as Britain's equivalent of China's notorious Three Gorges hydroelectric dam. My bet is that will never be built.

How far can renewables go? Britain may only rarely have days when the wind blows nowhere, but renewables can be unreliable. Witness the current plight of New Zealand, which is rationing power because drought has emptied its hydroelectric reservoirs.

Some say the old warhorses of the energy age, coal and nuclear power stations, will still be needed to cope with windless, sunless, waveless days. Probably so. But one solution – oddly barely touched on in the strategy — is electricity storage.

Right now, the only really big electricity store in Britain is dug into the north Welsh mountains at Dinorwig. When there is spare power, the system pumps water to a reservoir at the top of the hill; when the grid needs an urgent top-up, the water is poured downhill through turbines. It is neat and hugely effective. We need more of those to make the most of our renewables.
We could take a leaf from Norway, whose energy council this week announced plans to turn the country into "Europe's battery", by generating power from huge new offshore wind farms and storing it by pumping water between its many hydroelectric reservoirs.

And one day soon we could all be storing power for the grid – thanks to electric cars. Those plug-in city runabouts are getting bigger. A new generation of lithium-ion batteries will be powering new hybrid vehicles by 2010.

Electric cars will change everything, as the government's plan acknowledges. First, we won't need oil or liquid biofuels. By 2020, millions of cars could run on wind or solar, or whatever was supplying the grid at the time. But just as important, by charging their batteries at night, every car would be acting as a power store for the grid, balancing periods of high and low demand.

However, what is needed most is in fact none of the above, which all address our supply-side fixation. It is the cutting of energy consumption via increased efficiency that is most essential, unglamorous as it is. So one of the most encouraging features of the strategy is its promotion of energy efficiency to the front rank of energy policy. And one of the most depressing is that it postpones decisions on how to do it for another day.

After two recent white papers and a host of half-hearted initiatives, this government's energy policy has been a laughing stock, with rising imports of coal the only beneficiary. This new strategy is coherent and makes environmental, industrial and economic sense. And yet it is only a consultation document. The high winds and choppy waters of public opinion await.