Source: Royal Academy of Engineering
URL: http://raeng.tv/default.aspx?item=72
Date: 13/06/2012
Event: Royal Academy of Engineering: Wind Power: The Great Debate
Attribution: Royal Academy of Engineering
People:
Beverley Parkin: Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Times Cheltenham Science Festival. My name's Berverley Parkin, and I'm a director at the Royal Academy of Engineering. And we're delighted to be co-producing this debate today, on wind power, with the motion: this house believes that Britain should be a fan of wind energy. And, of course, the subject of wind energy is something that matters a lot to all of us. It underpins every aspect of our lives, whether it's building and heating the homes we live in, or growing and processing and delivering the food that we eat, whether it's fuelling the transport and travel that we all need and enjoy, or indeed powering the many devices and systems that we use every day, for work, for leisure or for communications.
So, at the Royal Academy of Engineering, we put a lot of effort into supporting the really important quest of getting Britain an energy system that is clean, green, fit for purpose, sustainable and secure. And that means, of course, that substituting a large chunk of the fossil fuels that we currently burn with green energy, from a range of renewable resources. In fact, the government is committed to a target that will see 15% of our energy coming from renewables by the year 2020. And wind power, the subject of our debate today, is central to the plans for that target. And current government policies will mean that thousands of new turbines will be installed on land and at sea, and it will be a massive challenge, in terms of investing in and engineering the infrastructure we need.
But, of course, wind power is a technology that divides opinion and creates hotly contested views, whether it's on the cost issues, the efficiency or indeed the impact on the landscape. And it's a very topical issue, because only yesterday, the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee opened a call for evidence on the economics of wind power. So I'm really looking forward to hearing what our distinguished panel here today, and what you, the audience, have to say about this really critical issue. So it just remains for me to introduce the chair for our debate this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, the science writer and broadcaster Vivienne Parry. Thank you.
Vivienne Parry: Hello, everybody. It's so good to be back at Cheltenham again. Wonderful. It's absolutely my favourite place to be, of all the science festivals. The Cheltenham audience, the best, by a long way. And that's not just to flatter you. Many of you who have come to the events before will know I'm an absolute devotee of the Cheltenham audience. So, let's start off - before I introduce the panel to you - but let's start off with just finding out what you think about this motion. So, can we take a show of hands, ladies and gentlemen? This house believes that Britain should be a fan of wind energy. If you believe that to be the case, put up your hands now. [Show of hands in the audience.] So, opposing that motion. [Another show of hands in the audience.] Okay, so quite a substantial number, I'd say, it's about two thirds and a third, at the moment.
So, let me introduce the panel, who may persuade you to change your mind, or not, as the case may be. So, on my far right, we have Dr Andrew Garrad. Andrew is director of Garrad Hassan Partners, which is a consultancy, and past chairman of the British Wind Energy Association. So it will not surprise you, ladies and gentlemen, that he's speaking for the motion. Then we have Ben Pile, I'd describe you as a writer and blogger, is that...? [Ben Pile is nodding.] But all-encompassing and his particular speciality is energy policy. He's speaking against the motion. Then we have Jonathon Porritt, who none of you will know at all. [Audience laughter.] And those that do know him, who live in Cheltenham, will know him because they bump into him on the streets, because he lives here. But, Jonathon Porritt you'll know very well indeed. He's been involved, of course, in environmental issues for many years, since 1974 co-founder of the Forum for the Future and, pertinent to this debate today, chair of the UK Sustainable Development - Agency?
Jonathon Porritt: Commission.
Vivienne Parry: Commission.
Jonathon Porritt: Erstwhile.
Vivienne Parry: Erstwhile. And finally, John Constable of the Renewable Energy Foundation - and you actually started your life as an academic in English, with fascinating mathematics and poetry, which I think we should have as a future Cheltenham subject. But - er, Renewable Energy Foundation, a - er, this was a surprise to me but - energy policy - and you will speak against the motion today.
John Constable: I will.
Vivienne Parry: Right. Okay, marvellous, so - I have, in my hot little hand, a gavel. And it's got a very pointed end, that's so I can poke people as well as time them out. And we're going to have six minutes from each of our speakers - for and against, and for and against - then I'm going to come out into the audience, because I want this to be your debate. After all, what do they know? They're only here to spark debate amongst you, the audience. So that's what we'll do. Then we'll come to the fevered conclusion, take another vote, and then we'll all go for lunch. Sound like a good plan, ladies and gentlemen? I just wanted to make one thing clear, this is not about - in case there's anybody who thinks it might be - this is not about "Does climate exist?" We're not doing that debate. So, we're not going there. So - and the other thing I want to say before I let them loose, is that if I come amongst you and you go on a bit, I will hurry you up. She says. Casting a gimlet glare amongst them. Please don't be offended if I do that. It's simply in the interest of hearing from everybody. So, let's start off with Andrew - and let's get my stopwatch going, And Andrew, you have six minutes to put the position for the motion, starting now.
Andrew Garrad: Well, thank you very much. So, this house is a fan of wind energy, at least, and I know that's almost true. But I'd like you to remember that if you're not, you have to be a fan of something else. You can't be a fan of nothing. If you like electricity, if you're a fan of electricity, you have to be a fan of gas or oil or coal or nuclear or something. So you can't opt out altogether. Energy is political. It doesn't matter whether you talk about cost or economics. If you scratch the surface of energy economics, you find politics. And I don't believe we should be afraid of that. I think we should recognise that energy is political, and we should decide how we want to generate our electricity, it is a political matter.
And a very interesting evidence of that - or perhaps not - was to witness the Minister of Energy, on the Today programme the other day, squirming and dancing his way through an interview, desperately, desperately trying to avoid linking the two words "nuclear" and "subsidy". Some of you may have seen that - it was a remarkable achievement. He just about made it, but it was clear - he wanted to have nuclear energy and he wanted to subsidise it. Well, if that's what he wants, that's what he should say. So don't pretend that only renewable energy is subsidised - all energy is subsidised, because all energy is political.
Is there an environmental impact of wind energy? Yes, absolutely there is. You can see the windmills. You can see the windmills - you may not like to see the windmills. You may think - you may see them as blots on the landscape, or you may see them as symbols of clean power for the future. You could see them, but what you see is what you get. There's no invisible NOx, SOx, CO2, radiation... You can see them, you like them, you don't like them - that's your choice. But that's it. That's the deal. I'm an enthusiast. You may have realised that already - you probably can't see my tie [holding it up] but I've got a fantastic tie on, with 200 windmills. [Audience laughter.] You see, they're not really obtrusive at all, are they. [More laughter.] I've spent the last 32 years of my life working on wind, and I've done that because I believe wind - then, when I started, and I still believe it now - has a big part to play in the future of electricity generation in Britain, in Europe, and actually around the world. And I say "part", I don't say - this is not the panacea, it's not the whole answer, it's part of the answer.
This is a science festival and I'm an engineer, so I think I should say something about the engineering, something about the science. I'm based in Bristol, I employ a thousand people around the world, working on renewable energy. We have offices in 22 countries, but my head office is in Bristol, where there are 200 people - 75 of them today are designing two of the world's biggest rotating machines, which happen to be windmills. Two 10-megawatt turbines for international customers - that's being done in Britain, that's being done in Bristol, 50 miles from here. We are generating designs for the world's biggest rotating machines. I think that's an absolutely fantastic achievement, and I'm extremely proud of them, and I'm proud to be part of that effort.
Those turbines, which are many, many Wembley stadiums rotating in the air for 15 years, have to last a long time. Is 15 years a long time for a rotating machine? A car lasts nine months. You may think it lasts ten years, because you've bought it and you're going to keep it for ten years. But actually it runs for nine months, and then it falls apart. And it's extremely clever. The fact that they can make it fall apart after nine months is terrific - we haven't got that far yet. You may not think it's terrific, but it is, it's extremely clever. So we've got some way to go before we can be quite as precise. So, a machine many times as high as Wembley Stadium, rotating in the wind for 15 years. That is an extraordinary achievement.
I'm sure we're going to hear a little bit about intermittency during this discussion. Windmills actually aren't intermittent. Conventional power generation is intermittent. Intermittent is a binary thing. Your ignition - your car ignition - either works or doesn't work, if it has an intermittent fault. Our grid system is designed to allow two 60-megawatt sets to come offline in a millisecond. That's what it's designed for, it does it very well. Is that better or worse than, say, 1320 megawatts of windmills going offline predictably over, say, 12 hours? It isn't either better or worse, it's just different. And we need a lot more work to look at the statistical optimisation of the correct generation mix.
Well, we are able to predict the way the windmills behave. So my company is doing short-term forecasting, hour by hour, two days ahead, for the whole of Japan. Texas, California, Greece, Ireland, UK and Turkey. And our customers are bidding in to an energy market. So wind energy is participating properly, like other generation, in an energy market. Again, quite a remarkable scientific or mathematical achievement.
When I started in this business, the motivation was clean energy. It was before climate change was mentioned. Then it became CO2 mitigation, and latterly it's become security of supply. So security of supply is now a big deal. And I think those three things are all equally important, as well, of course, as cost. I like the idea of British wind, on British soil, producing British electricity. If you're a fan of gas and oil, maybe you'd prefer not to have a British source but to have one in Saudi Arabia or Russia or the Ukraine. Or, if you're a fan of coal, perhaps you prefer Colombia to Britain. Me, I like British wind, British soil, British electricity. So I hope that means that you'll be a fan of this exciting new industry producing clean, reliable indigenous energy. I hope you will be fans of wind energy. Thank you. [Applause.]
Vivienne Parry: So he was pretty much on the button, there. Very good. Not so much hot wind, then. Okay, so now let's now go to Ben Pile. Your time starts now.
Ben Pile: I have to admit that I'm a little bit puzzled by the motion. Energy is just energy. It's a means to an end. And I doubt that many of us will get excited about what comes through the plug as we do when our favourite football teams score a goal. So what I think we're really talking about, as Andrew perhaps said, is policies, which have led to the construction of wind farms. And I think we're talking about the ideas which have informed those policies. We're talking about the consequences of committing ourselves to those policies and to the ideas. The wind turbines themselves are just a means.
And I think the nature of technologies is such that they produce unintended consequences. And we tend to organise our lives around the - as much around the unintended consequences as around the intended consequences. So, for example, many people have rightly pointed out that the convenience of the motor car has led to the development of towns and cities in a way that has often left communities divided and isolated by busy roads, often creating large, unnatural housing estates devoid of social space and other amenities.
So a meaningful commitment to wind energy, then, means committing ourselves to the limitations of wind energy, the unintended consequences, which are its expense and its variability - or its intermittency, depending on which term you prefer. So what are the consequences of such a commitment? Well, the CEO of the National Grid, who should know, Steve Holliday, he says - and I quote - "The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020... We keep thinking about: we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It's going to be a much smarter system, then. We're going to have to change our own behaviour and consume it when it's available, and available cheaply."
So making the grid compatible with an increasing proportion of wind and the replacement of our current generating capacity with wind energy is going to cost hundreds of billions of pounds. And at the end of it, we're not going to be left with an energy grid that is - that we have now, that is capable of delivering a continuous supply of energy. Now, 15 gigawatts of energy generating capacity is scheduled for closure by the end of 2016. To replace that capacity with wind energy, at the current rate at which it's being built, of about 650 megawatts a year, with a load factor of about 28%, would take over 60 years. Wind energy simply cannot fill the gap that's been created, and an emphasis on wind energy is going to create shortages.
Now, as Holliday admits, the smart grid will decide for us when we may and may not use electricity. People will find, in the future, that they cannot afford electricity deals that guarantee continuity of supply. The capacity to supply it is not going to exist. If you're better off, on the other hand, you will be able to afford the prices that suppliers will be charging at times when electricity is in short supply and demand is great.
And I believe that this Orwellian use of the word "smart" betrays some deeply regressive values, and if we're going to start making sensible decisions about our energy future, our choice of technique must be informed by the recognition of the need for ample and affordable energy. Wind energy lobbyists have recognised that there is a problem with rising energy prices, and they have said that actually wind energy only costs a few pounds on the average house bill - average electricity bill. Now this is technically true, but it's disingenuous, okay. What it forgets is that currently wind only supplies a tiny fraction of our total energy needs. And emphasis, more importantly, on renewable energy creates a massive opportunity cost. Rather than seeking ways to make energy abundant and cheap, global agreements, and EU and UK policies have instead sought ways to emphasise change in our behaviour, reducing demand and limiting the production of energy.
I would suggest here that policymakers simply have the wrong priorities. They believe it's their responsibility to force us to change our behaviour and to manage a diminishing supply, rather than respond to our democratic will, or at least to our basic needs. The message from our politicians is quite clear: you're not allowed to have cheap and abundant energy. And it would be much harder to say that about wind energy if there had been a public, democratic debate about our energy policies and the ideas which inform them. And it would be harder to say that politicians have it wrong, were the public- had the public been allowed to express its view and decided that the costs of wind energy were worth bearing, for whatever reason. And wind power doesn't offer us anything intrinsically good, such as more abundant or cheaper energy. It's just going to cost us more and deliver less. So there's nothing to be a fan of, I would argue, except for cost, inconvenience and a form of politics which is indifferent to our needs. So I respectfully request that you reject the motion. [Applause.]
Vivienne Parry: Very good. They've got very impressive time clocks going on in their heads, haven't they. It's very good. That, or they've been practising an awful lot. So, Jonathon, six minutes, for the motion, is now yours -
Jonathon Porritt: Thank you.
Vivienne Parry: - and would you like to start - now.
Jonathon Porritt: So, I'm mindful of Vivienne's warning that we're not allowed to talk about climate change. And that is absolutely appropriate, and I'm not going to, other than to mention [audience murmurs] one little statistic, which is that two weeks ago, for the first time ever, in our tracking of the science of climate change, we surfaced concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere above 400 parts per million. In the Arctic and in Japan. A seasonal extreme, if you like, and it will come back down to an average, but this is the first time we've crossed that symbolic threshold.
And I want to mention that, because the imperative lying behind this whole debate is decarbonisation. We don't have a choice about decarbonisation. You noticed that Ben said that he wants to leave it up to everybody to choose for themselves [Ben Pile is nodding] to have cheap and abundant energy. Well, that would be fine - if the world was constituted a little differently and the laws of thermodynamics didn't exist. That would be fantastic. Unfortunately, this is our reality. So decarbonisation is a non-negotiable imperative. And it's in that context that we're talking, about the contribution that wind power will make to that decarbonised world.
As Andrew already said, no-one is pretending that wind is the answer to this particular challenge. There are all sorts of other ways in which we can do it. We probably won't talk much about it today, but the first and most important of all of those ways is energy efficiency. We still live in grotesquely inefficient economies, for all sorts of historical reasons and financial reasons... but efficiency first. But once you've done all the efficiency stuff, as Ben quite rightly said, we've got to work out where the electrons come from. And our electrons have got to come from low-carbon sources. We need to get these electrons from our low-carbon sources as cost-effectively as possible. There isn't any point investing in technologies where every ton of CO2 you take out of the system costs you three, four, five times more than it needs to do. So cost-effective delivery of low-carbon electricity, of low-carbon energy is absolutely critical, as you've heard.
Now, you'll hear a lot of talk today about subsidy. Just beware what that word means. As Andrew said, all energy forms are subsidised today. We're talking about wind. We're talking today about levels of political support for wind, in terms of the additional costs that come from counting more on wind. Just bear this in mind, today, in the debate - total subsidy to all sources of renewable energy in the UK - £1.4 billion per annum. Total subsidy to the hydrocarbon industries in the UK - £3.6 billion per annum, largely via arrangements around VAT. And an additional 3 billion promised in the budget. That's in excess of 6 billion, that's what the subsidies look like for hydrocarbons. 1.4 billion for renewables, relatively small by comparison. Now Ben said it was "disingenuous" to claim that this isn't going to have a big impact on consumers. So let me just give you the authoritative source here, which is DECC itself, of course, which we've all come to see as the most authoritative source in these matters. As some of you will know, DECC maintains a series of scenarios to tell us what the likely consequences would be, of relying more on different kinds of energy, over time. And one of those scenarios is called the "high fossil fuel price scenario", which indicates that the price of fossil fuels will continue to rise.
Okay, if you follow through the high fossil fuel use scenario, and we're already seeing that unfolding in our midst at the moment, the likely additional cost, from sourcing as much as possible of our energy from renewables, will be about £16 billion by 2020. 16 billion by 2020. That's three years' worth of subsidies to the fossil fuels industries. And about four years' worth of subsidy to the nuclear industry. And it'll add £12 per person per annum to the bills. That is not disingenuous, that's economics. And we need to be aware of the fact that all these horror stories put forward by opponents to wind power, that it's adding massively to the bills, are - sorry to be blunt about this - lies. They are basically lies. DECC again, Ofgem, Committee on Climate Change, has told us time after time that the contribution of investment in renewables is a fraction of the additional costs, most of which are generated by increased costs from fossil fuels.
So we do need to keep ourselves pretty focussed on the economics and on the factual aspects of this, as we move towards a conclusion to this debate, I'm sure we'll come back to some of these things. Can I just bear out one last point that Andrew said - this is about the future of the UK economy, not just the future of wind. It's about manufacturing, it's about skills, it's about jobs, it's about those aspects of our economy as it is a much as about cost-effective, low-carbon electricity. And I hope we'll have a chance to debate the net contribution now from the renewables industry, and particularly from wind, to the UK economy - what it is today and what it'll look like through to 2020, and on into the rest of this century. So, of course you're going to be fans of wind power. [Audience laughter.] Obviously. [Applause.]
Vivienne Parry: Thank you very much. So, finally [to John Constable] - young man.
John Constable [giving her an exasperated look]: Very well. Now we're often told that we need to think about at the big picture, when we talk about wind. So let's do that, let's think about the big picture. I mean, what does the big picture tell us? Well, it tells us that climate change mitigation has failed. It has already failed. Global emissions have increased dramatically since 1990 by nearly 45%. Chinese emissions have tripled since 1990 and now exceed those of the United States, which itself has increased by 20% over that period. The trend is upwards. Something's gone wrong - who's to blame?
Well, actually Jonathon's to blame. And Andrew too. They're to blame because they bullied the OECD into adopting legal mandates for low-carbon solutions that are technically primitive and ludicrously expensive. The result is that the example of the low-carbon economy that we present to the developing world is deeply unattractive, and we have persuaded nobody, least of all our own population, so now we're waking up to the fact that the uptake of renewables - originally promised as grass-roots, small-is-beautiful - has turned into a bunfight between target-driven government and subsidy-hunting corporates, with venture capital feasting in the space between. And Jonathon, of course, cheering them on from the sidelines.
So think about the costs. And think locally. Between 2002 and 2011, renewable subsidies to electricity cost the consumer £7.3 billion. Now those subsidies increase your bills and transfer wealth to investors in renewables. That is quite different to the VAT discount of 5% rather than 20% on your bill, which reduces your bill and is a subsidy to you at the expense of taxpayers. Economists also classify it as a subsidy because it makes energy more attractive as a purchase than things that pay the 20%. It does not increase the income of fossil fuel generators. It is wrong to suggest that it is comparable, as a subsidy. Quite wrong.
So the current rate of subsidies to renewables is about 1.5 billion, as Jonathon said, and it's increasing rapidly. To drive investment to meet our targets, we have to subsidise electricity to the tune of something like 8 billion a year in 2020, such a staggering quantity that it has destabilised the rest of the market, meaning that they too are hunting for subsidies. So, nuclear and gas, and perhaps coal, if it comes back, will also want subsidies. None of this should happen.
So a modest target, even for renewable heat, in the UK, is going to be costing 2 billion a year in 2020. This is all artificial. These sums would be unaffordable in good times, and they are completely so in the present situation - no wonder the Treasury wants to cut them back.
Now wind power is a key element in the mess the green movement has made of the climate change agenda. Because the wind industry offered rapid deployment at scale, in spite of the drawbacks, and it had one significant merit for the green NGOs - it was not nuclear. This is essentially a negative enthusiasm. Wind was good because it was not nuclear. But wind requires, as I've said, very heavy income support - roughly 50% of an onshore turbine, roughly 66% of the income of an offshore turbine, is subsidy. They're just not ready. No wonder the Chinese are happy to sell us these devices but don't want, actually, to base their economy on them.
Wind also requires indirect subsidy, in that the management costs it imposes on the energy system are socialised over everybody else. Couldn't face those costs itself. And they can be very significant. We know that constraint payments to Scottish wind already exceeds 24 million in the visible balancing mechanism, in the last year and a half. So the net result is extremely expensive emissions savings. Even at a generous estimate, onshore wind costs £90 a subsidy per ton of CO2. Offshore wind £180 a ton. In comparison to the EU ETS, which is roundabout 10 euros. Now when system costs are taken into account, that will rise.
Now £90 a ton of carbon dioxide is not, in any sense, a viable climate change policy. You cannot sell that to China. And indeed they haven't listened, unsurprisingly. It's a vanity project. And it's failed. And it's failing in Europe, now we can no longer afford it. So between them, naive enthusiasts and cynical speculators have set back the cause of clean energy, globally, some 20 years. Jonathon we can forgive - he meant well. But for the wind industry, that's done very nicely out of those subsidies, I don't think any apology will ever be sufficient. And therefore I would ask you to oppose the motion. Thank you. [Applause.]
Vivienne Parry: Very good. So, I'm now going to come amongst you. [She leaves the stage and goes amongst the audience.] Two quite distinct views, there. One side's saying, basically, it's fantastic, the other saying it's an unaffordable policy that takes no account of the impact on consumers of not having a continuous supply. What are your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen? Let's start here. I'm so glad it's a lady we're starting with. Have you noticed? All male - what is it about wind, that it's all male? [Audience laughter.] I'm sorry. That wasn't meant to sound quite as it came out.
Woman 1: I am a fan of wind power, but I'd like to ask Andrew - one of the criticisms is that when it's windy, they stop. And I'd like to know how close is the technology for keeping them going, however strong the wind is?
Andrew Garrad: Good question, and it's completely stupid that they stop. There's no need for them to stop. In fact, it's a sort of emotional reaction, I think. Someone somewhere decided that 25 metres a second, that they should be turned off. Several suppliers now don't turn off, they ramp down steadily to about 50 metres a second, which is a gale, it's a mere storm in fact. So that will stop. So they will no longer stop, they will go on operating in high winds.
Woman 1: [Inaudible] - things aren't going to fly off, which is what non-fans say -
Andrew Garrad: Strangely, the load on the windmill is actually lower if it continues to operate. So there's really no good engineering reason to stop. And that's something which I've been campaigning for, inside the industry, just to continue operating. And that will help, certainly, the system problems which appear. So, very good point, I'm glad you made it, and it's completely stupid. [Audience laughter.]
Vivienne Parry: Now I may have missed something, but they do stop when there isn't any wind.
Andrew Garrad: That's another question, yes. [Laughing.] That, fortunately, was not the question that was asked.
Vivienne Parry: Yes. [To Woman 1] Would you like to ask that question? [Andrew Garrad is laughing.] What happens when there is no wind? I mean, we've had a lot of wind recently, obviously, but a lot of the time we don't have any wind. And particularly in certain situations in towns, for instance, there are all those people who, enthusiastically put windmills on top of their properties. I think David Cameron doesn't have a lot of wind in Notting Hill, for instance.
Andrew Garrad: Yeah, I think we should perhaps distinguish between David Cameron's windmill in Notting Hill, and sensible windmills elsewhere. So let's forget about him, for the moment. Maybe we'll come back to him later on. Yeah of course, if there's no wind the windmills don't go round. So they have to be part of an electrical system - that's exactly what our National Grid or the European grid is there to do. And the aggregation of wind around Europe, or around Britain, is a very important part of the process. A lot of work has been done to look at what level of other supply is needed within a grid, if you have a high level of wind. And the answer is, actually, that it is relatively small, and the extra expense is relatively low, and adding new windmills to the grid does allow you not to build other unconventional plant. If you had all wind - this is why I said this is not a good idea - if you had all wind and the wind didn't blow anywhere in Britain - which never happens, but if it were to happen - clearly wind wouldn't be a good solution. There is wind around Britain most of the time - almost all the time - and by having it linked into a grid, we deal with it through aggregation. So, it's a very good point and a very important point, but it's been covered by lots of different studies, and there are pretty good results to determine what the cost is.
Vivienne Parry: Ben or John, any thoughts there?
Ben Pile: Well, sometimes when there's a lot of wind, these wind turbines just fall over. And we saw two or three of them fall over at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, in some very high winds. And I would suggest that actually, as a proportion of the total wind farm fleet, that represents quite a substantial part of them.
Jonathon Porritt: What percentage is that?
Ben Pile: It's about 0.03.
Jonathon Porritt: Of windmills that have fallen over.
Ben Pile: That's the number of wind turbines that have fallen over in one episode of high wind, yes. And if that was a motor car, that motor car would have been -
Andrew Garrad: One feature of windmills is that they're very public. So I wonder how many conventional power stations don't work, from time to time. How do you know? You have no idea. So yes, there have been a few accidents. Usually the accident has been the result of human intervention - poor human intervention during maintenance. Yes, and there have been some accidents. There have been some windmills that don't work, some windmills have gone wrong. It's engineering. It's real life. But it's rather a ludicrous criticism to -
Vivienne Parry: Okay, we're going to move on from that point, because this is the Royal Academy of Engineering event, and we are assuming that, since engineers are tops, that they won't fall over. And I'm going to move to another... Let's move up here. Sir, it's you.
Man 1: I voted against the motion, despite the fact that I'm pro-renewables. It's the fact that we're harping on wind, which I've heard is relatively puny, compared with the likes of tidal, hydro, solar, etc. Is what I've been told propaganda, or is in fact this true? I quite like - the actual environmental part of windmills is relatively irrelevant, because how long have we had windmills in this country? How many centuries before the Industrial Revolution? And what would we think if we did away with all the water mills in the Norfolk Broads? We'd howl with [inaudible] - the right things - [inaudible] puny -
Vivienne Parry: Okay, so who would like to take that? Jonathon?
Jonathon Porritt: Shall I try and leap in there first. No, wind is not relatively puny. It is one of a sort of suite of renewable technologies which are becoming more available over different periods of time. So you mention wind and wave, for instance, and tidal stream. Well, I agree with you, I think one day they will be big, but they're not going to be big in the short term. They may begin to grow nicely from 2020 onwards, but right now they're very small and they will remain small for quite some time to come. The one - the game-changer are the suite of solar technologies, and we are now seeing such dramatic reductions in the cost of solar power - both PV and concentrated solar power, that we might even be able to meet Ben's requirement to have a cheap and abundant energy from renewables within the course of the next five, six years. Most experts now talk about "grid parity", so paying no more for a unit of electricity from solar than from any other source. Grid parity within five to six years max, so we're really heading towards that. But wind is critical, and if you look at Germany, which is the most sophisticated country in EU, and it looks at integrating its different kinds of renewables. They've relied very heavily on onshore wind, and will rely very heavily on offshore wind over the course of the next decade. And they are very substantial contributors to the total renewable energy scene. I think in the UK now, wind is 27% of the total renewable contribution?
Andrew Garrad: Mm-hmh.
Jonathon Porritt: At the moment? So it's more than a quarter, at the moment, of the renewable electrons we have available to us, and that will continue to grow. Last point, if I may very quickly, costs will come down for onshore - not sure about offshore, but costs will come down. Probably my two colleagues here haven't had a chance to look at Bloomberg's report which came out yesterday showing what's happened to the average levelised cost of different renewable energy sources over the course of the last year - onshore wind down 9% in the course of that one year. And you can expect substantial further reductions of that kind over the next few years. Different -
Vivienne Parry: John -
Jonathon Porritt: - different with offshore.
Vivienne Parry: Let's go to John.
John Constable: Those reductions, of course, are -
Vivienne Parry [interrupting, after a distant banging noise is heard]: Oops, that'll be the Severn Barrage, or it'll be Andrea Sella doing one of his chemistry experiments.
John Constable: The reductions in capital cost are real, at present, and government is using them as a pretext for reducing subsidies. They're coming about because of intervention in the markets in China. China's aim is to secure a very large part of the market share, and they've destroyed the German solar industry, they're now moving on to the German wind industry. And once they've got control of those markets, their interest in further capital costs reductions will tend to weaken, I'm afraid. Now, levelised costs methodologies that Jonathon mentioned are only part of the story, because that only takes the kilowatt hour up to the system boundary. And it's integrating it into the system which is actually very expensive. And notwithstanding what Andrew says, it is very expensive. You have to build new grid, otherwise you have to constrain these new wind farms off. Regardless of whether you've got the wind. You know, you may not be able to actually absorb it, and that's why they're having to constrain them off in Scotland very regularly. Indeed, one new wind farm in Scotland, during its commissioning phase, was paid 144,000 over two days, to stop generating. And that's extraordinary. The grid is simply not ready for this. We have to spend a lot of money expanding the grid, and then running a parallel and flexible conventional power system with it. This is going to be expensive. And engineers - power system engineers in the room - will know perfectly well just how expensive that's going to be. A lot of money.
Vivienne Parry: Can we just address your question, which was, I thought, looking at: was it puny, compared to other sources? I mean, for instance, how many people here would be an enthusiast for the Severn Barrage? [Some hands go up, in the audience.]
Andrew Garrad: Oh sorry [holding up hand] - yes, me. [Laughs.]
Vivienne Parry: John.
John Constable: Is it puny or not? Well, air is a thin fluid, water is denser, so yes, it's puny in that comparison. [Andrew Garrad laughs.] But the industry is a lot bigger. That's the key thing. And it offers incredible margins to the investor. So the wind industry is mighty. Because it has economic advantages. But technically, yes it's not dispatchable. Biomass is a fully dispatchable technology. But there are real and genuine concerns about the sustainability of the source.
Vivienne Parry: You're beginning to talk in tongues here. A "fully dispatchable technology..."
Andrew Garrad: Yeah...
John Constable: You can send the electrons - [inaudible.]
Andrew Garrad: Can I just look at part of the question, which maybe will be useful. I thought it was rather a good question. I think it would be really, really sad if this debate degenerated into a battle between the renewables. They're all part of the answer. Wind has done a fantastic job in leading the way, and cost reduction has been substantial. It's ahead - onshore wind is ahead. Offshore wind is coming further behind. So, as Jonathon said, it's on its way. Largely, I agree, as a result of cost reductions coming from China. But I've got 40 people working on - 20 people working on wave and 20 people working on solar. And wave and tidal is a particularly British thing, because of where we are, so we're very much in the lead, which is very nice to see. We've got various prototypes up around the countryside and also in the - in Ireland. It's going to come. Particularly the tidal - not the tidal barrage, which is different - I think you're referring to, perhaps, is tidal stream turbine, so two types of tidal turbines. So, it's all part of the mix. It's all part of the solution. I must confess, I have more of a problem with waves, because if you look back in history, people have used the Sun forever, windmills have been around forever, water mills have been around forever, tidal mills have been around forever, but everybody's been avoiding the waves like mad. So, there are big loads in the waves. But it isn't wind against wave, against tidal, against solar - it's all part of one solution, which we should integrate.
Vivienne Parry: Okay. On to the next question. And there's lots of questions, so let's try and keep our answers short, now.
Man 2: Oh, hello. Can I ask both proponents and the opponents to, sort of, help frame this for us - what mix of energy they would like to see in place by, say, 2030?
Vivienne Parry: Okay, let's have that, very briefly, from each of you. Let's start with Andrew.
Andrew Garrad: I'd like to have a maximum amount of renewables. Renewables, not wind, renewables. And I think there's a good argument that if you get to 100%, then it would be very expensive. But we need to think on a broader canvas, in terms of grid integration, so if we have a large amount of investment in the grid - which I see as a very positive thing, as it's thinking in a new way - then we can certainly get to 100%, but it will be expensive. I think 50% of renewables will be easily achievable, and so that's where I'd like to go.
Vivienne Parry: But could I just say: I mean, you would say that, wouldn't you. Being somebody who employs a thousand people, all in the field of renewables. I mean, haven't you a vested interest in saying that?
Andrew Garrad: I've a vested interest in us producing clean and reliable indigenous energy, and I've a vested interest in us developing a brand-new industry, which is exciting technically, is worthwhile, is clean, is fit for the future. Yes, I have a vested interest in doing that.
Vivienne Parry: Okay. Ben.
Ben Pile: I think that people, perhaps, have lost sight of what we use energy for, and they've become obsessed with the means. So -
Vivienne Parry: The question is about the separate percentage.
Ben Pile: Well, yes, absolutely, but - so, I'm happy to sign up for any form of energy that can deliver that. If that has to be low-carbon energy, I think there's a lot of room for nuclear, in the future, but I know that tends to offend the gentleman to my left. [This is Jonathon Porritt.]
Vivienne Parry: Okay, let's find our how many of you would support nuclear. [Some hands go up.] Given that I've been involved in some of these debates before, you are an unusual audience. Normally we say that and there's a lot of hissing, and I run for the door. Jonathon, percentages.
Jonathon Porritt: So, by 2030, I think we would be doing well to get to between 60 and 70% of our electricity from renewables. You have to think about total energy, including transport fuels and heat, and we'll have lower percentages in those two areas.
Vivienne Parry: Okay, John.
John Constable: What mix should we have, in the future? I have no idea. It's got to be clean and it's got to be cheap. We're going to find out how to achieve that. What I'm afraid is, we're not going to find out, if we carry on pouring subsidies onto pet technologies too early, ahead of the learning curve. This is an experiment.
Jonathon Porritt: Would it be fair to [inaudible] what the technologies will be?
Vivienne Parry: Okay, no I'm going to go to the audience - this lady's been very patient here.
Woman 2: My husband works for National Grid, and I have these discussions with him all the time. I am basically pro-wind, but I do see the problems. And like the gentleman said, you've often got wind blowing, say, at night-time in Scotland - when the demand is low, you can't use the electricity, and so they have to ask the power stations to switch off. Now, my view is that the wind is blowing, you're not able to utilise it because you haven't got the demand when the wind is blowing, so why aren't we trying to link wind power with other technologies to try and store that electricity, so that the wind is not wasted? Maybe use the electricity to pump water uphill and store it, like at Dinorwig, or something, and then you can run a hydroelectric system from the - you know, the fact that you've pumped the water uphill, and then it's stored and you can generate electricity that way. It seems that these things seem to work in isolation. And so you're not making the most of the technology, and you're not making the most of the wind when you've got it.
Vivienne Parry: Okay, so we're talking about an integrated energy system there, very good point made by a woman. [Audience laughter.] Andrew, can I ask you for an engineering answer to that question?
Andrew Garrad: Yeah, I think it's quite funny that we can make electricity by splitting the atom, and the best way we can store electricity is by pumping water up the hill. It's quite bizarre. So the holy grail is energy storage. So there are two ways of tackling this. One is to go directly at energy storage - and people are starting to work quite hard on it, but it has been a bit of a holy grail, so it may be difficult. And the other is to deal with it through the grid - either bigger grid networks or a smarter grid. So you use electricity when it's available, you don't use it when you don't need to. So, something that's missing, I would say, in all of this - and it comes back to the previous question, too - is a proper, rigorous, statistical investigation of the right energy mix. We've got various different sources - how do we put them together? What's the best way of putting them together? That's something we could do quite rigorously, which frankly, in the UK at least, we haven't done. But grid integration is - so your husband's - get him working on it and it'll be fine. [Laughs.]
Vivienne Parry: Can I also just put a question, while we're on the subject of wind in Scotland, is what happens when we float them off as a separate nation? [Audience laughter.] And they've got all the wind and electricity, and we haven't. What about - John, would you take that one?
John Constable: Yes, well, I've spoken and written on this subject, actually, quite extensively. It is an interesting political question. Because there is a wealth transfer from south to north, at present. We are paying for Scottish wind. And will we go on doing that?
Vivienne Parry: And a lot else.
John Constable: Will we go on doing that? That's an interesting question. Will we be motivated to find cheaper green megawatt-hours from other countries or within our own boundaries, rather than carrying on trading? Yes, all these very uncertain questions, and I know that Scottish engineers are deeply interested and concerned by them. I think Scottish politicians will also become concerned by them. They can't afford to pay for those subsidies themselves. They need some help.
Andrew Garrad: I don't think it's just a matter of wind, to be frank.
Vivienne Parry: Is that not - sorry - Andrew -
Andrew Garrad: I don't think the Scottish question is just a matter of wind.
Vivienne Parry: No, possibly not. Right, the gentleman in the middle, here, who I'm going to pass that [the microphone] to. By the way, is there somebody who knows about that grid question? Because my knowledge of Cheltenham audiences is that there's always an expert amongst you.
[Man in the audience responds, but it's difficult to tell what he is saying.]
Vivienne Parry: Okay, I'll come to you in a second, but let's get this gentleman first.
Man 3: A few points. Firstly, with our speaker on the left, who's obviously very pro-wind. When he listed British energy, I noticed that he particularly omitted nuclear, which is a very good source of British energy, so I - I think you - take you to issue there.
Andrew Garrad: I've got it on my list but I didn't say. [Laughs.]
Man 3: Jonathon, I don't know where you get your figures - amount - subsidising hydrocarbons, when we pay two thirds of everything we pay for petrol goes straight to the government. Also you've got to accept that wind power relies on gas turbines to pick up the shortage when there's no wind, okay? Now, lastly you made some very good points about wind being political, and I think a very good way to describe wind farms is "environmental bling".
Vivienne Parry: No, come on, you can't just throw "environmental bling" into the mix, then not explain. Come on, environmental bling.
Man 3: Well, it is very political and I'm blaming a party - the LibDems are pushing wind for political reasons rather than scientific reasons -
Andrew Garrad [interrupting]: It's a terrible mistake to think that there's a difference. Technical reasons must be part of the political deliberation. You can't separate the two. They're part of a whole, integrated discussion. It's a big, big mistake to do that.
Man 3: No, but you have to accept that it is very politically -
Andrew Garrad [interrupting again]: I told you, at the very beginning of my talk, I told you energy is political.
Man 3: Yeah.
Andrew Garrad: And it's a perfectly legitimate step to take, say - "Okay, it's political, we're going to decide to have nuclear power stations. Unlike Germany, which has decided to stop -
Man 3: Right, you made the point -
Andrew Garrad: - so rely on the French." It's all political. But don't make the mistake of splitting up the political and the technical.
Man 3: No.
Andrew Garrad: In energy, it's part of the whole thing, it's one thing.
Man 3: But you made the point that you can actually see windmills. And that's why I say windmills are environmental bling.
Andrew Garrad: I also made the point that you couldn't see radiation. Which some people might think was a good thing, and other people might think was a bad...
Vivienne Parry: Right, let's have that lady in the - no, sorry, let's go first to this chap to get your expertise and then we'll go back to that lady. You were going to talk about France, I think.
Man 4: Well -
Vivienne Parry: It's a dangerous thing to do...
Man 4: There were two points, if I may. I understand that the French and German networks were nearly in trouble because of the closure of the German nuclear plants. Now, two other points, if I may. Water is 800 times denser than air, so we may as well have generation around the tidal stream that circulates at the British Isles. On fossil, the emissions from combined cycle gas turbine plants is one third that of coal-fired plants. Global - the, er - the solar pollution - sorry, the air pollution because of methane is orders of magnitude more than CO2, so we may as well burn the methane, and there's plenty of methane in Blackpool. So we may -
Andrew Garrad [laughing]: You come from Blackpool.
Vivienne Parry: "Plenty of methane in Blackpool". [Audience laughter.]
Man 4: Underneath.
Vivienne Parry: Oh, underneath! Oh, I just thought it was due to all those stag parties that went around. [More audience laughter.] This lady, here. Can you just pass that [the microphone] back.
Woman 3: Thank you. One - to pick up one specific point Ben made, and then a general question. You suggested that it was undemocratic, what was happening with wind farms, but I think you can't take that in isolation, either, because I think if you ask people about nuclear, you've got to mention Chernobyl. If you ask them about coal, you've got to mention miners' lung. There are other industries with, you know, unintended consequences, as well. But, the other thing, nobody's made any comments about the wider environmental issues to do with scenery and also the technical ones to do with shipping, for offshore, and things like that. So, if people could perhaps give a comment about that.
Vivienne Parry: Okay, let's talk about the environmental issues. Let's start with you, Ben, on that.
Ben Pile: So you wanted me to add some clarity to that? I'm not saying that -
Woman 3: You sounded if you were expecting [inaudible]...
Ben Pile: No, no, I think there should be a full democratic discussion about all forms of wind energy, and no -
Vivienne Parry: But isn't a democratic discussion - a full democratic discussion - going to be skewed by people who don't want something, because it's in their particular space?
Ben Pile: Environmentalists have the monopoly on saying what they don't want. And I think that's perhaps shifted the nature of politics, and, you know, you said [to Andrew Garrad] that the debate was political, and it very much is. And politics used to be about the art of the possible. But now we hear very much from Jonathon, and his speech in this way, and it's that politics is now about the art of the impossible. You can't have - you can't use this form of energy, you can't use that form of energy. And actually it's - any sort of solution to climate change, or any sort of energy future, the biggest voices against it will always be - even wind farms, you know - will be from the environmental movement. They're against the Severn Barrage, nuclear power, reducing our CO2 with gas. It's - all we hear is negativity, from that, and I think that's created a very, very strange relationship between the public and the government. And I think we, sort of, see that in the desperation of DECC, at the moment.
Vivienne Parry: John.
John Constable: Yeah, the debate has become politicised, with regards to energy. I don't agree that the energy sector is political, inherently. Wind is dependent on political mandates, so it tends to look like that, from that perspective.
Vivienne Parry: But address that particular problem about the environmental impact. Recently, in Cumbria, I think, views that Wordsworth would have seen, now, besides daffodils, wind power...
John Constable: The most important environmental impact, apart from visual and landscape impact, is that of noise. Which is very significant for near neighbours, completely omitted, by the way, in the LSE's recent publication, which has been covered in the press, a bit - strange, that. Noise is real, from wind turbines, and this is coming up at many locations around the country. The industry's having real difficulty in addressing it. It's a big problem at night, people can't sleep. What's the industry going to do about it? And yet they really don't know, right now. I think this is going to become a growing issue.
Jonathon Porritt: If I may. I mean, I think it's interesting to say it's a growing issue. It is already a massive issue, in terms of all planning enquiries. And the amount of exaggeration about the noise problem beggars belief. I don't know -
John Constable: That's not fair, Jonathon, have you ever visited people who've had a noise problem -
Jonathon Porritt: Yes, actually I have, often, and I've spent quite a lot of time near wind farms, and I find a lot of these stories about noise destroying people's quality of life just massively over the top. It is true that if they're not sited properly, and you don't manage to design it properly, as Andrew will tell you, that you can have a problem, but there's a story going on, here, about needing to exaggerate. If I may come back to the aesthetics story, because I think that's a very interesting one - blots on the landscape or eco-bling, whatever your insult was - this is complicated. Some people actually do really love the presence of wind turbines in the landscape. They find them a powerful and very symbolic expression of what a sustainable -
Ben Pile: Now you're exaggerating.
Jonathon Porritt: No, I'm not exaggerating. I do. So I'm not exaggerating. And I've got - and I've got two friends. So I said - so I said "some people". So how could I be exaggerating? If I meant three people. Be accurate here. So some people really love it, okay? Other people find it really, really, dreadfully intrusive and can't bear it. And we're never going to be able to go to a solution, a consensus place around that. That's just - that's just the nature of this technology. I'm afraid we've got to live with that. And it's an important part of the local debate.
Vivienne Parry: But let's put a - let's - there's a very nice hill, as you come out of Cheltenham, as you're going back east again, along the A40. What's the name of that hill? [Someone is talking.] Yes. That one. Yes. But how would you feel if there was a wind farm along the ridge of that hill? Would you support it? [People are talking. Someone is saying "No".] Support it. People who support it. [Some hands go up.] People who would oppose it. [Other hands go up.] Actually, I would say that was evenly...
Andrew Garrad: But you see, the really good thing about that is people can see, can decide whether they want to see it or they don't want to see it. So I'm not going to pretend, and Jonathon isn't either, that everybody should love windmills. They don't. We know that. But you get what you see. Or you see what you get. So, some people will see that as a symbol of clean power for the future and will see it as a pleasing object. Some people will see it as an appalling thing. But that's it. That's the end of the discussion.
John Constable: Apart from the economics, of course, which -
Andrew Garrad: No, we're talking about the aesthetics.
Vivienne Parry: But let's have a look at those - I just want to look at that whole thing about NIMBYism. Because it's presented as if it's a kind of middle-class aesthetic thing. But actually it's an economic imperative.
Andrew Garrad: If anyone says it was middle-class, that was you.
Vivienne Parry: Er, would either of you like to comment on that? Because it has a big impact on people's - for instance the, um, the sale value of their homes.
Jonathon Porritt: No it doesn't, there's no evidence to that effect. Sorry, you keep trotting out this stuff, you need to be really careful. Where is the empirical data which shows impact on house prices? Give me this. Give me the reference? Please.
Ben Pile: Well, unfortunately, Jonathon, I haven't brought my list of citations with me.
Jonathon Porritt [getting agitated, now]: There is no evidence in many of these claims that are just simply dropped into debates like this, and they're allowed to settle and people think "Ooh God, house prices are being driven down by wind farms." [Shouting.] There is no evidence!
Ben Pile: Jonathon, you've just agreed that there is a large subjective component -
Jonathon Porritt: House prices isn't [sic] subjective.
Ben Pile: House prices are subjective if there's a wind farm next to your house you may or may not want to buy. Would you buy a house - would you voluntarily buy a house, move to a house right next to something you hated, and you think may cause you a problem?
Jonathon Porritt: Do you mean, like a nuclear reactor or something?
Ben Pile: Yes, like a nuclear reactor. You want to say nuclear reactor but I want to say wind farm - it doesn't matter. Would you...
Jonathon Porritt: Exactly. Um, no I wouldn't move to a nuclear reactor.
Ben Pile: So the chances of someone being able to sell a house -
Andrew Garrad: But there are a lot of people who would, so the price of that house would be unaffected.
John Constable: Noise is more relevant to this, because -
Vivienne Parry: I'll tell you why I oppose that. I oppose that, and I do it in the absence of specific evidence. But it does seem to me that if somebody had something sited like a wind turbine almost next to their house, that it's not about NIMBYism, it's about defence of your - something that you have put a lot of money and effort into creating. Which, for many people now, is their pension. People's pensions are nothing, absolutely nothing, so they're hoping everything is tied up for them in the value of their home. So that's very important to people now.
Ben Pile: That's true - as well as pensions having diminished, house prices are still very, very high. And so it's not unfeasible that a house could lose £100,000 worth of its value, and a pensioner, someone on a pension, may be only receiving £10,000 a year. So there's a [Jonathon Porritt is saying something.] Well no, I've met people in this situation, Jonathon.
Jonathon Porritt: Can I just say, there is a -
Ben Pile: They can't sell their - can I just finish. They can't sell their home and they are left with this negative equity, and they're getting old and infirm, and they can't move. Right? And there's no compensation for them.
Jonathon Porritt: Well, I'd really like you to send me more data, if I may. I think your point, Vivienne, is really important. If we'd been smarter about this, and found ways of enabling communities to share in the benefits of wind farms, as they've done in Germany, in Denmark, to a certain extent in the Netherlands, in Sweden, if we'd actually had community engagement in this, many of these sharply polarised views - about whether this is good or bad for the community, good or bad for the individual householder - would diminish.
John Constable: Yeah, but no amount of bribery, to use Tim Yeo's recent term, will reconcile people to the fact they can't sleep in their houses. And I've been to see people recently, who are quite close to a significant wind farm. [Voices in the background, a man mentions "engineering, please".] They were actually very worried about that.
Vivienne Parry: Can I go back to engineering. I do love an engineer. Right -
Andrew Garrad: Quite right.
Vivienne Parry: Can we go back to engineering? Are you an engineer?
Man 5: Yes, I'm an engineer, and, as Jonathon Porritt knows well. I'd just like to ask our first speaker, Andrew Goodman [sic], one of the things you said about wind power was security. Right? And it's British. For every installed megawatt capacity of your wind turbines, you need a ton of neodymium, and you buy it all from China. Right? That's where we get it from, 26,000, you need -
Vivienne Parry: Can you - sorry - explain to the non-
Man 5: You need it for the turbines, for the actual electricity generation.
Vivienne Parry: Sorry, just explain to the non-engineering audience what it is.
Man 5: Well, it's a rare earth. And 26,000 tons are produced in China every year, 600 tons in America - and only 600 tons in America because the environmentalists won't let people dig it out of the ground, which is a problem we have to get over. The other thing you said, which was very interesting, "15-year life" for your wind turbines. Can you tell us when you get into credit? Once you've spent all that energy producing it, how many years does it take you to get into credit? And then what do you do with it when you have to - your offshore array suddenly is no longer - you know, it's coming to the end of its life. How do you then refurbish it? Because we all know how you can repair cars and look after them, and they can be made to last a long time. What do you do with your offshore array after the 15 years, when something needs replacing? Maybe you can tell us what needs replacing, and how you go about it.
Vivienne Parry: Top question from an engineer.
Andrew Garrad: Well, maybe we could start with a clarification of the first bit of the question. So there are some new generators which are - called permanent magnet generators, which are gathering popularity in the wind energy business, which need rare earth magnets, which is what he's referring to. And these are really remarkable things. If you walk past with your watch or your pacemaker - if you walk past with your pacemaker, these magnets - you'll die, and if you walk past with your watch, you'll get grabbed. So these are extraordinary things, and they are very rare. And the question is quite right, most of it comes from China, although there's some in Australia, some in America, some in Turkey. And the security of supply of those magnets is certainly an interesting point. However, we don't need to have them. So there are discussions now about how to secure that supply, do we want to rely on the Chinese. If actually we started to mine the way the Chinese are mining, it seems the costs in the other supplies would reduce; so I think there's an environmental and a commercial and a political issue there. Siemens and GE are both working on substantially reducing the amount of rare earth needed for those generators. So - it's a hot issue, they're smaller, more efficient but not vital. So it's great if you can get it, but it's not vital.
Vivienne Parry: Are you saying, sir, that those are likely to increase in number, those particular type of turbines?
Man 5: No, I was just querying the security aspect of it, the fact that the wind is British, you know, that's all I'm saying -
Andrew Garrad: The wind is British -
Man 5: The engineering solution will come, and that's great, you know, but -
Andrew Garrad: The wind is British, the magnets are Chinese.
Man 5: - don't give the impression that it's secure in a way that other things aren't [?]
Andrew Garrad: Well well -
Vivienne Parry: Okay. I'm very interested in the other part of your question, which I think it -
Andrew Garrad: So when I agree on the magnets. We need to either use them and get them secure, or use something else.
Vivienne Parry: Let's go to the decommissioning.
Andrew Garrad: Now on the offshore, all I said was - not that there was a 15-year life, it's actually usually a 20-year design life. And for about 15 years, of that 20 years, the thing is actually rotating. And offshore, it's very likely, I think, that that lifetime will actually be extended, because the infrastructure has a much longer lifetime, and so probably we'll be looking at 30 years or so. During the lifetime, during the 20-year lifetime, there is, clearly, ordinary O&M, operations and maintenance. Just like you have with a car. And there will be failures of certain components. So we've had a particularly -
Man 5: How many years before you get into credit?
Andrew Garrad: About nine months.
Vivienne Parry: Now, you clearly don't -
Andrew Garrad: So we have nine months - nine months repaying the energy debt, and 19 years making energy.
Vivienne Parry: You don't believe that, [inaudible] believe that.
Man 5: Thank you for the answer - I can't possibly challenge it. Thank you very much. But what happens at the end of that life? How do you renew?
Vivienne Parry: And what are the decommissioning costs, of...
Andrew Garrad: Well, the conventional wisdom on the decommissioning costs is that they're zero, because the scrap value of the turbine is about equal to the decommissioning costs. Offshore situation is slightly different, because we need to remove the foundations from the sea bed, unless of course it's re-used. We haven't done that yet, but it's part, as you may well know, it's part of pretty standard offshore oil and gas practice. And there are bonds, construction bonds in place to make sure that happens. So we're following, pretty much, the same practice that is conventional in the oil and gas business. Onshore, we've decommissioned quite a few now, I suppose, and the scrap value has proved to be either the same as, or in excess of, the decommissioning costs. So pretty much zero, but often bonds are needed.
Vivienne Parry: I've got a fantastic vision of Del Boy knocking the door [audience laughter] saying "Any old wind turbines". Now, we've got one last question, so is it going to be a quick one?
Man 6: Yes, I'd just like to ask all the members of the panel to sail a yacht down the Baltic in a 5-knot wind. And see the number, the thousands of Swedish turbines that aren't turning. And then sail through the Orkneys in a 5-knot wind and try and compete against an 8-knot tidal current, which runs for 75% of its duty cycle.
Vivienne Parry: And your point is?
Man 6: It's far more efficient to use water. There's far more energy there, and you can't see it. [Some audience applause.]
Vivienne Parry: Right. A point that's been so well received [?] I'm so sorry that I'm going to have to come to a close on this, because it's a really interesting debate. But, of course, it's a Cheltenham debate. So, what more can we expect? What I'm going to do now, is I'm going to give each of the panel one minute to sum up, and then we'll take that vote again. So, let's start with - reverse order, with John Constable, first of all.
John Constable: Okay. Renewables may have tremendous potential. We have no idea what it is, and we are never going to discover what it is, so long as we pour subsidy into this sector and do not expose the industry to the real world conditions, which alone will actually make them cheaper and better.
Vivienne Parry: Jonathon.
Jonathon Porritt: So, I think the one area that we haven't dealt with, in this debate, is - we've talked a lot about what it will cost us. We've had no reference - because of Vivienne's embargo on this topic - what it will cost us not to do this. So just to mention Nick Stern, for instance, he would have made short order of what you've just heard from John, in terms of saying: if we don't find a way of bringing forward very low-carbon electricity generation systems, the cost we will pay in future, as a consequence of accelerating climate change, will make today's very small bills look like something we should never have missed the chance of getting. So, what will it not cost us? Just keep asking yourself that question, when you think about how you're going to vote.
Vivienne Parry: Okay. Ben.
Ben Pile: Well, I think we're probably all - have reached our saturation point with bossy boots like Nick Stern, telling us what we can and can't do in the future, and I think it's about time we took control of our - I'm talking [to Jonathon Porritt, who is trying to interrupt] - it's about time we took control of our own energy policy and we suggested to Professor Stern that he's ignoring our wishes. We've got no control over the processes or the decisions, and I think it's time we should maybe inject a bit of Obama-ism, if I may borrow his slogan, and recreate a politics of "Yes, we can".
Vivienne Parry: Okay. Andrew.
Andrew Garrad: When John was giving his talk, we had a lot of numbers, and it put me in mind of - I don't know if you know what R.D Laing [sic - actually was Andrew Lang] said about statistics. He said "Statistics should [sic] be used as a drunken man uses lamp posts, for support rather than illumination". And I feel we've been in danger of that, here. Because I think what we're addressing now is something where we really need to start again. We need to start thinking on a bigger canvas. So both the opponents have said "Ah, but we can't use our grid like this, because it wasn't designed like that, we're going to have to spend money on it." That, to me, is absolutely the point. We need to think in a different way. We need to think in a different way, how we use our grid, how we make electricity. So don't try and fit it all together in the old days, think of it as a future and the beginning of a new era when we do think differently and we act differently.
Vivienne Parry: Okay, thank you very much. Let's go back to our motion which was "This house believes that Britain should be a fan of wind energy". Has anybody changed their mind? Hands up, anyone who's changed their mind, during the course of the debate. [One woman raises her hand. Some laughter in the audience.] So, I'm going to ask you, have we got a - which way you've changed your mind. Are you now in support or not in support?
Woman 4: I'm now in support. [She says something else, which is inaudible.]
Vivienne Parry: Sorry, we can't hear you. Or at least I can't hear you. Have we got a - have we got the, um, microphone, still?
Woman 4: In support.
Vivienne Parry: She's in support.
Woman 4: Previously, I thought we should be doing much more with wave power and water power.
Vivienne Parry: Okay. Thank you very much. Well, I'm afraid, you gents, you haven't made any difference. Apart from - so I think you should go and be very nice to that lady and her husband, because obviously you've been persuasive to her, but to none of the others. Thank you - to you, our audience. I do actually wonder, as we come to an age, perhaps of energy austerity, if actually populations are going to react in the same way that they have with financial austerity, with demonstrations on the street. But we have that yet to come. So meanwhile, audience, would you please thank our panel - Andrew Garrad, Ben Pile, Jonathon Porritt and lastly John Constable. [Audience applause.] But most of all, could I say that engineering is going to be part of the solution, and absolutely essential. We can't have enough engineers. And thank you to the Royal Academy of Engineering, who's sponsoring this event. [Audience applause.]