(www.naturalchoices.co.uk) Britain’s energy policy is in crisis, the successive failure of the UK Government to take any meaningful action on its innovative 2003 Energy Policy and its subsequent watering down in the 2007 Energy Bill has now been further compounded by it’s recent inability to make any decisions at all about anything argues Naturalchoices Editor Peter Shield.
The Government’s approach to energy has been a national disgrace, even more so because the New Labour administration started off actually quite well. The Energy White Paper of 2003 was one of the most remarkable approached to energy undertaken by a developed nation, with its commitment to a 60% target for renewables by 2050 and a clear break from the nuclear option. Sadly however they sat on their hands while the large energy companies explained to them why it was not in their commercial interests to implement it.
After 3 years of total inaction, they undertook another re-look at their energy policy, maybe this time with the idea of actually doing something about it, the 2006 Energy Review lead to the 2007 Energy White Paper which reinserted the nuclear option. Ironically it was instantly out of date due to the fact that the UK Government was negotiating a completely different set of targets from their own budding policy over in Brussels- gold star to the ‘Linked up Government’ crew. Which lead the Government to issue its Renewable Energy Consultation paper on how it will meet the EU target of 20% of total energy by 2020 as agreed by the UK government under the Renewable Energy Directive, for the UK this would mean about 35% of the UK’s electricity needs will have to be generated by renewables., as opposed to a paltry 3% at the moment. The Energy Bill 2008 lead to a slight strengthening of the renewable option, with tariffs for renewables and off shore transmission being included.
On the upside the United Kingdom is blessed with a tremendous amount of wind power, both on and off shore wind, according to the Sustainable Development Commission, “The UK has the best and most geographically diverse wind resources in Europe, more than enough to meet current renewable energy targets”, in their report ‘Wind Power in the UK’ they find, “Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of renewable energy and increasing supply to 20 per cent by 2020 would present only a very modest increase in cost for consumers that compares well with other energy sources. Indeed, as fossil fuel prices increase and wind turbines become cheaper to build, wind power may even become one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation over the next 15 years.”.
However onshore wind has seen a number of setbacks, firstly there is the local population backlash secondly incredibly slow planning permission process, and thirdly the fact that the big energy companies have lost their taste, if they ever had one for renewables, and the last is that to effectively integrate renewables into the national power grid the grid itself has to be rebuilt into a “Smart Grid”.
Public protest to the 4,000 proposed onshore wind turbines has lead to over 200 anti-wind farms groups being formed pulling in a handful of celebs such as climate change denier David Bellamy, Melvyn Bragg, and Sir Chris Bonington. Speaking at the Premier of the climate change documentary, The Age of Stupid, Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, said, “The government needs to be saying, ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area – like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing’.”. Maybe he should have been addressing his Government colleagues because they are not saying anything of the sort. Also, despite the Conservative Party’s “Turbine Tory” spin, it is their local councilors that are most sympathetically to the anti-wind lobby as the majority of projects are in rural areas that have Conservative controlled local authorities.
In order to ‘counter’ this slow planning process the Government have come up with the new Planning Act, which takes planning control away from local authorities and hads it over to an Infrastructure Planning Commission. The issue here is that one it only deals with major project, so may be useful to override the democratically elected authorities for a project the size of the proposed London Array.. Smaller projects, below 50 megawatts which make up the majority of the 4,000 turbines locations would fall below its minimum criteria so would still face the same issues, nothing is being done to allow local input but streamline the process so that the backers have a clear yes or no earlier. And of course from a green perspective the IPC will be just as likely to use it’s undemocratic powers to push through a Heathrow Extension or a Kingwood North as a wind farm, or tidal or wave power plant. As we have seen with the Anti-Terrorist Act the Government is well prepared to use powers introduced purportedly for one thing for a completely different use, as the Climate Camp 2008 attendees.
Big energy companies have always had an on off relationship with renewables. They understand ‘traditional’ fossil fuel and nuclear plants, you put fuel in at this end it creates electricity at a fixed ratio, it is plugged into the grid in such as fashion and it yields ‘x’% return on investment over ‘y’ years. They know how to build them, run them, promote them and very importantly how to get funding from their banks, and tax breaks from governments for them. Renewables are altogether a different ball game, they involve R&D, they work with the national grid differently, they require demand side changes as well as supply side changes: In short they are a much bigger challenge, banks don’t understand them and are reluctant to fund them, and the civil servants who like the power companies themselves, were brought up on mega generators equally like to stay within their comfort zone. Last week alone we say Shell say it was going to sell its solar division, EDF and E.ON try and blackmail the British Government into lowering its commitment to renewables, and Scottish Power back away from its commitments to renewables. The UK Government is relying on these power companies to pay for its renewable commitments, and now they are saying no. Unless the Government take a firm stance both we regards to negotiations with the power companies and a renewed commitment to financially supporting renewable energy then the whole edifice could come crashing down.
The signs however are not great, take the Smart Grid. A Smart Grid is one that aims to marry supply and demand by pushing consumers into using power when it is being created, electricity prices are increased in times of low supply and decreased in times of high supply. By installing smart meters in consumers houses, offices they seek to marry up supply and demand, very important when wind and solar power is a factor, smart grids also support a decentralized generation system which moves away from mega power stations to home generated, and locally generated power being integrated into the system.
Last week Obama announced that funding for a Smart Grid will be part of his rescue plan for the US economy, from the British Government silence. Well actually worse than silence, total indecision.
The Government promised a decision on the rolling out of smart meters in May last year, they then delayed until November, they still haven’t made a decision. Dave Robinson, market development manager at smart meter developer Landis+Gyr, told The Guardian: “We’re still waiting for a decision on how this will be done and a start date for the roll-out. It’s very frustrating.”
The Chief Executive of National Grid this week called for a MasterPlan for Renewables, saying, “2020 is not very far away. [There is a danger] we are going to wake up and say we have not got a chance of meeting it because of the time we have lost.”
The very fact that we have got this close to 2020 without one is as damning an indictment of the UK’s energy policy as any.
29 March 2009, 11:42 am
no se ve tanto como crisis sino como velocidad más lenta que la planificada. Ni omparado con las demoras en america latina.
29 March 2009, 9:05 pm
no creo que estemos tan mal por aca. Guardando las proporciones estimo que Chile empezo tarde pero va bien encaminado en cumplir objetivos de energia renovable.
saludos