From Guest Blogger Cass: An Overview of UK Renewable Energy

The UK government is moving, some would say stumbling, towards its legal obligation to have 15% of the UK’s energy produced by renewables by 2020.  Every year more sources of renewable energy come on stream, but there are setbacks on the way.  This turbulence is not just in the wind that affects wind turbines, but political turbulence that has made the investment, skills acquisition, and long-term planning for this young industry more problematical. 

As the government works on a five-year cycle, and energy planning needs a framework of decades, there is a disjunction.  For example, planning and implementing large conventional power stations takes around five years from decision through planning to when it comes on line.  Nuclear power stations can take much longer when cost overruns and construction delays are taken in to account. Wind farms and solar arrays can be constructed significantly quicker, but of course there is also opposition at the planning stage which can result in delay. 

The good news is that, according to government statistics, the UK is at an all time low for fossil fuel dependency, at 84.5% and that has been declining continuously as we add more renewables to the energy production matrix. There has been a steady upward growth in all forms of renewable power, between 2006 and 2011 the percentage of UK electricity generated from renewables nearly doubled, from 4.5% to 8.7%. 

The UK has legal obligations, in both the 2008 Climate Change Act and the 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive to have 15% of its end-use energy provided by renewables by 2020.  Currently the UK is at 3.8% – good progress has been made but we are some way short of the target.  In 2011 Solar Photovoltaics increased by about seven-fold but the sudden change in the Feed-in-Tariff late last year has meant that many planned projects were cancelled, thus giving the  UK renewables industry a serious setback. 

It should be obvious to anyone with an interest in their energy bills that prices have been rising steeply, and will continue to rise as long as the country is dependent on coal, oil and natural gas for the major part of its energy requirements.  There needs to be a continuous move to phasing these out and replacing them with renewable power, as well as full electrification of the railways and moving to electric vehicles (EVs) where possible. It might be better to prioritise EVs for the fleet sector rather than family vehicles – short range delivery vans, forklift trucks, council utility vehicles, which would mean that the cost per unit would be reduced, as EVs are currently too expensive compared to petrol and diesel vehicles. 

Although energy efficiency has been increasing in most sectors of the economy,  there are still large areas which are not energy-efficient.  For example, of the 25 million homes in the UK today, 62% (with lofts) have insulation, which means that 38% don’t have this simple and cost effective measure.  Similarly only 60% of homes with cavity walls are insulated.  

There is good news on the horizon.  Early this year Spain generated more electricity from wind than any other power source.  This should be a wake-up call for the UK, which has a considerably better wind resource than Spain.  With the start of an EU single market in energy planned for next year, and the beginning construction of a European electricity super-grid – to ensure that energy can be efficiently shifted around Europe – from generation source to where it is needed, there is a bright future for renewable energy generation of all types, as long as there is sufficient investment which will necessarily include both public and private sector finance and the political will to push forward on the transition to a low-carbon future, which the government seems conflicted about: both promoting renewables, in areas such as the Green Deal but backing away, for example in the Green Investment Bank.   A more cohesive approach would benefit the country better.