Government Confident of Renewable Energy Targets
Under the old Labour government many green energy targets were developed and agreed although recent evidence suggests these would be widely missed, however the new coalition government now says that it’s confident of hitting these. Lets investigate.
One of the biggest commitments made under the Labour government was to the EU which said that the UK would generate at least 15% of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2020 – now under 10 years away. The current levels reported in the UK are still in low single figures at around 5-6% depending on what reports you read and with the current recession and cutting back on investment some commentators were wondering exactly how these targets would be met.
New National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP)
However, the new government has been very busy in its first few months and has already submitted a report entitled the new national renewable energy action plan from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) which is a requirement from the EU to detail exactly how these 2020 targets would be met.
Only the UK, Holland, Denmark and Sweden have now submitted their reports out of all the EU members and the UK government says that it is confident of meeting the 15% target.
The overall make up of the renewable energy sources is as follows and totals a massive 38.2 GW and this won’t be all as the report suggests that “we want to go a lot further” :
- Onshore wind farms 14.9 GW
- Offshore wind farms 13.0 GW
- Biomass 4.2 GW
- Solar panels 2.7 GW
- Hydro water power – 2.1 GW
- Wave and tidal power 1.3 GW
One of the interesting facts from the report states that there are no installations producing this kind of power that are waiting to be connected to the national grid although there are projects in development that are seeking connection.
Part of the plans to instigate further investment in these programmes by the government and the private sector is to ramp up the introduction and adoption of feed in tariffs which although are out there are not heavily promoted as yet. This is a scheme where private individuals and businesses get paid directly for the amount of renewable power they generate whether they use it or not. Certainly when you look at the available business electricity suppliersthat are around some of them may produce the green tariffs you are after but recent work looking at carbon offset schemes suggests that you can’t actually say that business A definitely gets their energy from green sources as it simply comes from the national grid rather than directly from a wind turbine (although some of the newer green energy suppliers can guarantee this).
Additionally there is the possibility of extending the projects to run along side the current renewables obligation contracts. The overall plans calls for the following proportions of energy to be from renewable sources; 30% for electricity demand, 12% from heat demand and 10% from transport demand (with the introduction of electric cars and alternative fuels this could certainly be achieved).
But as can be seen from the initial breakdown of where most of this new green source of energy is going to come from it would seem the relentless investment and generation of offshore and onshore wind farms is certainly set to continue and the document goes further in the detail to say that this is a key area for investment and development. There are also many emerging technologies in this section which the government is set to exploit and although these will at first generate very little in the way of renewable energy (such as anaerobic digestion) these may be developed so many years in the future there is a base to work from.
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