June 25, 2008

experts comment on the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy

The Government’s proposals include increasing the contribution of renewable energy to the UK’s energy supply to 15% by 2020, including building up to 7000 new wind turbines, as part of long-term plans to cut Britain’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2050.

Prof Peter Stansby, FREng, School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester, said:

“The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy is to be applauded. The underpinning engineering challenges are however broad and deep. The desire to jump start emerging renewable technologies such as wave energy and marine turbine generators is welcome news and in effect acknowledges that this has previously been lacking. The UK has a vast untapped marine energy resource. These technologies will work and quite quickly given investment and with the expansion of the more developed technologies of wind and solar should contribute substantially to a secure and stable electricity supply. As well as supplying present needs it should make manufacturing investment attractive for many parts of the UK. The need for long term planning cannot however be overstated. Integration of renewable energy with the grid with its associated storage issues needs to be urgently addressed and planned. Major infrastructure takes years to implement and supply chains need to be developed. And human capacity needs to be rapidly developed from a low base. The hard road to a sustainable energy system with long term investment has already been started by many of our European neighbours, notably of course the Germans.”

Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, BP Institute, University of Cambridge, said:

“The targets for renewable energy to reach a proportion of the overall mix will be much easier to achieve with more effort and targets to reduce the overall energy consumption in the first place! For example, ventilation technologies exist today which are capable of reducing the energy consumption of a building by a factor of 2 or more. These technologies are relatively inexpensive, especially when compared with renewable energy sources. However, they do not receive the same level of support as renewable energy – for example, builders are mandated to provide 10% renewables on site, whereas they should be mandated to create the 90% or 80% building (i.e. reduce the energy consumption required from the grid etc by a factor of 10-20%). This would achieve better results assuming one elected the 80% target, would be easier to achieve, and be cheaper to implement … all too obvious really, so why has this been missed?”

Prof Ian Fells, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Emeritus Professor of Energy Conversion at Newcastle University, said:

“Like the Bourbons, the Government seems to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Who will invest in these huge projects in the current financial climate? People are busy pulling out of offshore wind schemes – wind power is the most expensive way of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

“Experience in Denmark shows that to go above a 10 per cent contribution from wind power causes terrible problems because you need a 90 per cent back up from other generation systems. And even if you could generate all this extra wind power in Scotland there is no way to bring it to England where the major demand is unless you upgrade the interconnector, which can only carry 2.2 Gigawatts at present – who will pay for this?”

Dr Jon Gibbins, Senior Lecturer in Energy Technology for Sustainable Development, Imperial College London, said:

“It is good to see electric vehicles using low-carbon electricity are getting more attention. Their batteries can help balance out fluctuations in wind generation. Electric vehicles can also often get more useful energy out of biomass than turning it into liquid fuels – and with carbon capture and storage on the biomass-to-electricity plant you can even get negative CO2 emissions per km. And a fast track for electric vehicle development could help to accelerate the transition to a future low-carbon electricity economy – possibly essential for 80% CO2 cuts and beyond.”

Andrew Furlong, Director of Policy at Institution of Chemical Engineers , said:

“The government is absolutely right in reconfirming its commitment to meeting its renewable energy targets.

“Global warming is a clear and present danger and we must maintain the pressure for a step change in behaviour.

“Renewables are a key part of the solution but it’s not a case of wind power versus nuclear, or wave power versus coal. We will need every tool in the box to combat climate change and all of these solutions have one thing in common – skills.

“Government and industry together must initiate a step change in support for science education. Without inspirational teachers all is lost; we might as well quit worrying, switch out the lights and prepare for a return to the middle ages.

“Ultimately, politicians won’t stop global warming – but well trained scientists and engineers just might.”

Dr Godfrey Boyle, Director of the Energy & Environment Research Unit at the Open University, said:

“If the advance reports are correct, the Government’s new Renewable Energy Strategy is very welcome and a major advance on what’s gone before. It’s what some of us have been demanding for years. The rate of expansion of wind power, for example, may seem challenging, but it’s comparable to that achieved by Germany, Spain and the USA in recent years. Having ‘talked the talk’ in this new strategy, let’s hope the Government will now ‘walk the walk’ by putting the measures into place that will actually deliver 15% of the UK’s energy from renewables by 2020. Market forces alone won’t get us there.”

Simon Harrison, Chair of the Energy Sector Panel of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said:

“Achieving the EU targets by 2020 will be a truly massive deployment challenge, for both generation and also supporting infrastructure such as electric networks. It will require a true step change in government commitment and very clear signals to investors, as well as an acceptance by the public that this will cost money and require major infrastructure to be given planning consent. However with ongoing increases in oil and gas prices this is part of an inevitable picture of energy price increases being necessary – all options are costly going forward.”

Dr Patricia Thornley, Researcher at the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester, said:

“The government’s renewable energy strategy seems set to recommend a substantial increase in biomass energy crops. These crops require energy to grow, process and transport, but despite this using them to generate electricity offers greenhouse gas savings of around 90%. Work carried out by Tyndall Manchester (in conjunction with Aston University and University of Ulster) as part of the Supergen bioenergy consortium confirmed that this reduction is achievable with current technologies from small community schemes to large scale co-firing in coal-fired power stations. Consultation as part of this work showed that greenhouse gas savings are the biggest priority for stakeholders, although the potential to regenerate rural economies is also rated highly. The Tyndall/Supergen work demonstrated that the job creation opportunities associated with energy crops are substantial at all scales of project development, although agricultural jobs are much lower than with arable farming. Equally important, in areas where fuel poverty is an issue, sustainable wood fuel is now available in many areas at a price competitive with fossil fuels.

“However, these benefits need to be set against other impacts. Biomass is the only readily storable renewable, which gives control over when energy is delivered, but inevitably leads to transport requirements, which are frequently a focus of local community objections. This is despite the fact that the energy use and emissions burden associated with the transport element has been shown by the Tyndall/Supergen work to be extremely small. Airborne emissions are also a significant area of concern for local communities and, while these are tightly controlled, recent work by Tyndall/Supergen showed that overall emissions can actually be higher (per unit of electricity produced) for small community-based schemes than for larger ones.

“It must always be remembered that biomass either originates from agricultural and other wastes or requires land to produce. This means there is a need to consider the most appropriate/efficient use of biomass (and land), bearing in mind it can be used to produce heat, electricity and transport fuels. Which of these is the “right thing to do” depends on local conditions as much as strategic priorities.

“Biomass plays a significant role in the UK’s renewables portfolio, with about half of the UK’s renewable electricity coming from biomass in 2006, but very little of this has come from energy crops. These crops offer greater socio-economic and other benefits to the UK but are much more expensive than agricultural wastes and other forms of frequently imported biomass. Energy crops are a long-term commitment by land-owners and will only be viable with adequate long-term policy mechanisms and financial incentives to support them. The detail of these measures in the Renewables Strategy will ultimately determine whether the vision of a substantial contribution to UK energy demands from energy crops is achieved or not.”

Dr Sue Ion, Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“The Engineering challenges inherent in delivering a vast uplift, particularly in offshore wind, are IMMENSE and totally underestimated if accounted for at all in the Government’s thinking. How on earth can you present a plan which is as ambitious as the one laid out without ANY thought as to how you will tackle the project management, supply chain and deployment challenges. The consultation document almost acknowledges failure as it is printed by admitting that there are only 3 manufacturers in the world currently able to make the turbines, that there are not enough vessels to deploy or skilled workers in the sector.

“The massive investment required in evolving a 21st century grid capable of dealing with more distributed generation and movement of power from North to South to realise the benefit of Scottish wind seems to have been underplayed if taken into account at all.

“Each technology seems to be taken in isolation without thought as to how they all come together at system level. Also has Government really taken into account the ‘holistic’ costs – both environmental as well as economic – in assessing the potential benefits and impact of a massive uplift in bioenergy, solar and ground source heat pump deployment?”

Philip Wolfe, Chief Executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said:

“The strategy shows a new maturity in approach; getting away from the ‘soundbite policy-making’ of the past and looking carefully at the role of renewables in buildings, heat, and transport, not just bulk electricity. However the industry has a very short space of time in which to meet challenging targets and Government needs to act with urgency to complete its action plan this year, not in 2010. We have a gold-plated opportunity in this year’s Energy Bill to deliver obvious measures such as a tariff for smaller renewables, aligning sector regulation to low-carbon objectives and ensuring priority access for renewables to the grid.”

Prof Roger Kemp of Lancaster University, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“Earlier strategies seemed to be based on the assumption that the UK has until 2030 or even 2050 to reduce emissions – this just isn’t the case. Newly industrialising countries, such as China, which have per capita emissions well below the UK’s, are building a coal-fired power station each week. To limit the build-up of greenhouse gases while allowing developing nations to develop economically, the developed world will have to reduce emissions much more quickly. An increase from 5% to nearly 35% in renewable sources of electricity by 2020 will be a huge challenge – and not only to the engineering profession. It will affect communities across Britain as it will require new wind farms, transmission lines and other infrastructure.

“While I welcome this strategy, we have to recognise that it is only a start – if it succeeds, the EU plan for renewables will reduce emissions by around 15%, and some of this will be eaten up by an overall growth in energy use. Climate scientists have identified the need to reduce global emissions by more than 60%, which means that developed nations will have to make cuts of 80% or more. Gordon Brown recognised this in his speech on the environment last November. Achieving the objectives in this strategy document can be seen as a trial run for the following 30 years.

“Reducing greenhouse gases is sometimes seen as a competition between renewable energy, nuclear power and conservation – the X or Y or Z model. It is to the Government’s credit that they have realised that we do not have this luxury, we need renewables, nuclear and conservation – X and Y and Z.

“If I have one criticism of the Government’s energy strategy, it is that it is disconnected from other policies, such as education, immigration, competition, employment, defence or economic growth. All these strongly influence the level of travel and thus emissions. For example, a policy of best value procurement that requires a local authority to invite competitive bids for all services, rather than operating a direct works department, will result in contractors from neighbouring areas driving many miles to do the work. Education policies that result in children being driven past a local comprehensive to a faith school or specialist college have a similar effect, as did invading Iraq. If the Government is serious about reducing climate impact, all other policies will have to be subject to a environmental impact test and only those with negative or neutral impact would be implemented. That would demonstrate real commitment.”