Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

By Ray Block

The low
carbon economy strategy announced this week by Ed Millband, Energy and Climate
Change Secretary and Lord Mandelson, Business Secretary contain highly
ambitious targets for a UK
economy, still in the grip of a deep seated recession.

 

According
to UK
government figures, greenhouse gas emissions are currently 21 per cent below
1990 levels. The ambition is for the carbon target to fall 34 per cent below
1990 by 2020, and by 80 per cent below by 2050.

 

Renewable
energy as a percentage of total electricity produced, which was as low as 1.3
per cent in 2005, and is still less than 5 per cent, is required under European
Union edicts to rise to 15 per cent by 2020. The 15 per cent renewables is
meant to include power, heat and transport.

 

Daunting as
the renewables target is against the background of little achieved to date, the
new UK
approach is to go for broke aiming to reach a low carbon economy target of 40
per cent by 2020. This would include a 10 per cent renewable share of transport
fuel. The low carbon mandate for 2020 is 40 per cent.

 

The aim for
renewables by 2020 is no longer 15 per cent, but double that at 30 per cent. There
would be a further complement of low carbon items, particularly in nuclear
energy and “clean coal.” The latter will involve the retrofitting of post
combustion installations in power plants, with subsequent sequestration of
carbon dioxide.

 

An
illustrative renewable technology breakdown to reach the 2020 target would
include Renewable Transport to consist of 20 per cent renewable energy, in say
electric and hydrogen vehicles and biofuels. This would represent 10 per cent
of the total transport mix.

 

Renewable Heat
could represent 33 per cent of renewable energy and make up 14 per cent of
total heat. This could be made up of Biomass 15 per cent, Biogas 5 per cent, Heat
pumps 4 per cent; Solar 9 per cent.

 

Renewable
electricity would consist of 33 per cent in renewables. This would represent 47
per cent of total energy. Apart from small hydro resources, onshore wind could
provide say 13 per cent and offshore wind 19 per cent. Up to 33 GW of offshore
wind “might be achievable by 2030, and 18 GW by 2020.”

This is against 8 GW
planned, but not installed to date. Modelling also suggests that by 2020, the UK would need
14 GW on onshore wind energy against 2GW today

 

The UK
Government still sees the need for  new
conventional coal fired power plants in the next decade to make up for the
expected electricity demand. Current estimates suggest the need for over 45 GW
of new generating capacity by 2020, of which around 30 GW will be renewable. A
minor amount of energy will also come from tidal and wave technology, of which
the UK
is the world leader, along with biomass and waste to energy.

 

The
Department of Energy and Climate Change is frank in saying: “We do not
underestimate the challenge of delivering the scale of renewable deployment in
little over a decade….However, to meet our target, we have no choice but to
face the challenge head-on.”

 

And how
much is this brave new world to cost? Here the bureaucrats are coy, but suggest
a “central estimate of the cost to the UK in meeting a 15 per cent
renewable energy target could be around in English pounds 5 to 6 billion a year
in 2020 at 2009 prices.”

 

In a weasel
approach, they ask the rhetorical question whether the European Union
directorate would allow the UK
the luxury of using offsets, that is deploying some of the energy projects
outside the UK, which would
cut back on the expected rise in UK energy prices, making the
development of the strategy more acceptable to the electorate.

And there is the
hope of saving energy and saving money through a smart grid. The UK
electricity grid is in urgent need of greater flexibility to cope with the
expected rise in renewable electricity.

 

In blunt
terms, the UK
has suffered to date with too much planning and little to show in renewable
energy terms. Planning authorities have done their best to prevent many wind
energy projects from getting off the ground, and the Gas and Electricity
Markets Authority, has been somewhat inept.

Hence the government is giving the
renewable energy sector to a new Office of Renewable Energy, with the aim of
speeding up the implementation of the low carbon strategy.

 

The new
strategy is subject to public responses to the plan and consultation with the
EU Directive, which means that the whole process may be in limbo until the
government’s final determination will be published in the Spring of 2010. By
which time, there will be a general election, and so the whole process may go
on and on.

 

 

 

Posted under Carbon Abatement Scheme, Climate Change, Economies, Renewable Energies