"We need to be more positive and proactive, particularly in
promoting alternative renewables such as wind and wavepower, biomass and solar
technologies, as well as developing means of reducing waste, such as CHP
schemes."
So said Labour Energy spokesman John Battle MP at the ICOM
Renewables Conference in March. He was talking just after Tony Blair had
committed Labour to creating 50,000 new jobs through an energy conservation
programme - which would help the UK to cut its C02 emissions by 20% by 2010 (see
Renew 101).
Now it was renewables turn for the limelight.
Battle
reiterated Labour's target of a 10% contribution for UK electricity from
renewables by 2010, and 20% by 2025, and he spelt out some of the likely
priorities. He saw solar photovoltaics as being particularly important.
"We are in danger of being left behind - instead of being at the
forefront of the environmental industries of the future. This Government is only
investing £560,000 in photovoltaics - less than the DTI on fossil fuel
promotion and publicity. Japan and the US are all moving ahead with investment
programmes and clear domestic installation targets."
£564,000
was, he said, less than a penny a person. By contrast in Germany "£250m
has been invested in solar power" and the world solar market was worth
$1bn.
He added "Because our support for renewables is so low,
Britain is being held back from establishing a competitive renewables industry.
We are being held back from the future industries of the next century. Already
we have lost ground by failing to encourage a UK wind turbine industry early on
in the expansion of the industry."
He concluded "What's
lacking is a strong framework of support to ensure that renewables, wind,
biomass, wave and solar, can move out of the margins and have a positive future
as part of a diverse and sustainable long term energy supply" and
proposed that the NFFO, the bulk of which has gone to support nuclear power, be
converted into a 'Cleaner Energy levy' to support renewables.
There were he
said major implications for employment: solar energy alone could generate up to
1.5 million jobs globally by 2010. "What is needed is vision and political
will".
In its 1994 environmental statement 'In Trust for Tomorrow'
the Labour Party set a target of generating 10% of UK electricity from renewable
energy sources by 2010. In the wake of its paper on energy conservation (see
Renew 100), SERA, Labours Environment Campaign group, has produced a report
examining how this might be achieved. Assuming a vigorous energy conservation
programme, the target translates to 31 Twh pa by 2010.
SERA's proposed
programme would, it is claimed, help to attain this with relatively little cost
to the consumer: it would require an achieved spending of around £45m by
2010, which would represent a levy on electricity consumers of 2.6% and this
would fall after 2010 as renewables become cheaper.
The main contribution
would come from biofuels, onshore wind and offshore wind, as well as the
existing hydro plants. Wave power and solar photovoltaics would be making a
small but growing contribution by the end of the period. Overall there would be
4.5 GW of new renewables by 2010 in addition to existing hydro. The full text
can be obtained from the Socialist Environment and Resources Accociation,11
Goodwin St, London, N4. An edited version of it appeared in Renew 101.
A new version of the Osprey wave energy device is being developed
ready for a second try - after last summers disaster when Mk I was damaged by
storms.
But Mk II seems to be facing some new problems. David Ross
reports.
The builders of the OSPREY wave power station have been prevented from
using sand for ballast for their next attempt at harvesting the energy of the
waves - because the sand belongs to the Queen. They have been told by her
agents, the Crown Commissioners, that the foreshore and the seabed out to 15
miles from land are the property of the Crown Estates and they must go through a
legal performance known as Government View Procedure and then, if they pass,
they will have to pay for the sand. OSPREY have decided instead to use concrete.
This is not the only change in their plans. They are going to rock-bolt the
structure into the seabed. They had previously rejected the need for bolting and
said they would rely on the weight of the ballast to hold their generating unit
on station.
The Scientific Director of the project is Prof.Alan Wells,
a Fellow of the Royal Society and an internationally respected wave power
pioneer. He invented the "Wells turbine", named after him, which
continues to revolve in the same direction as it accepts a stream of air from
below (as the waves peak) and above (as the waves fall into a trough). It has
been used by Oscillating Water Columns in Norway, Japan and Portugal as well as
on Islay in the Inner Hebrides. He told your correspondent of his experience
since OSPREY 1 sank off Dounreay last August.
"I have never been put off by the fact that we lost the thing",
he said, "My friends for a time treated me very gently and
didn't exactly flock around to talk to me, but it has changed since I've had an
opportunity to talk to them."
The next OSPREY had been planned
for this summer but it was always clear that this was an optimistic forecast. It
may yet happen but, as Professor Wells said, "it is likely
to be in '97 in fact. We might have to cut too many corners in '96 to make the
best of it."
Explaining the plan for the next OSPREY, Professor
Wells said: "We have as many as three designs and we have a process
of design evaluation by third party to get insurance, which will obviously be a
higher hurdle than before. We have two or three interested fabricators. Indeed,
we even have interest in investment by the fabricators in one or two cases. So,
if you included two years, 1996 and 1997, then I would say it is almost a
certainty but it may be, on a prudent basis, not appropriate to put it out until
1997".
The decision to bolt it to the seabed is surprising.
With OSPREY 1, it was argued that using "gravity-anchoring",
with the weight of 7,000 tonnes of sand to hold it in place, would prove cheaper
than piling it into the seabed. Professor Wells said they would use
enough concrete inside the structure while it was being floated to site to
obviate the need for the slow operation of pumping in sand. Then the
rock-bolting would be "the necessary adjunct to survive the extreme
wave forces."
As to cost, he said "It is
surprising. We had the impression at the beginning that it was expensive but
there is so much rock-bolting done these days that we found that it was not an
exorbitant component cost, particularly as we avoided the considerable costs
associated with sand-pumping and grout spread. We have gained a fair knowledge
of what the actual costs of the offshore operations are and they are not
necessarily where one would expect to find them. That was something we could
learn only by going to sea."
The managing director, Allan
Thomson, said that overseas potential customers were visiting his Inverness
headquarters where he has a wide testing tank suitable for work on arrays of
OSPREYs. There was a potential order for a series of OSPREYs. He said that one
group were also studying their own wave resource and seabed topography. He could
not name them at this stage.
The loss of the OSPREY has injected new
caution into the wave power programme. Everyone knew that there was a
considerable danger of losing the pioneering generators but they had not
expected it to sink so quickly. It was the result of a combination of unlucky
factors which are unlikely to recur, but there may be other unknown problems.
What has been glossed over in recent years is that the Oscillating Water Column
(OWC) may not prove to be the best wave power device. It has weak points. It has
to stand upright and receive the full impact of the waves on its outer wall,
then admit the water through an opening (which is itself a second weak point)
near the base, and receive another pounding on the back wall as the water surges
through the opening.
By contrast, the Duck (which is not ready for
launching, in the opinion of its inventor, Professor Stephen Salter) moves with
the waves, with the largest part, the Duck's "beak", rising and
falling.
Another device that has been much overlooked is the system of
articulated rafts invented by Sir Christopher Cockerell, the inventor of the
Hovercraft, which has a low freeboard and so can tolerate the waves washing over
it, and also has one of its sections rising and falling with the waves. But the
OWC is the most developed and the simplest. It has worked well in less ferocious
conditions in the Pacific. An OWC is due to be the next wave power device to be
launched on the shore of the island of Pico in the Azores this Summer.
The Cumbrian based Wind Company recently launched a share issue for a
local wind farm on Harlock Hill, on the Furness peninsula overlooking Morecambe
Bay. The £3m project is to be run and owned by a specially created Baywind
Energy Co-operative, which will give preference to local people. Planning
permission has been given for five 500kW machines, and the co-op will buy them,
probably one by one, from the Wind Company, who will act as the developer. The
first should be installed this autumn. Minimum shares have been set at £300,
and a return of up to 8% is expected in real terms after tax.
However, one
time Greenpeace activist Simon Boxer, one of the project initiators,
told the Guardian it wasn't just about money. 'Too many people forget why we are
going to all this effort', which is why the share launch was timed to coincide
with the 10th anniversary of Chernobyl - many Cumbrian farmers still have sheep
banned from sale due to the radioactive fallout.
The co-op idea was a
central element - as was small scale operation. Another founder Phil Storey
commented 'One of the problems with larger wind farms is that big companies
are seen to be coming in and taking what they can get. Attitudes will be
different if local people have a share'.
Support for setting up the co-op
scheme has come from ETSU and a local Building Society. Details from The Wind
Company, Unit 29, 1 Trinity Enterprise Centre, Furness Business Park,
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, LA14 2PN (Free Phone 0800 919540; Direct 01229
821028)
The timetable for the next round of the UK's Non-Fossil Fuel
Obligation has emerged. As we noted in Renew 101, there were nearly 900
applications for support under NFFO-4, and a long drawn out process of
assessment is underway - culminating in the formal setting of the NFFO by the
Secretary of State in March 1997. Then in April 1997 the contracts will be
announced, ready for commencement on May 1st 1997. Presumably the contracts
will, as with NFFO-3, be for up to 15 years, with the levy being used to pay
premium prices - though what they will be depends on the competitive bidding
process. Projects will have what is nicely being termed a 'Shoo-in' period of 5
years, before they need to start up.
Interestingly, the overall NFFO levy
including the nuclear element, is to be kept at 10% of fossil fuel prices for
1996-7, with of course the bulk of this money raised still going to support
nuclear power. In principle, given the start up of Sizewell B, Nuclear Electric
was eligible for a larger share, which would have pushed the overall levy up to
14.5%. But, according to Wind Power Monthly (Feb. 96), given that some of
Nuclear Electrics plants are about to be privatised, they have 'agreed to a
postponement of some of its receipts'.
In 1993/4, the levy raised £1,234m,
approximately 94% of which went to nuclear generation, 6% to renewables, i.e.
around £74m. In 1994-5 the renewable share increased to £96m - or 8%.
When the 1998 deadline for levy support under NFFO-1 and 2 arrives, the levy
charge will obviously fall, but by then NFFO-3 projects will be getting support
and some NFFO-4 projects may be starting up, so the original DTI estimate of a
renewable levy of around £150m p.a. by the year 2000 seems likely to turn
out to be right. The nuclear part of the levy will of course end in 1998. But on
current plans, there will be no further renewable NFFO's after NFFO-5 in 1998,
so after 2010-15 or so, when NFFO-3 and 4 projects reach the end of their
contracts, that will be that. Unless that is the plans like those outlined by
SERA (see Renew 101) are adopted. Under SERA's programme, further NFFO rounds
would continue and would push the levy up to £415m by 2010, (adding 2.6% to
electricity consumer bills) so as to generate 10% of the UK's electricity from
renewables. After 2010 though, as the technologies matured, the costs should
drop.
Catherine Mitchell from the Science Policy Research Unit at the
University of Sussex, has also produced a plan for further rounds of the NFFO -
right up to NFFO-15! Her plan also has a '10% by 2010' target, but she
calculates that it can be achieved with smaller levy payments rising at most to
only around £180m in 2010. This is achieved by using a fixed price approach
for the main part of the NFFO and cost reflective pricing generally - and by
eating into the profits of the Regional Electricity Companies. See Renew 102 for
details.
Most of the remaining projects under the first (1990) round of the Non
Fossil Fuel obligation have now been completed, but the Second (1991) NFFO has
been less successful - by September 1995 only 81 of the 122 contracted for
projects had become operational - 181 MW out of 472 MW, and with the 1998 NFFO
levy deadline coming up, few more are likely to go ahead.
According to
'New Review' 27, the 4.5 MW New World Power Windfarm at Four Burrows in Cornwall
is expected to be 'the last of the NFFO - 2 projects to be commissioned'.
Consisting of 15 300 kw rated machines, it's the sixth windfarm in Cornwall.
Meanwhile, NFFO-3 projects, which do not have the 1998 deadline, are beginning
to get underway.
The first was the mini-hydro plant at Barrowash in
Derbyshire which will initially have 3 x 60kw turbines.
And work has
started in the first NFFO-3 supported windfarm - National Wind Power's 5.6 MW
project at Trysglwyn on Anglesea: which consists of the Bonus machines. It
should be operational soon.
NWP is also pressing ahead with the 5 windfarm
contracts it was awarded under the first Scottish Renewable Order.
So there
is some progress. But it will take time before NFFO 4 has an impact: the
contract allocations under NFFO 4 are not expected until 'early 1997'. NFFO 5 is
likely to be set in outline in 1998, and if there is also more than a years
delay before actual contracts are allocated, that could not be until 1999 or
2000!
This service is free as long as it is not used for commercial purposes but please ensure you credit the source of any material you use from RENEW ON-LINE.
EERU Home page
E-mail to Dave Elliott@open.ac.uk
Any comments or requests for further information should be addressed
to;
NATTA c/o EERU
Open University
MILTON KEYNES
MK7 6AA
U.K.