David Cameron's plans for wind farms show he is not committed to his climate targets - and it's turning green business against him
If the Conservatives win another term in May, they will end subsidies for onshore wind farms. According to David Cameron, the British public are ‘frankly fed up’ with the onshore wind industry, and he has pledged that under another Conservative government onshore wind turbines would provide no more than 10 per cent of the UK’s energy.
In this pledge, the prime minister has not only shown that his green promises were empty – remember ”vote blue, go green”? – but is ignoring both expert and public opinion.
This week Guy Hands, the founder of investment firm Terra Firma, launched a scathing attack in the Financial Times(£) on Cameron’s renewables policy. He said the Tories had failed to recognise the falling costs of the industry, and accused them of harbouring an ’emotional hatred’ for wind farms. He is the latest business leader to express concern that the Tories could scare off investment at the very moment when costs are falling.
Meanwhile Dale Vince, the founder of green energy supplier Ecotricity, has given an interview explaining his decision to support the Labour party. He says that this election poses an ‘existential threat’ to his industry and to the country:
“Since the last election, (Cameron) has gone from hugging huskies to describing it all as ‘green crap’.”
According to Mr Vince, Ecotricity believe Cameron would extend his cap on onshore wind to solar power if he stays in government – he plans to close the current subsidy scheme for large solar farms. Indeed, it is Mr Vince’s belief that all forms of renewable energy are under threat from the Tories.
But why, when renewable energy is only just getting to where it wants to be?
RenewableUK, the UK’s leading non-profit renewable energy trade association, says that by 2020, onshore wind will be the cheapest form of new electricity generation. In a report released last week they found that:
“Impressive levels of generation capacity are matched by equally impressive financial benefits to the UK economy, with £1.6 billion of investment – £729 million of which was spent in the UK – delivered from projects that were commissioned in 2013/14 alone.”
RenewableUK also found that onshore wind farms will deliver £2.55 million of annual community benefits to local people, as well as the almost £6 million they have already contributed to local councils through business rate payments – equivalent to a lifetime value of £149 million. Furthermore, their taskforce said that if their recommendations were followed, up to £21 per megawatt hour could be cut from today’s wind costs.
They said:
“The next government could choose to work with our industry so that in the next five years, the cost of decarbonisation falls more quickly and UK consumers benefit.”
But David Cameron won’t work with them. He insists that the public have had enough of wind farms, despite the government’s own polling showing that 67 per cent of the public support them.
In their report, RenewableUK acknowleges that there has been ‘a clear and consistent drop in planning approval rates over time’. Analysis by the Fabian Society showed that in 2014, 57 per cent of wind farm applications were rejected, up from from 37 per cent in 2013 and 21 per cent in 2008.
Part of the problem here is with the way these projects are implemented, and too often people feel they are having developments foisted upon them without their say. Communities secretary Eric Pickles has intervened in 50 planning applications since June 2013, rather than allowing local authorities and planning inspectors to make the decisions based on, and adapted to, the needs of the community.
Dale Vince describes how one of the great advantages of renewable energy is that it is decentralised, working on a small scale. Not only does this limit the scale of possible errors, it should ideally allow for more democratic design.
Success stories for wind farms have involved the local community at every level; for example, at the 9.2 MW project at Delabole in Cornwall, local residents were shown several options for the size and number of turbines, and the provider Good Energy adapted its plans according to their preference. Good Energy now offers local residents discount energy bills to make sure they feel the benefits of hosting the farm.
Campaigners have urged Mr Pickles to cease his interventions and allow local authorities to retain control of the planning process – especially as he is clearly hostile to wind power and refuses the majority of applications. (As of September 2014, he had refused 17 out of 19 processed applications; five of the 17 had previously been approved by the Planning Inspectorate.)
The renewable industry has always been clear about the fact that the ultimate aim is to operate without government subsidies, but these need to be withdrawn in a way that is steady and predictable. Prematurely cutting off the wind industry, as David Cameron wants to do, would mean that, in order to reach the renewables targets that he has himself committed to, there would be a long and expensive battle to get support for an alternative energy source off the ground.
Onshore wind farms are working. They are providing clean, sustainable energy which is getting steadily cheaper. Withdrawing support from them at this stage would undermine all this success, and plans to do so show David Cameron’s contempt for both the environment and the public purse.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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20 Responses to “The Tories vs green business”
Leon Wolfeson
Working? The work they do is supply renewable obligations, their role is not really at all to generate energy in most cases. The scale of building is primarily because of legal issues rather than green generation, and little attention is being paid to things like capacity factor.
The targets should be purely emissions-based (with a carbon tax), and nuclear energy should be a large bit of it. Or we’ll end up in the near future building dirty coal plants like Germany, while energy costs will keep soaring ever-higher, driving away business and making the poor’s plight worse.
“Decentralised” is another word for “inefficient” in energy generation, of course. “Discounts” to pay off a community for getting it’s RO generators built quickly and without objection, to avoid higher fees for not having sufficient RO’s make a mockery of the entire system.
Scottish Scientist
The Left can offer nationalisation of the electricity generation industry as a way forward policy whereas the Right’s preferred market solution is beginning to falter and so Conservatives are giving up.
It’s going to take a lot more investment before Britain can hope to achieve 100 per cent renewables-only electricity generation.
The cost to the UK of 100% renewables-only generated electricity would be about £480 billion. That’s for wind turbines on land and doesn’t include new grid infrastructure. Offshore wind turbines are extra.
My estimate for the UK grid’s requirements is –
• Wind Turbine maximum power 290GW
• Pumped-storage hydro energy capacity 1400GWh
That’s a LOT more of both needed than we have installed already.
Today in the UK we have about 12GW of wind power installed.
So I estimate we’d need a factor of 290/12 = 24 times more wind turbine power than we have today.
Today in the UK we have about 27GWh of pumped-storage hydro installed.
So I estimate we’d need a factor of 1400/27 = 52 times more pumped-storage hydro than we have today.
I initially worked out figures for the energy requirements of Scotland only, or a peak demand of 6GW or 11.4% of the UK peak power demand of 52.5GW.
Scotland Electricity Generation – my plan for 2020
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/scotland-electricity-generation-my-plan-for-2020/
I’ve created a spreadsheet model to determine how much wind power and pumped-storage hydro energy capacity would be required for Scottish needs.
So remember to multiply the figures in my diagrams by 52.5/6 or 8.75 to get the appropriate numbers for the UK.
Modelling of wind and pumped-storage power
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/
My cost estimate for Scotland was £50 billion for wind turbines and pumped-storage not counting grid infrastructure upgrades.
So say maybe £480 billion for the UK.
The annual government budget for the UK is something over £700 billion so a project of the size of £480 billion or the cost of 40 channel tunnels would clearly take a number of years to afford and to build.
So renewables-only electricity generation is indeed possible but it is not cheap and it is not easy, if my figures are anything like correct.
But my ideas are at least sound applied science which is more than we’ll hear most times on the BBC from Pallab Ghosh.
The UK should be part of an international research effort to design and manufacture the biggest, more powerful and most economic wind turbines in the world.
Instead the BBC broadcasts Prof Brian Cox telling us that CERN finding the Higg’s Boson was a “breakthrough” (HYPE!) and we “should research nuclear fusion” (IMPOSSIBLE ENGINEERING!)
Not only that we have a UK Energy Secretary who has funded the flawed carbon capture and storage idea which is vulnerable to black-market dumping of carbon dioxide and ends up doing nothing to lower atmospheric CO2.
It is time to get real and get our national research in science and engineering focused on what is needed and what works.
ghost whistler
Wait a minute, isn’t Guy involved in# the Sweets Way residents’ homes?
With friends like that!
Tommo
“Green Business”
Contradiction in terms !!!!
Dave Stewart
Decentralized energy generation is actually highly efficient.
Transporting energy over medium to long distances through the national grid is hugely wasteful. I’m sure you have heard that faint buzzing sound coming from electricity pylons. That is literally the sound of energy being wasted as it is converted into sound rather than electricity and that is just the easily observable waste. Transformers are also hugely inefficient and waste a great deal of energy and are required to up and down voltage the energy supply as it goes on and off the grid. This all adds up to vast amounts of energy wastage.
Local energy generation removes most of these factors thus saving a lot of energy.