The UK government has been warned that it will fall short of its 2020 renewable-source energy targets. At current rates of progress, the UK will only have built 25% of the offshore wind farms that it needs to reach the target of having 15% of energy produced from renewable sources.
The Carbon Trust, an independent think-tank, says that cost reductions, re-assessment of investor and developer risk, and speeding up the approval process could cut around £16 billion ($28 billion) from the cost of building such wind farms.
Current rules dictate that the next round of wind farms will be built 70 miles from shore in deep water. The Carbon Trust suggests that closer wind farms in shallower water could meet the target of 29GW of offshore wind farms being constructed by 2020. It also recommends reducing the number and scale of regulations preventing building and increasing public funding – allowing offshore wind power to compete economically with non-renewable generation before the 2020 deadline.
Wind-farm promoters say that protracted planning processes, including public consultation and objections, delays in national grid connection of up to a decade, and unanticipated technical problems in building deep-water wind farms are all contributing to a likely failure to meet the wind energy target. Despite this, Ed Miliband, Minister for Energy and Climate Change, has just increased the UK’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 60% to 80% by 2050. The UK is the first country to attempt to switch its energy supply so fast, and on such a massive scale – and wind power, which currently generates just under 4% of the country’s power, would have to be producing 36% by 2020. Many companies appear to feel that it is policy barriers rather than technical difficulties that made the target unreachable – Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of a major Thames Estuary wind farm project before the summer, claiming the increase in oil prices meant the company had to rethink its investment in renewables.
Offshore wind turbine courtesy of Phault at Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence
[...] the economic downturn on environmental issues has been mixed. In 2007 the European Union agreed the 20-20-20 programme: by 2020 member states would aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increase renewable [...]