BWEA submission to energy review I

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) today presents the Prime Minister and Malcolm Wicks, Energy Minister, with new evidence on the delivery of wind and marine power and calls on them to commit the nation to generating 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. According to BWEA’s submission to the Energy Review, by 2020, wind power both on and offshore, wave and tidal stream and small scale wind turbines can generate 21% of the UK’s projected electricity needs. On and offshore wind will play the leading roles, generating respectively 8.8% and 9.4% of projected UK electricity supply, with an additional 2.1% coming from wave and tidal power and up to 0.7% from micro and mini wind turbines.

These technologies alone could have a combined capacity of 28,000 megawatts (MW) in place by 2020, generating 78 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, equivalent to the needs of two thirds of all UK homes. If displacing gas-fired electricity generation, this would reduce gas imports by 14.6 billion cubic metres annually and avoid 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, whilst delivering major economic benefits to the UK of more than £16 billion in the period to 2020 from construction and operation of the potential onshore and offshore wind capacity. While BWEA’s research indicates that by 2010 around 8% of the country’s electricity needs will be met by renewables, primarily from onshore wind, it also shows that ‘business as usual’ progress, driven by the current support mechanism of the Renewables Obligation (RO) will not be sufficient to drive a major roll out of offshore renewables, without which we will fall well short of the 20% potential identified by the Association.

A contribution of 20% is not only deliverable, as identified by BWEA, but can be accommodated on the grid without reduced reliability, as noted in a new report released by the UK Energy Research Centre last week*. Their comprehensive assessment of the evidence on intermittency confirms that variable generation from sources such as wind do not compromise system reliability and that while some changes to operation and additional investment in backup capacity are required, these are limited and quantifiable, and easily achievable in the 2020 timescale.