Examination of Witnesses (Questions 89-99)
Ms Juliet Davenport
31 MARCH 2008
Q89Chairman: Ms Davenport, thank you very much
indeed, I am sorry that you were delayed coming through security,
it is one of the more onerous burdens that are placed on those
visiting us. We are aiming to finish at 6.00. Perhaps you would
be very kind just to introduce yourself and your organisation,
and then make any opening remarks that you may wish to, and then
my colleagues that remain will be asking questions.
Ms Davenport: My name is Juliet Davenport,
I am chief executive of a company called Good Energy, we are a
renewable electricity supplier in the UK, specialising really
in the end of the market where we are trying to reintroduce energy
to individuals, that is to reconnect how you generate energy with
how you actually use it. A lot of our work involves looking at
the microgeneration end of the market, the much smaller end. We
do do some development of larger wind farms that we are working
on at the moment, but I would say probably our specialism really
is in the micro end of the market. In terms of an opening comment,
I would say that the EU targets that have been outlined in the
papers that have come through are very ambitious. I think what
is going to be interesting is there are not only going to be some
big gesture political moves that are going to be needed, but also
a lot of very small technical details. One of the comments I may
come to at the end, about governance particularly, I think, is
regulation is going to be extremely important in making sure that
this goes through the whole heart of the energy market, because
if you are introducing such an extreme target, and it is an extreme
target, then you need to make sure that you do not have policies
conflicting with each other.
Q90 Chairman: Could you just define
for the record microgeneration?
Ms Davenport: Well, they are very different
descriptions of it, but we define it as under 100 kW, so that
ranges from solar panels on people's roofs to small community
wind turbines and small biomass units and small hydro units as
well. So it is a kind of range, we have about 380 of these generators
that we support at the moment, and we have been putting a lot
of effort into trying to simplify the administration procedures
to get the costs down in terms of serving those particular generators.
Q91 Chairman: By support, you mean
simply purchase contracts?
Ms Davenport: Purchase contracts, but
we have actually put a particular structure together. We have
a tariff where we can define how we prove what is called environmental
additionality against our tariff, so essentially we do something
called retiring ROCs, I think we talked about Renewable Obligation
Certificates earlier, to prove that we actually do more than just
supply green electricity in the market that goes above and beyond
Government targets, we have to use some kind of mechanism. We
use a mechanism called retiring ROCs, but also we use a mechanism
where we issue two ROCs to our generators rather than just the
norm of one, so we have preceded Government policy in a tester
environment.
Q92 Chairman: How do you finance
that?
Ms Davenport: We ask our customers to,
so we are very transparent in terms of what we support, and we
tell our customers why they pay a premium, and that is how they
accept it.
Q93 Chairman: Are your customers
domestic or industrial or both?
Ms Davenport: They are a mixture of really
domestic and commercial, we do not really have any large industrial
customers.
Q94 Chairman: My colleagues? I am
going to ask you, if I may, following Mr Thomas's very helpful
advice, could you give us some comments from experience about
the planning process? We have had a fascinating piece of evidence,
I think you were in the room, when the evidence was we ought to
look at recommending a change to placing planning authority at
county level, and then one of the questions from Lord Bradshaw
mooted the point that perhaps we ought to turn the whole process
on its head and start from an inspector, centrally appointed,
I guess, asking questions about how the energy on a renewable
basis could be supplied. What are your views on the planning system,
can you give us some practical examples?
Ms Davenport: Yes, we have had experience
from developing wind farms similar to Mr Thomas, but also to the
experience of our generators, our smaller generators, who have
gone through the planning process, and for microgenerators, traditionally
the planning process has been a big barrier, in terms of you want
to buy a wind turbine, it is an expensive thing anyhow, you have
made that decision, and then you have to go through the planning
process, and the real problem is the planning officers have no
idea what these technologies look like. They have no idea what
they can possibly achieve. So the tendency is to reject because
they do not have sufficient information. So I think the idea of
trying to improve the information levels at all levels within
planning, whether you go to a county level or use a different
format, but our view is that you do have to provide resource at
that level, whether—if you leave it in the local district,
particularly for microgeneration it might work better, but provide
an expert at a county level who can provide this information.
Because our experience has been that nobody really knows what
they are talking about. In fact, we were very close to North Wiltshire
District Council officers, we actually worked in the same building,
and the informal conversations we had with them were really around
the fact that they had very little information on this technology,
and therefore, it tended to get pushed to one side because they
did not have the resources to deal with it. Our experience in
terms of wind farm development has been repowering, where there
is already an existing site where we are taking down the old turbines
and putting up new turbines. What is interesting about this is
this site has had a wind farm on it for nearly 20 years, yet we
have to go through the same environmental impact assessment as
we would for a completely new site, so we know what the bird strikes
are on the site, we know what the bats are on the site, but we
still have to go through the same process. So our view would be,
particularly for sites that have already had wind farms, there
should be some kind of streamlining process, so there can be some
acceptability of historical evidence on the site.
Q95 Chairman: Would you go so far
as to suggest that there should be either regional or national
inspectors, skilled in and experienced in wind farm operation,
and planning applications and the issues that arise, so that you
are not having to ask the same basic questions, if you are the
inspector or the councillor, and learning as you go?
Ms Davenport: Yes, I would. I think particularly
around new issues like noise issues, where there are new EU areas
around this, I think are very interesting, because we are getting
different views from different local planning authorities about
these points, different interpretations, and then as soon as you
have a different interpretation, you are putting two different
types of environmental impact assessments in.
Q96 Lord Bradshaw: Yes, I am very
interested in this, because it appears to me the opinions, often
quite—well, not very well-founded opinions of people on
planning committees actually are influencing the thing enormously.
If there were specialist planning inspectors, would you tell us
whether you think some of them should actually be experts in energy
supply, so that they were not diverted on to other building matters
and development matters, so they actually knew technically what
they were talking about?
Ms Davenport: From a point of view of
implementing renewable energy, I would say yes, of course. It
really comes down to resource, but I think it would be the number
of planning applications that are likely to go through, if we
start moving forward, particularly on microgeneration as well,
will increase significantly, and I think not being able to have
the resources to deal with those, we have already found that problem
on the regulatory side, with central regulation, let alone local
regulation, and I can see the same logjams coming through again.
Q97 Lord Walpole: Could I just say
that my local authority was good enough to lay on a demonstration
of microgeneration. I have not noticed them going up all over
the place, but there were actually a very substantial number of
people there, 70 or 80 of them, looking at little wind things,
you know, tiny ones. I have not noticed them going up everywhere,
but at least they are taking an interest.
Ms Davenport: The issue for us is that
some local authorities are excellent, and they have a lot of information,
and they have a particular planning officer who has taken a real
interest in this, so you get great quality from that side; and
then you go to other areas where they are not. It is the fact
that the quality is so different across the country. If you are
looking at a national programme, which is what we are looking
at, to roll out information, grants and sort of support systems
for microgeneration, it is very difficult to do it unless you
just do it on a very small area.
Q98 Lord Walpole: When you talk about
a normal wind turbine, is there a normal size? Actually, I should
have asked Mr Thomas, I suppose, when he was in full flow, but
is there a normal one?
Ms Davenport: I suppose in terms of the
larger onshore wind turbines, there is a movement towards a 2
MW type, which is round about 100 metres in tip height. With the
small ones, no, there is not, yet. That is still quite a disaggregated
market, in the sense there are lots of new technologies coming
in and there is not a standardised one yet. I think we will see
some market convergence in the next five to ten years, depending
on how fast the market moves.
Q99 Lord Rowe-Beddoe: Thank you,
My Lord Chairman. Ms Davenport, if I may say, you have been extremely
cautious, when you actually referred to the EU target, as indeed
was Mr Thomas, but I noted with you it was extremely cautious.
All I am really saying to you is basically, could you honestly
tell me whether you think, from your viewpoint, we have a chance
in the United Kingdom to actually achieve it, assuming that we
accept the EU proposals?
Ms Davenport: Well, we are very far behind.
If you look at the comparison in terms of the targets for everybody
else and our targets, we have had our own oil and gas and nuclear
programme in the UK which has tended to mean that we have not
developed renewables. In fact, it is not just us, there are about
five northern European countries where other fossil fuels and
other energy sources were important, so it is a very stretching
target. For me, it is going to come down to what is happening
on renewable heat, and that is an area that really has not been
addressed very well yet, if at all. Everybody is sitting there
going, "We really do not know how to do this", but the
heat part of this is going to be very significant. Transport again
is an area where people really do not know what the possibilities
are for the transport side of it. On electricity, I think it is
very stretching, and I think there are some issues on intermittency,
in the sense that you have to look at what the rest of the grid
is doing on a European level, not just in the UK, because after
all, we do balance France's nuclear for it quite nicely, as everybody
else does, and it depends not only what renewables you have got
in the system, but also whether you have got coal, gas or nuclear.
The problem with the question is it is not just about what you
are going to do on renewables, it is about what you are going
to do on energy efficiency, and what you are going to do on the
rest of investment in your infrastructure. If I could put my hand
on my heart and say you could make sure you have got the infrastructure
in Scotland, to make sure you can get the wind farms in Scotland
on, you can get the balancing position from very good up-to-date
coal, which is what you are going to need, I believe, and you
could make sure that you have got energy efficiency really coming
through very strongly, and you keep energy prices high, which
is a real conflict for fuel poverty, I know, but it is really
what is going to be needed to deliver, then I think you have got
a chance, but I think you really have to look at it. It is not
just one answer, you cannot just respond to this with a renewable
energy policy, it is an overall energy policy.
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