Source: Channel 4 News
URL: http://www.Channel4.com/news/worlds-largest-wind-farm-opens-off-kent-coast
Date: 23/09/2010
Event: Channel 4 News reports on the opening of the Thanet offshore wind farm
Attribution: Channel 4 News
People:
Jon Snow: The world's largest offshore wind farm has been opened off the coast of Kent. Costing £780 million, it's expected to generate enough electricity to power over 200,000 homes. The Government's hoping to increase the amount of energy being produced through windpower from 2.5% to 20% within the next ten years, much of that offshore. But the wind industry is warning that 50,000 green jobs are at risk, if the Government withdraws funding from a project that would upgrade British ports to cope with the logistics of servicing offshore wind farm projects. Our science correspondent Julian Rush has this report.
Julian Rush [voice over]: One hundred green turbines standing in the sea. But not one green turbine made in this country. British firms and workers did make the cables and construct the foundations, but the masts, blades and turbines, for what is - for the moment, at least - the world's largest offshore wind farm, were all made abroad.
Øystein Løseth: I hearby declare Thanet Wind Farm for open.
Julian Rush: The opening does mark a milestone for wind power in Britain. Five gigawatts - that's five billion watts, enough electricity for nearly three million homes, now comes from wind. A milestone Germany passed in 1998. New research published today suggests 58,000 jobs could be created in Britain to build and service offshore wind, but the company that built the turbines here is warning they're at risk without decisive Government action.
Anders Søe-Jensen: If we do not have a place to work from, here, yes indeed, it will have a big effect on us. Given the fact that also future turbines would be so large that they actually have to be, more or less, built where they have to be put up. We need the ports in the UK, we need the cooperation with the local suppliers, ships, and again when the ports are built, we need maintaining facilities, which are long-term jobs.
Julian Rush: An uncomfortable truth about this wind farm is that 80% of the jobs constructing it went overseas. Vattenfall built it, using a barge and crane based in Dunkirk in France, because British ports had neither the space nor the facilities. The last Labour Government promised £60 million to upgrade British ports to build the new round of offshore wind farms. But that money is under threat, with the Coalition Government's Comprehensive Spending Review.
Chris Huhne: We're determined to do everything we can to make sure the manufacturers have the infrastructure to do that, so that we can participate in what's going to be a very rapidly growing industry, as part of our low-carbon future.
Julian Rush: But are you confident you can persuade the Treasury that they should give away that £60 million to make it happen.
Chris Huhne: Well, we're looking, in Government, at everything we need to do, to make sure the supply chain is there, as well as the installation of the actual turbines, to make this green revolution happen. And we're determined that it's going to.
Julian Rush [voice over]: Right now, though, in that green revolution, offshore wind is a bit-player, Thanet just one of 13 wind farms off the UK coast, but between them they generate just under 1300 megawatts, enough electricity to power 100,000 homes [On screen is graphic from Renewable UK, showing "Offshore Output: 1341 MW: 917,244h"]. But a huge expansion is under way, with much more sites under construction, planned or in development, which could ultimately generate a total of up to 34,000 MW by 2020, enough to power 23 million homes. [On screen is graphic from Renewable UK, showing "Forecast output in 2020: 23,000 to 34,000 MW: 23 million homes".] It's hugely ambitious, needing investments in the order of £200 billion in the longer term. The industry says the short-term decision that has to be made is to spend the £60 million to upgrade Britain's ports, to attract that investment. A lot, it seems, depends on a decision in the Treasury next month.
Jon Snow: Julian Rush reporting. And we'll be discussing the merits of wind power later in the programme. But now over to Katie for some of the day's other home and world news.
[Other news reports.]
Jon Snow: The UK is "determined to get out of 'dunce corner' on renewables". So said the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, today as he officially opened the world's largest offshore wind farm, off the Kent coast. It's part of the fastest expansion of renewable energy attempted anywhere in the world. A suitable response, says the Government, to global warming.
[Voice over.] The new 100-turbine Thanet wind farm will supply electricity to the equivalent of more than 200,000 homes a year. Currently the UK sources just 3% of all its energy from renewables, though with 24 further wind farm projects in the pipeline, this should rise to 15% by 2020, powering more than 22 million homes. Critics point out, however, that the turbines only produce energy when the wind is blowing, making them a costly, inefficient blight on the landscape.
[Back in the studio.] Joining us now, Charles Anglin from RenewableUK - that's the trade body for the wind energy industry - and John Constable, who is Director of Policy and Research at the Renewable Energy Foundation. Are you both united in welcoming what's happened off the Kent coast today?
John Constable: I'm guardedly in favour of offshore -
Jon Snow: Guardedly in favour.
John Constable: Guardedly in favour. One has to be realistic about the cost to the consumer. I mean, you mentioned the capital cost of this project's been £780 million to motivate that private investment. The subsidy has to be in excess of £90 million a year. It's two thirds of the income. So the cost to the consumer is considerable, and one has to really wonder whether the scale of that cost is tolerable, when you're heading up to 30 to 40% of UK electricity.
Jon Snow [to Charles Anglin]: You, presumably, having come from the trade body, would have no reservations about the cost.
Charles Anglin: The cost is real, absolutely. Renewable energy is more expensive than gas. The question is: do we want to build a new generation of gas power stations, which will then have to import the fuel for, from places like Iran, Algeria and Russia, and be dependent on the whims of people like President Putin?
Jon Snow: But can wind actually make up the difference?
John Constable: Well, the levels of wind contemplated by Government seem, to many of us, reckless, economically and technically.
Jon Snow: Reckless?
Jon Snow: Reckless. These are very - well, they're very, very high levels in a short period of time. And this is a level of wind penetration into a grid system which is almost unprecedented.
Charles Anglin: It's not unprecedented at all. It's exactly what Germany does. It's what Spain has. It's what -
Jon Snow: Denmark -
Charles Anglin: Denmark has. And they manage -
John Constable: [Inaudible] a very special case.
Charles Anglin: It is not a very special case -
John Constable: Yes, it is.
Charles Anglin: - at all. It simply requires being connected to the grid. And, if you talk to National Grid, they'll tell you that it's perfectly feasible to do it.
John Constable: Indeed. But National Grid will regard that - all the costs as a pass-through cost to the consumer. And that's a further cost, in addition to the subsidy. And one can be really quite positive about wind, but say that the pace of development is risky, economically and -
Charles Anglin: No, it's not - [inaudible, several people are talking at once.] Germany went from about two and a half gigawatts to about 25 gigawatts in the space of a decade. That's broadly what's being proposed in Britain. It hasn't - I haven't noticed the German economy falling over -
Jon Snow: Well, no, but -
Jon Snow: - let's take the cost out of the equation, for the moment, and just deal with whether it's wise to go for wind on this scale. You [to John Constable] are suggesting it's not.
John Constable: No, the German case is fascinating. Germany has about 7% of wind energy at the moment, so actually much less than is currently proposed. And remember, Germany, and Denmark too, are connected into the European network system. The UK is an islanded grid. Quite a different system. And in fact, Germany and Denmark balance their wind with the unique resource of the Norwegian and Swedish hydro, which was adventitiously present - they didn't build it specially, they just took advantage of it -
Jon Snow: But we have a great advantage, have we not, in that we are an island, and we have a great deal of wind.
John Constable: Yes, there is quite a lot of wind, and it's sensible to experiment in it, the question is whether it's wise to rush forward -
Charles Anglin: No, no, it's not a question of experimenting. Over the next decade, a third of our existing power stations have to close. The old generation of nuclear, the old generation of dirty coal. We need to replace that. We have a choice -
Jon Snow: He said you're experimenting in what you're going to replace it with -
Charles Anglin: Well, wind is actually a technology that has been around, now, for twenty years. It's getting better all the time. But these people are not investing, these energy companies are not investing billions of pounds in something they think isn't going to work. The fact of the matter is: we have to replace it, either with dirty coal, or with imported gas, or wind. We are facing an energy crisis, and we are either going to replace that capacity with something that is UK based, or something that we import, and pay more and more for -
Jon Snow [to John Constable]: Accepting the ingredients that he puts into the equation, what would you do?
John Constable: Well, we do indeed have to replace power stations in the next few years, but unfortunately -
Charles Anglin: What would you replace them with?
John Constable: - due to the intermittency of wind, you're going to have to build conventional power stations anyway -
Charles Anglin: What would you replace them with?
John Constable: - equivalent to the - you're going to have to build conventional power stations at the moment. Because of the wind policy, it's likely to be gas. A little-appreciated fact -
Charles Anglin: There we are.
John Constable: - is that the wind policy is, in fact, accidentally a gas policy.
Charles Anglin: You have to - all energy sources, electricity sources, have to have backup. The point about wind is that you won't have to use that gas supply when the wind is blowing, and actually, wind farms operate 80% of the time.
Jon Snow: Well, we're going to have to leave it there, but it's a fascinating discussion. I hope we'll be able to pick it up again. John Constable and Charles Anglin, thank you very much indeed for coming in.