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
20 Responses to “The Tories vs green business”
Bob Roberts
If wind is that brilliant it won’t need subsidising by the government, in which case Cameron is absolutely right. However, I do think that his arbitrary 10% cap is a pointless piece of government intervention – if the cap is needed to constrain future growth, it shows that wind is actually a decent method of electricity generation.
Scottish Scientist
My plan offers electrical power on demand, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week.
It manages to guarantee power when needed from intermittent wind power by using surplus wind power to pump water uphill into hydro-electric reservoirs. Then later, when the wind isn’t blowing enough, the hydro-turbines generate whatever power is needed by electricity customers.
We scientists explain how our plans will work by means of graphs and I have a couple of graphs which explain my plan on my webpage.
“Modelling of wind and pumped-storage power”
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/
Well there are still plenty of sites for wind turbines but more use can be made of the same site by installing a bigger, more efficient wind turbine instead of a smaller, less efficient wind turbine.
There’s a lot of research and development to be done before the last word on the economy of wind turbines will be written. It may well be that a new “generation” (ha, ha) of wind turbines can lead to a reduction in the size of the investment required.
Pumped-storage hydro has been the technology of choice for grid energy storage for years. Maybe other alternative storage technology can prove themselves better one day, but not as yet.
As for diesel generators – the National Grid has a whole lot of them providing grid back-up power for wind turbines at the moment, so I’ve read anyway. So rich and poor are getting our electricity from diesel now.
The only nuclear fusion which works for our energy needs is the nuclear fusion which powers the sun – and is the source of solar power on earth – and that works better nearer the equator but even solar power at the poles is a better bet than man-made nuclear fusion for power generation.
Something as out-there as orbital mirrors to reflect sunlight on the polar regions during winter is so much more realistic engineering than man-made nuclear fusion for power generation.
For nuclear, consider the options for man-made nuclear fission power – for portable power especially – which have not been fully exploited as yet. I’m no expert but some people are enthusiastic about the Thorium alternative.
Imagine the opportunities of a nuclear fission reactor which one could fly into any point on the globe for instant plentiful power to develop any part of the world.
If nuclear is your thing, go fission, and forget the dead-end of fusion!
My plan is for 100% renewable energy. Yes there are costs but the grid costs are only a small part of the total whereas the £480 billion would be most of the cost – and grid costs are not quoted because it is difficult to estimate when you don’t know where power stations are going to be and how long the grid connections between them will have to be.
It’s like if you phone up and ask for a quote to have electricity connected to the new house you are having built – the first thing the electricity company will ask is – “where is it”?
Guest
Ah, so you’re ignorant of basic science in this area. My my. 30% is the practical limit.
How will you find few hundred times GDP needed, too?
And no, I mean the private generators the rich will use in your scheme.
You’re making excuses for your slip on fusion, check, etc.
Your plan is for a completely unfeasable system, yes, as you aim for *maybe* 5% uptime with that tiny amount in terms of your goals… And the costs of connecting wind farms to the grid and to balance it can at many times be as expensive as the farm itself…
Scottish Scientist
Well you’d better pop down to your local wind farm with your red flag and start waving it to warn them of their dangerous impracticality of generating 100% of their power from wind.
Only £480 billion is needed for the wind turbines and pumped-storage to generated 100% of the UK’s electricity needs, 24/7.
The annual GDP of the UK is about £1,600 billion.
480/1600 = 0.3 so it would cost a total of 30% of GDP in one year.
Not that there is any need to built it all in one year. Take ten years and it is only 3% of GDP per year.
Electricity would be available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. There would be conventional power stations available on stand-by for emergency power. There should be no power cuts, no more than there are today anyway. No-one would need a private generator.
Excuses? Slip? Moi?
It’s perfectly feasible. 100% uptime. The balancing is done by the pumped-storage hydro which is included in the cost of the £480 billion. Grid costs are low in comparison to the £480 billion.
Guest
So you try and conflate a single wind farm with a country’s power…er…that’s lame.
As you ignore the basics here, assuming 100% capacity factor, not taking into account diseconomies of scale, ignoring supply constraints, etc.
SOME energy would be available all the time, but as you note without any kind of ability to level the grid, much of it would be blacked out most of the time, you’d need expensive surge protection for electronics, etc.
You are in complete denial of the engineering for this, claiming faeries and talking about utterly impractical things, as ever, and making claims that trillions are less than the fake figures you’re using.