2020 vision

Government launches ambitious blueprint for alternative energy future

The government’s blueprint for generating 15% of the country’s energy needs from renewables by 2020 paints a radically different picture of life in just 12 years’ time: solar panels on 7 million buildings, 3 million homes heated with biomass, an extra 7,000 wind turbines on and offshore, a nationwide network of charging points for electric cars; 160,000 new ‘green collar’ jobs.

Prime minister Gordon Brown described the plan as the “most dramatic change in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power”. Indeed it has to be if the UK is to hike up its proportion of green energy (that’s transport and heat, as well as electricity, of course) from 1.5% in 2006 to the 15% set out under the latest EU targets.

The suggestions aren’t cheap, needing investment of the order of £100 billion. But John Hutton, secretary of state for business, enterprise & regulatory reform (BERR), points out that they’re all about making it easier – and more attractive – for the private sector to stump up the cash. The price tag for the wider economy, could be around £5-6 billion a year in 2020, his department reckons, because of the additional costs of using renewables, rather than the cheapest available fuels.

The strategy will look like better value if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, say the policy wonks, who predict a 35% to 40% drop in the cost differential if oil were at $150 a barrel in 2020.

So what sort of mechanisms does the vision propose?

• Regional renewable strategies, similar to those that exist for housing, would give planners a target in delivering green energy projects in a given area.
• Fast-track planning for certain renewable projects under 10MW (so that it’s much easier to get permission to install a biomass scheme or solar panels, for example)
• Feed-in tariffs for renewables produced at the household and community scale that guarantee a fixed sum per unit of electricity (the model used so successfully in Germany to help boost domestic solar installations).
• A renewables obligation for heat (extending the system, which currently only applies to electricity, that obliges energy majors to buy a share of what they sell from renewable sources).

To make sure all those new wind turbines don’t come up against too many hurdles, the government is working with the MoD and aviation authorities on technical solutions to radar and aviation interference from the blades. It also launched a strategy to speed up the connection of renewable energy projects to the grid – which can currently take up to ten years.

So what do environmentalists make of it? “Without doubt the best thing to emerge from BERR over the last five years,” reckons Jonathon Porritt, founder-director of Forum for the Future and chair of the Sustainable Development Commission. Greenpeace, not one to dish out compliments to the government, was pleased to at last see “some meat on the bones” of an energy strategy, but director John Sauven expressed some doubt as to whether the government “actually means it this time”. – Hannah Bullock

Further information at http://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/

14 July 2008

Hannah Bullock