Examination of Witnesses (Questions 146-159)
MR CHRIS
SHEARS, MR
MARCUS RAND,
DR GORDON
EDGE AND
MR DAVID
MILBORROW
25 OCTOBER 2005
Chairman: A warm welcome to the British
Wind Energy Association, and to Mr Milborrow. Thank you for coming
today.
Q146 Joan Walley: I was glad that you
were able to be here for the first part of our inquiry this afternoon.
I am moving on to wind. In terms of the memo that you have given
us, in paragraph 11, I think it is, you say that there is no technical
or physical reason why renewable energy, and wind power in particular,
could not deliver on the target of 10% renewable energy by 2010.
I would like to know exactly what the current target is in respect
of 10% as far as wind is concerned and what expected contribution
for wind you would see being made by 2010?
Mr Rand: Obviously a key question.
In our submission we said, yes, technically we do believe that
the 10% target is achievable. Renewables, as you are probably
aware, currently generate just over 3% of the nation's needs.
The BWEA have said all along, from the formulation of the target
through to the formulation of the RO, that the wind industry will
be delivering the bulk of that target. We see that to be around
7,000 to 8,000 megawatts installed capacity by 2010. We have always
said we see that split more or less evenly between on-shore and
off-shore. We see a minimum of 4,000 megawatts on-shore being
developed by 2010 and up to 3,000 megawatts off-shore created.
How are we doing? This year has been a record year for the wind
industry. We have installed, or will have installed by the end
of the year, 500 megawatts of capacity this year, which is a doubling
over last year. As a result of the RO some 6,000 megawatts of
on-shore projects have gone into planning and some 3,000 megawatts
of off-shore projects have gone into planning. The RO has certainly
stimulated a strong interest in terms of delivery of the project,
and so there is enough wind capacity either in planning, approved,
under construction or built to deliver on the target. The other
statistics are at present we have got around 1.3 gigawatts of
projects built and a further 700 megawatts of projects under construction
which we are pretty confident will be built next year. In terms
of how we see that expanding over the next couple of years, we
see the on-shore market remaining pretty strong at around 500
megawatts per year, so we are pretty confident that we will deliver
on the 4,000 megawatts of on-shore. The big question mark, we
have said in our submission and in our work with the DTI and around
government at the moment, is whether we can bring off-shore into
play in a big enough quantity to deliver the 3,000 megawatts of
off-shore that we need to by 2010, and that is another key part
of our submission. Yes, it is technically possible, but we think
the key factor will be bringing off-shore into play.
Q147 Joan Walley: There are two issues
I am still not wholly clear about. We heard earlier about the
length of time it takes to get up to speed on these things early
on, and you have to pay the premium, and you produce very little
and then you suddenly start to get dividends and you can make
a more accelerated pace later on. By 2010 will wind be delivering
5% of what is required or will you be doing a lot more? I still
do not quite see where you will be.
Mr Rand: About 7% of the nation's
electricity supply if we deliver on those numbers, seven to eight
gigawatts.
Q148 Joan Walley: That is perfectly feasible?
Mr Shears: Coming in on that,
there is a sort of sea-change happening in installation rates
that we can see now. Through the nineties and the first half of
this decade we constructed about 1,000 megawatts and we have already
done 500 megawatts this year, so there is a bit of an exponential
up-ramp in the installation of wind energy both on-shore and off-shore.
Q149 Mr Chaytor: May I clarify one point
in your figures? You said, on the applications you have got in
or the sites under construction, you would reach the target by
2010. Surely the problem is the applications that are in: because
it is still the issue of the obstruction to on-shore planning
permissions that is your biggest obstacle. What proportion of
your projections is due to planning applications that are in but
have not yet been approved?
Mr Shears: The statistics are
interesting actually. We have 1.3 gigawatts built now, we have
about another 1.2 gigawatts with planning consent and we have
got about 600 megawatts under construction (0.6 of a gigawatt
under construction). You look at that and in relation to on-shore
we need another 1 to 1.5 gigawatts of consents to do what we have
already said we have set out to achieve on-shore. There are now
currently about another 6 gigawatts of wind in the planning system
and we would anticipate that there will be perhaps another 1 to
2 gigawatts in the next 12 months coming into the system. The
bulk of that is in Scotland at the moment, but I suspect there
will be a spread further south and into Wales for schemes coming
forward. Our position is that we anticipate that there will be
a reduction in the success rate, if you like, for schemes in planning,
but the key thing is that we keep the churn of projects going
and that the best schemes bubble to the surface and move on to
contribute towards the targets.
Mr Rand: A further piece of information
on that. If you look at it on average, it takes around two years
post- planning to get a project up and running just because of
construction time, so really we need to have achieved another
1,500 megawatts of consents by the end of 2007 for us to have
confidence that what we have got approved now and what is being
built now plus those future approvals can be built out by 2010.
That means that the bottom line is that we need to be getting
approvals around 700 megawatts a year. The good news is that last
year we achieved that target of 700 megawatts a year, and I think
this year we are at about 550 megawatts with the recent announcement
that the Minister made last week.
Q150 David Howarth: Can I ask about the
technical improvement in regeneration? At what rate are we seeing
technical improvement? Is it the case that one way to increase
numbers is by increasing the efficiency of equipment?
Mr Milborrow: To answer your last
specific point, increases in efficiency will generate relatively
modest improvements. What will generate more energy productivity
will be increases in the size of wind turbines, and the taller
they are the higher the wind speeds they see. Coupled with that,
the larger wind turbines also go with cheaper installation costs,
partly because the turbines achieve that, partly because you need
fewer of them for a given number of megawatts. There are improvements
but several different factors contribute to that improvement.
To answer the other point in your question, that trend has been
quite evident for the last 20 years and shows no signs of decelerating.
Q151 David Howarth: Within the period
2009 and 2010?
Mr Milborrow: Agreed, yes.
Mr Shears: To put it in context,
the turbines which are being installed at the moment, as a rule
of thumb, are around the two megawatt installed capacity mark,
and there are some five megawatt prototypes being looked at at
the moment now. The focus for those is perhaps for the off-shore
market in the future, but it does show that there is still huge
potential in the technology.
Q152 Chairman: The five megawatt ones
are much bigger, are they?
Mr Shears: They are.
Q153 Chairman: Is there a correlation
between the tallness of a wind turbine and the number of local
objectors?
Mr Shears: Not necessarily in
our experience.
Q154 Chairman: They object to them anyway,
whatever their height?
Mr Shears: Potentially that element
may be there, but I think generally it is perceived that to have
fewer bigger machines is a more effective way of getting delivery
than perhaps where we were 15 years ago where we were installing
three or four hundred kilowatt machines and we are now installing
2,000 kilowatt machines.
Q155 Joan Walley: There would not be
objections if the profits that were coming were invested back
into the local communities, but be that as it may. We have had
various different questions and I am still not absolutely clear.
Are you saying for the figures in respect of 2010 that if you
have 7,000 to 8,000 megawatts by then, that would be equivalent
to delivering 7% of electricity?
Mr Shears: Yes.
Mr Rand: The point is we have
got 3% already from other renewable sources; so technically you
can meet a 10% target.
Q156 Joan Walley: Given your reference
to things like the consents coming on stream, in terms of where
you will be by 2020 how much do you think wind will realistically
deliver by then?
Dr Edge: A lot of that depends
on how much of the off-shore resource is employed by then. Most
of the figures we have been talking about here have been on-shore,
and post 2010 there will continue to be on-shore development,
and you are looking at maybe something like 5 or 10% electricity
from on-shore at 2020, but in order to get the large increases
in wind power capacity then you will be moving off-shore, and
so by 2020 you might have seven, 8% on-shore and 10, 12% off-shore
wind. Those are the kinds of ball-park figures that are entirely
feasible at 2020.
Q157 Joan Walley: Effectively you are
being quite upbeat about what wind can deliver. What I need to
be clear about is whether or not you feel that renewables, including
wind, could contribute substantially to the gap that has been
left by the phasing out of older nuclear power plants and also
coal plants?
Mr Shears: I think the context
is that we are coming up the curve very quickly as a new technology,
and the numbers that Gordon has outlined, we believe are wholly
achievable from a technical and resource perspective. Going beyond
2020, we have been thinking closely about this and we will be
thinking more about this in relation to the impending energy review
next year, but we certainly think we can go on with another 1%
of wind beyond that on an annual basis, so the long-term ambitions
of this technology can be pretty substantial in terms of our UK
requirement. Let us not forget that off-shore we can provide three
times our power requirements just from the off-shore wind resource,
and so there is huge potential there.
Dr Edge: Also, you have to remember
this is just off-shore wind we are talking about. There is also
the wave and tidal stream resources which will be contributing
substantially post 2015.
Q158 Mr Hurd: Could you help me picture
what an on-shore wind industry generating 7 to 8% of British electricity
might mean in terms of the number of sites? Very broadly.
Mr Shears: The seven to 8% is
with the combination of on-shore and off-shore.
Q159 Mr Hurd: I meant 2020, 7 to 8% on
shore only?
Mr Shears: By that point we are
saying somewhere around 8,000 to 10,000 megawatts of capacity,
that sort of level. If we assume the two megawatt turbine like
the ones we are putting in now, that is about 5,000 turbines across
the whole of the UK. To put that in context, I think there are
currently around 80,000 pylons in the UK.
| 
