Soon
we’ll see election positions being taken up, with energy being one key issue: some
first shots have already been fired- e.g. Labour’s pledge to freeze power
prices. And (see below) its new ‘green gas’ commitment.
Setting
the wider scene, the Conservative Party’s manifesto in the recent Euro election outlined what it saw as its
achievements in relation to the EU, including: stopping EU attempts to ban
further offshore oil and gas drilling, stopping EU attempts to over-regulate
the UK’s emerging shale gas industry, and ensuring that the proposed 2030
renewable energy target is non-binding on individual EU countries. What will be
in their 2015 national election manifesto? An on-land wind freeze?
The Lib Dems oddly didn’t mention their support for
nuclear in their Euro election bumph, Labour is also all for it, so is UKIP (and very hostile to
renewables), leaving just the Green Party as the only pro-renewables/anti-nuclear option, the SNP in Scotland apart.
However, to be
fair, investment in renewables has doubled under the present government, with
renewables now supplying 15% of UK electricity, although whether they can claim
to have aided or hindered that is another matter. In terms of overall expansion
plans, a Parliamentary answer a minister indicted that by 2015 on shore wind
was expected to deliver 5.6-6.6% of UK electricity, offshore wind 3.4%, solar
1.3 and nuclear 1.5-16.7% (Hansard 14/5/14 : Col 595W).
Will rival
parties push for more in the election run up? And new support options? DECC had made proposals for an Offtaker of Last
Resort (OLR) system, to support independent renewable generators by
guaranteeing a route-to-market and therefore improving their ability to raise
project finance. That seems to be designed to help small generators, but
details are scarce. Could there be other new forms of support, or is it just
the standard Contracts for a Difference system, shared with nuclear ? If so,
then the new £205m p.a. CfD cap limit on renewables will slow things down.. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/over-200-million-boost-for-renewables
More
immediately, there’s the Scottish Independence referendum. What does that means for energy and in
particular, renewables? Carbon
Commentary.com suggested that
about 15 GW of 2020 renewables will be in Scotland or in Scottish waters and
only about 18 GW will be in England and Wales. So Independence would mean that
around 40% of total renewables will ‘disappear’, but only 10% of UK electricity
consumption.
The UK rump would have to
import this green power to meet its targets. Also it claimed that Scottish
renewables would only need a subsidy of on average £44/MWh as against £93 for
England and Wales. (CarbonCommentary, quoted in
issue 62 of NuClear news: http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclear-news/)
Whatever happens
in relation to Scotland, there will be room for new interventions. Labours energy spokesperson Caroline
Flint says if Labour won the general election, they would commission the
Committee on Climate Change, with National Grid, to report by the end of 2015
with advice and recommendations on reforms needed ‘to maximise the potential
for the development of green gas’. She claimed that the cost of minor gas grid upgrades for green gas
injection, so as to continue to provide heating, would be much less than for
the electrification of the heating systems in the UK (the current government
plan is to do that mostly via electric powered heat pumps) which would require
an electricity transmission and distribution system four times its current
size. It’s an interesting idea. Landfill gas and sewage gas production is
effectively free and its use offers some of the cheapest electric power we
have, but these are relatively limited resources, and probably best left for
electricity production. AD biogas production is a potentially much larger
resource, using farm and food wastes and possibly energy crops, like short
rotation coppiced willow. Though it’s more expensive than using landfill/sewage
gas. There may also be land use and eco-limits to the use of some energy crops: www.theguardian.com/big-energy-debate/biogas-green-energy-environmental-damage
However it’s
surely vastly preferable environmentally to use biogas than (fossil) shale gas.
And if, tragically, the wind programme stalls, or is stalled, and nuclear is
delayed (which seems very likely) or abandoned (which would be sensible), then
this, along with energy saving, might be part of the way ahead for heat supply,
rather than massive reliance on electrification. And biomass/waste-fired CHP
linked to district heating, ought to appeal to Labour, with its urban
emphasis.
I will be looking
at some of these technical options in my next post. But on the politics side, there was a time when the Labour
left was anti nuclear and pro-renewables and the right pro nuclear and
anti-renewables . However, these days energy choices don't always map onto
politics in any immediately obvious way, at least in the UK. Elsewhere it can
be different, though party positions do vary- who would have thought a right of
centre German government would be pioneering a nuclear phase out and a green
future? This sort of speculation may be of little value, especially since policies and contexts
keep changing (see Ben Sovacool and Scot
Valentine’s 2012 Routledge book
‘The National Politics of Nuclear Power’), but one cross-EU study did
find some clear left-right political correlations on sustainable energy and
nuclear power: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112002479.
For what it’s
worth, very roughly, there is, as far as I can see, a spectrum in terms of
positions on sustainable energy and climate change, but not often linked to
governing party politics, from very progressive and radical to reactionary and
conservative. So at one end, for example, there’s Denmark, Germany, Austria and
Scotland and at the other extreme Russia, along with ex-Soviet countries like
Hungary and Poland, and tragically now Australia, and maybe Canada. I’d put the UK in the centre
right in this range, drifting ever more to the right. Despite differing party
policies, Spain and France seem to have ended up in the middle too. Where you
might put China and USA in this framework who knows! China to the centre left,
the US to the centre right? It’s
much easier to locate organisations within this framework, with for example the
World Future Foundation, along with Greenpeace, WWF and maybe FoE, at one end
and the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the UK’s Renewable Energy
Foundation, plus many US anti-renewables groups, at the other!
Hard to place
Renewable UK: it’s clearly progressive, but seems happy to accept nuclear
power- or at least not oppose it publicly. Though it’s clear where its
loyalties lie: in its self-styled ‘election manifesto’ it says onshore wind
should be the cheapest new source by 2020, while offshore wind should be at
£100/MWh, and by then ‘wind should be meeting a
quarter of the UK’s electricity need’. It wants
the Government to ‘set a clear path for investors by setting a 2030
decarbonisation target, with an accompanying extension of the Levy Control
Framework, and an indication of how different technologies will play their
part. The strongest signal of all would be a 2030 renewables target.’ There was also a need for continued support for
technological innovation to get costs down e.g. for offshore wind. Interestingly it notes that 61% of
Conservative voters, 72% of Labour and 79% of Lib Dems back wind, as do a
majority of UKIP voters. If so, then maybe renewables are in with
chance: www.renewableuk.com/en/publications/guides.cfm/general-election-manifesto
