PM's wind power pledge under fire | Boris Johnson's wind power pledge comes under fire as critics say he CAN'T meet 2030 target | Where Boris will build his empire of windmills: But can he REALLY meet pledge to turn every home green by 2030? | By Daniel Martin, Policy Editor for The Daily Mail | 6 October 2020 | www.dailymail.co.uk
Doubts were expressed last night about Boris Johnson’s ability to deliver his promise to power every home with offshore wind by 2030.
The Prime Minister pledged £160million to help upgrade ports and factories to ensure that 40 gigawatts of electricity comes from turbines in the sea by the end of the decade.
But industry leaders said much more Government action was required to make the target a reality. And Labour said the target was less than half the capacity needed for homes by the end of the decade.
The Green Party also questioned how the 3,000 new turbines would be funded, suggesting the true cost could be £48billion.
Mr Johnson announced his plans in his Tory conference speech yesterday – and criticised his past comments attacking wind farms.
He said: ‘I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power, 20 years ago, and say that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.
‘They forgot the history of this country. It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness.’
The rice pudding comment was made by Mr Johnson himself seven years ago when he said: ‘Labour put in a load of wind farms that failed to pull the skin off a rice pudding.’
There is currently just under 10.5GW of wind in the seas around the UK, generating around 10 per cent of our electricity, and the Government has a manifesto pledge to boost its previous 30GW target to 40GW by 2030.
That could be expected to generate the amount of electricity needed for all the homes in the UK on current levels of use, though it does not include power for businesses, industry and public buildings.
And if homes switch to heat pumps for heating to replace gas boilers, as well as more electric cars, domestic demand for power will increase.
Melanie Onn of industry body RenewableUK said: ‘To reach the Prime Minister’s target of 40GW of offshore wind by 2030, which will power all the homes in the UK, we need to step up the pace and scale at which we build new projects.’
She welcomed an increase in the amount of renewable capacity that will be delivered in the next auction – where companies bid to secure contracts for payments for the power they will generate from new wind farms they build. That pace will have to continue for the rest of the 2020s, she said.
Measures will also be needed to support the development of new technology, particularly floating wind turbines, which can be deployed in deeper waters where wind speeds are higher, generating more power.
Experts warn switching all homes from gas boilers to heat pumps or boilers powered by hydrogen on a 2030 timescale requires new infrastructure and new technology to be installed in homes by a trained workforce.
Jim Watson, professor of energy policy at UCL’s Institute of Sustainable Resources, said the shift to powering UK homes from offshore wind is possible by 2030 and will bring other benefits due to the fall in wind power costs.
But he said: ‘On heating, it is much more difficult to decarbonise all heating systems in UK homes – and it would be very challenging indeed to do so as soon as 2030.’
Bikash Pal, power systems professor at Imperial College London, said: ‘Eventually UK homes will be heated through electricity from offshore wind, but to be able to build that infrastructure through a Covid-ruined economy by 2030 – in just nine years’ time – is a massive target.’
Shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead said much more investment was needed for other renewable sources to fill in at times when the wind was not providing enough power.
He warned the 40GW target is less than half that needed by the early 2030s to heat and power every home.
Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley said last night: ‘The level of investment proposed by the Prime Minister is nowhere near matching his rhetoric. The £160million for wind power falls far short of the £48billion that analysts say is necessary.’
Philip Dunne, chairman of the Commons environmental audit committee, said: ‘Reaching 40GW is no easy feat and the Government must work closely with industry to overcome challenges that are limiting progress.’
Hot air doesn’t add up, says former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, ZION LIGHTS
Whatever his faults, no one can accuse Boris Johnson of a lack of enthusiasm when it comes to eye-catching projects and targets.
‘We believe that in ten years’ time, offshore wind will be powering every home in the country, with our target rising from 30 gigawatts to 40 gigawatts,’ the Prime Minister cried to the (virtual) Tory party conference yesterday.
Speaking as a committed environmentalist, I applaud in principle the shift away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. But the wholly unrealistic pledge to power every home in Britain with wind energy within a decade was, quite frankly, entirely typical of this Government’s muddled thinking when it comes to future-proofing our energy supplies.
Even if Britain cranked up its wind power provision to the level the Prime Minister proposes, this amount would power only about half the homes in Britain – or 7 per cent of the total national energy demand. And that would only be when the turbines are turning.
Data company Aurora Energy Research has calculated that to reach 40 gigawatts by 2030, one new wind turbine will have to be installed around Britain every weekday for the entire 2020s – at a cost of some £50billion in capital investment.
I do not oppose wind power altogether: it has an important part to play in meeting some of the world’s energy demands.
Yet over time, like many environmentalists, I have come to realise that while renewable energy can and should be part of the mix, the idea that offshore windfarms can power huge parts of Britain’s national grid is simply not realistic.
Wind power is widely viewed as the safest, cleanest energy option – and it’s certainly safer and cleaner than gas, coal or oil. The problem is that it is nowhere near as reliable as they are.
In this year’s summer heatwave, for example, the UK went from sourcing 20 per cent of its energy from wind to sourcing just 4 per cent, a gap we plugged with imported, polluting coal.
On one especially windless day in October 2015, Britain’s wind turbines produced almost no electricity at all. The Government was forced to resort to using diesel generators to provide back-up power: hardly the ‘green industrial revolution’ of which Boris now speaks.
Anyone can understand that a piece of coal is stored energy. Wind power must be harnessed by a turbine and fed into the grid – or lost forever.
Batteries are an option to store the electricity generated from wind turbines – but they are hugely expensive (one big enough to store Britain’s electricity for a single day would cost an estimated £300billion) and themselves rely on polluting mining processes, rare minerals and must eventually be disposed of safely, so are hardly ‘green’.
Many experts believe that a big shift to wind power would see Britain’s energy bills soar.
We only need to look to the continent to see that a shift to wind power, whatever the fine intentions, can cause new problems.
Germany has spent billions of euros building more than 30,000 wind turbines but frequently on windless days, it has had to turn to high-emissions fossil fuels to make up shortfalls.
Meanwhile, a modern wind turbine is unlikely to last much longer than 20 years.
Though much of its components can be resold or recycled, the blades are a challenge: Most end up buried in giant landfill sites. Altogether: Not quite the cheap, clean, green answer to our problems that Boris seems to think it is.
So, given that it is paramount that we wean ourselves off polluting fossil fuels, what should the Government be doing? The truth is that we have only one hope of safeguarding our future energy supply.
Only this summer the Government announced that it was investing £40million to develop the next generation of nuclear energy technology in Britain. Yet the plans have stalled.
In Britain, reliable energy stands on a precipice. Seventies-style energy caps and rations, something none of us want, are inevitable unless ministers urgently prioritise this vital issue.
Everyone wants a safer, cleaner world for their children – and, for that, Government needs to make bold decisions. The shift to wind might look like that – but to me it all too closely seems like hot air.
Zion Lights is director of pro-nuclear group Environmental Progress UK
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/10/07/boris-johnsons-wind-power-pledge-comes-under-fire/