Dr Ian Mays Managing Director - Renewable Energy Systems Ltd 15 March 2004 The Royal Academy of Engineering / RSE

Joint Lecture Wind Energy : Powering the Future

Why renewable energy?

There are a

direction, as scientists are suggesting that by 2050, we will need to cut higher emissions by something like 60% in order to stabilise the atmosphere. In Europe, the 8% reduction is developing at different rates, more or less by way of CO2 reduction. Clearly developing economies need more energy and therefore are likely to generate more CO2. The developed economies can perhaps cut back. However, we are not doing particularly well at the moment, in 1999 Europe was 3.6% below 1990 levels. But two years later it had dropped to 2.3% below 1990 levels. EU Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, said The EU is moving further away from meeting its commitment. Member States that are not on track in reaching their targets urgently need to take additional action. Thats the CO2 side of things, the global warming side of things, but what about the energy part? Taking a step forward to 2050, we expect the population to have increased by 50%. On top of that developing countries will require more energy; maybe double the present amount by 2050. By 2050 we can expect that oil and gas will be severely constrained in their supply, coal will then take the burden, and thus will start to deplete rapidly. So our energy requirements will need to be met by nuclear and renewables. There is a question mark at the moment on the acceptability of nuclear power, not just in the UK but around the

number of reasons why we are going to need renewable energy in the future, first and most compelling at the moment, from a political point of view, is global warming, and how we best fight global warming. If we look at European demand, notwithstanding the fact that we are trying to put more energy efficiency into the system, energy demand is still growing at 1% per year, so that by 2010 we can expect that the energy demand will be some 10% above what it was when we set the targets. But, the driver for this is the increase in CO2 emissions and global warming in the atmosphere. Estimates suggest that somewhere between 2 and 6 degrees warming will happen over the next 100 years unless we do something about it. To put it in context, the difference between the mean temperature now and the middle of the last ice age was only about 2.5 degrees, but only in the other direction. You can see this rise in temperatures could have quite a catastrophic effect. To try to fight this, the Kyoto Protocol was brought in in 1997, and was signed by a hundred or so countries. The European Union said it would reduce CO2 emissions between 2008 and 2012, by 8% below 1990 levels. The UK was part of that drive, and is to reduce its levels by about 12.5% by a combination of measures - energy efficiency, sustainable transport, but also renewable energy. That is only a small step in the right

world, which may or may not be resolved so the extent to which renewables become the primary resource will, I think, depend largely on the future of nuclear. I do believe that renewables are likely to be called upon to meet more energy demands by 2050. What are countries around the world doing? The politicians recognise the need to be doing something in Europe. We have now set a target where about 12% of our primary energy should come from renewables by 2010. Thats quite a tough target; currently it is around 5.3%. In order to do that, an EU Renewables Directive was introduced which sets individual country targets. These are not obligatory targets but they are targets which countries have to try to meet. If targets are not achieved, then the Monitoring of Compliance will start to bite. Eventually there will be an attempt to harmonise the various support mechanisms for renewables throughout the EU. Renewable energy will be certified to ensure that what is being sold as renewable energy is actually renewable, tracing its origin. The planning consents which are holding up a lot of development at the moment are to be expedited, but also another issue - access to the grid - is also to be given priority. This will be reviewed in 2005 and then again in 2010. Where do renewables come from? There are a number of different renewable technologies, some with moderate resource and some with more significant resource. Those with moderate resource in a European context are waste technologies, geothermal power, hydro and tidal, and those with a more significant resource come from Biomass, wind (onshore and offshore), solar and wave. Geothermal. This is quite limited in Europe. Iceland has quite a bit, but it is really limited

in terms of the expected amount of energy that can be extracted. Tidal power in the UK we are very fortunate. There is a very good tidal scheme in the Southern estuary, which if developed could bring 6 or 7% of our power. It is quite expensive, and I am sure it will be developed in due course, however in a European context, there is limited potential. The most significant potential comes from biomass, which is basically growing crops to burn to generate electricity which is CO2 neutral. The issues here really are in developing a commercial mechanism, involving farmers, industry and technology. Solar power the technology has been developing quite well, but costs are still very high and I think that will limit its potential until such time as there is a quantum leap in the technology and technological development cost. Wave power there is potential here, particularly in the UK, but again cost is an issue, at the moment. In due course, we hope that costs will be driven down. What are the technologies which are likely to be able to meet some of those relatively short-term targets to 2010. Essentially there are two onshore wind and offshore wind, or at least that is my perspective. The EU has set a target of 468 TWh/yr by 2010. Initially it was thought that wind could perhaps produce 25% of that, and actually it is already doing extremely well. Wind in Europe is now producing 27,000 MW of this. The other technologies are not moving as quickly, so my expectation is that wind will be called upon to reach a much higher percentage of that target. At 75% that would mean 135,000 MW of wind. To put this into context in terms of the size of the business that this represents, it is round

about a one million euros per megawatt, so that represents round about 135 billion euros of business over the next 6-7 years. It is quite a big challenge to pull that out and to find cash to do it. The countries of Europe generally have a very good wind resource. In most countries in Europe, including the UK, the wind potential is adequate to meet at least 25% of the energy demand. So where have we got to now? Around the world, we now have about 39,000 MW of wind energy capacity installed and around 75TWh of electricity is produced annually. That is saving around 60 million tons of CO2 every year. Around the world, wind now meets the domestic electricity needs of more than 35 million people. There are 55,000 wind turbines installed, and in the past few years the number of new wind energy installations has passed that of nuclear installations. So why should we have wind energy in the UK? I believe it is the most appropriate renewable resource for the UK. The British Isles have 40% of the European wind resource blowing over their shores, and Scotland has about half of that. So Scotland, I would suggest, is probably the windiest country in Europe. Theoretically in the UK it is enough to provide three times our electricity power, but not 100% of our electricity supply, because it is intermittent. So we have a clean, abundant natural energy source; why not use it? Where have we got to in the UK so far? There are now 83 wind farms. Thats 1060 turbines, with a total capacity of 647 MW, - enough to produce power for half a million homes, and reduce CO2 emissions by 1.5m tonnes per year.

By 2010, in order to be able to meet the10% target, we expect wind will be producing around 7% of this. That would mean 8000 MW of wind split equally between offshore and onshore. We would need onshore around 3000 wind turbines in total. To put that in context, back in the 19th century, there were some 10,000 windmills around the UK mainland shores, and they were lived with quite happily. Wnd energy technology started to get moving in the 1950s, but it wasnt really until the 1970s, when the energy crisis came and focused peoples attention on the finite nature of energy resources, that people started to refocus on the possibilities of wind energy. Having been through a process of research and development, during the 1970s and the 1980s, through one-bladed machines, twobladed machines, and four-bladed machines, and the different types of rotation, vertical axis and horizontal axis, the design has now basically come down to a three-bladed wind turbine with a horizontal axis. Wind energy is an expanding industry, and it has enormous potential for creating new jobs. Benefits accrue during construction but also afterwards, with tourism both at local and national level. Wind energy results in more jobs per unit of electricity than any other method of electricity generation. The offshore wind market has very different characteristics to the onshore market. First of all it is important to know that it will be supplementing not replacing onshore wind; the costs are higher and we need to ensure that we use the resource that we have on land, in addition to that offshore. Onshore or offshore, I believe we need both in order to meet the UK Government targets, and I know that offshore plans are

likely to only reach 40-50% of the target for 2010. So what do we need if we are going to build a windfarm? What are the ingredients? First of all we need land with sufficient winds to make it economic, we need a power purchase agreement with someone to buy the power. We need building permission, a grid connection, and finance. Land is available, although there is quite a lot of competition for it now. Windy land finance is available generally, but planning permission and grid connection can be difficult and time-consuming, and the power-purchase agreement is a competitive process. Those are the sort of dynamics which we have currently in the wind energy market in the UK. The basic constraints for wind energy are the price of competing energy sources. Somehow we need a mechanism which enables these relatively expensive technologies to come forward into volume production and be able to compete. You need to ensure that you can get planning consent to build them in order to meet these targets, but the grid also needs to evolve. We have now got to the stage where the cheapest wind has been able to compete with the cheapest conventional power, and that has been demonstrated at a wind farm not too far from here on the A68, where the price of power is comparable with the price of gas generation. However, at less windy sites, the cost is higher and therefore, greater than the cheapest conventional power. Because of that, in order to bring wind on we need to have mechanisms in the market place to enable it to come to the market. These can be either an obligation to buy, a percentage obligation, or a tariff mechanism, such as is the case in France and many other European countries, and Germany in particu-

lar. To that you could add grant-aid if necessary. You can have tax incentives as is the case in the USA, or you can simply rely on consumer preference. In the UK, onshore wind power now costs around 3.1p KWh; by 2010 we would expect that to come down to about 2.7p KWh. Offshore power costs around 5.5p KWh, hopefully reducing to 4.4p by 2010 and to 3.7p by 2020. Compare that with the DTIs view on nuclear power costs (about 3.7p KWh) and you can see that offshore wind should be able to be competitive with nuclear, by the time that nuclear is able to make a significant contribution in 2020. Onshore wind is very much cheaper. If you take an international view of the costs of different technologies and project this up to 2020, gas and onshore wind should be expectecd to be the cheapest forms of power available, followed by coal and nuclear, offshore wind, energy crops and wave coming in in due course. Another issue is the grid. At the moment we have a centralised grid system. We need to evolve that and become decentralised, in order to capture the wind wherever it exists, so we need to strengthen the grid in windy areas. Time scales for grid development evolution are a big issue, because building new power lines takes time. We also need to be able to manage the fluctuating levels of generation which are a feature of wind energy. The UK grid system consists mainly of large power stations and is designed to cope with a large plant going out of action and also millions of kettles going on during the TV adverts. Fluctuations in the wind have the same sort of effect on the system as variations in demand. Various studies have been done, and intermittency is really not a problem in the system, until you get up to 10% of

your power from wind, and then you need to start providing back-up plant to enable the system to be as reliable with more wind energy on the system. The estimate from the DTI is that cost of back-up is about 0.2p KWh for a 20% contribution from intermittent generation. Although the level will rise once you start to get beyond 20%. A further issue is planning Although there is a vocal minority which doesnt like wind energy, the vast majority of people on all the public attitude studies we have done are in favour of it, but planning committees dont like to go against a vocal lobby. As a result of that planning can be difficult. There are moves by the Government to try to improve the planning system to enable wind energy to comeback more quickly, but we really need to mobilise the silent majority here to make sure that peoples voices are heard. In

the landscape modern wind turbines are quiet, despite what some people will say; they are graceful in appearance, and actually when larger, the rotation speed reduces, because the tip speed has to remain the same, so when it gets longer the RPO reduces. They rotate relatively slowly and they are safe. The vast majority (80%) of people generally support wind power. In Wales in 2002, 3/5 of those polled supported a doubling in the number of onshore wind turbines in Wales. Generally what is found is that the closer people live to a wind farm, the more they like it, which is quite interesting. So, why wind energy? It is clean, has no emissions, produces no waste, it is sustainable, it is safe, it is popular, it has low, reducing costs.