Looking for a clear steer on green energy policy from UK
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Like clockwork a story foretelling a breakthrough for nuclear fusion appeared near Hogmanay at the end of the decade. The great white hope of the nuclear industry glides slowly on.
For the present, we need to understand how the new UK Tory government will mesh its inherited climate change commitments with a far-from-clear clean energy policy.
That clarity will have to be wheedled out of a government deeply embroiled in exiting from the European Union by January 31. Of course, little will change in the transition period as civil service resources grapple with the enormity of trade deals and such like.
Little chance then of a clear steer on renewables?
Another surprise year’s-end story came on the ITV News. It featured the near self-sufficiency of Scotland’s electricity supply from wind power for the benefit of southern viewers.
What was not mentioned was the steady export of clean power to markets in England. ITV showcased one success of the past 20 years – the roll out of onshore and offshore wind turbines despite a perplexing series of policy shifts in Westminster.
Back in July 2015, Guardian journalists Adam Vaughan and Terry McAllister detailed that perplexity in ‘The nine green policies killed off by the Tory government’. The then Energy Secretary, Amber Rudd – more Windrush mess than rush to wind – was accused of “grotesque hypocrisy” for claiming that David Cameron’s government was “leading on climate change”.
The journalists argued the very opposite, reporting that some experts saw the Tory policies as the worst period of environmental policy in three decades.
Sticking with wind first, Rudd did have a point – subsidies for onshore wind seemed less relevant as costs of manufacture, installation and maintenance appeared to be drastically reducing due to large orders in the supply chain and technical improvements. That has proved true.
However, another factor in play was the pressure in 2012 from more than 100 Tory backbenchers to demand dramatic cuts for onshore wind. These MPs from the leafy suburbs and the ‘green and pleasant land’ of the Home Counties were relaying their constituents’ views when buttonholed at garden parties, fêtes and the golf clubs.
Strangely, last autumn many Tory backbenchers were beginning to see wind power as an asset as constituents were seeing job opportunities and growing fearful of the climate emergency which was confirmed by PM Theresa May, not long before she limped off the stage last summer.
During the UK onshore wind moratorium, some 47 onshore wind projects received planning approval in Scotland. These could be producing 1.6GW or power for 850,000 homes.
The knock-on effect for the local manufacturing of turbines, gear boxes and towers is a serious concern. CS Wind near Campbeltown in Kintyre is now owned by a Korean firm. It has virtually shut down. Canadian-owned BiFab of Arnish on Lewis and Methil in Fife hangs by a thread. All await a UK regime where steady orders flow.
In the meantime, subsidies for solar panel installation were axed, renewable obligations for biomass removed, the green homes deal killed off, the Green Investment Bank privatised, incentives to buy electric cars tampered with and fracking licences offered across the UK, if shale companies could get planning permission.
Well, they did in parts of England but, as campaigners warned, earthquakes occurred. Just before the December 2019 general election, Business and Energy Secretary Andrea Leadsom placed a moratorium on fracking sites. In Scotland, where planning is controlled by the Scottish Parliament, a moratorium and then a long-term ban on fracking were announced by Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse.
Throughout 10 years of Treasury-enforced austerity, many of the options discussed above became victims. Another was the Renewables Obligation mechanism which kick-started the boost for dispersed, clean power. Its replacement, known as Contracts for Difference – with an agreed strike price for electricity and gas – has bedevilled the development of offshore wind and tidal power. Some schemes got the go-ahead while others are knocked back.
A political carve up seems to be the criteria. If it is nearer the markets of south-east England, so much the better. Yes, schemes such as Beatrice in the Moray Firth and Neart na Gaoithe off the Fife coast are developed or in construction, but reliance on a supply chain across Europe and the world seems to defeat attempts to create a critical mass of home-grown manufacturing hubs in Scotland.
Yet we have the best wind resource in Europe.
The same hubs could be constructing tidal power equipment if a steady market was in place.
One of the big questions for this new Tory Government is whether the privatised National Grid plc is capable of coping with a plethora of wind and tidal projects that require grid space and have planning permission.
Another is the Tory obsession with nuclear fission. The French builders and Chinese investors at Hinkley Point in Somerset show it to be eye-wateringly over budget by billions of pounds. It will be intriguing to see the Johnson government’s response to this scandal and the chaotic clean power set up they inherited and previously applauded.
Seems to me that fusion of a non-nuclear sort is required. Get the wind and tidal turbines built at a far lower price and the old nuclear pipe dream can be ditched under the harsh lights of Brexit Britain in this challenging new year.
robgibson273@btinternet.com
