UK launches plan for 7,000 wind turbines

By Fiona Harvey and Jim Pickard
Published: June 26 2008 10:37 Plans to erect 7,000 new wind turbines will be unveiled by the government on Thursday but industry experts are concerned they have not been thought through.
The plans are the centrepiece of the government’s renewable energy consultation, setting out the means to meet the UK’s obligations under European Union proposals to generate 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
As the target includes transport and heating, the UK would have to generate about a third of electricity from renewables by 2020, a leap from the 5 per cent generated from renewables today. The government estimates £100bn investment, mostly from the private sector, will be required.
But some experts cast doubt on the government’s proposals. Sue Ion, vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said the engineering problems had been “totally underestimated if accounted for at all”.
She asked: “How on earth can you present a plan which is as ambitious as the one laid out without any thought as to how you will tackle the project management, supply chain and deployment challenges?”
Mark Williamson, director of innovations at the government-funded Carbon Trust, said: “The key question is can we deliver this major dash for renewables in less than 12 years and at the lowest cost to the consumer?”
Local opposition is also likely to be a serious obstacle. The British Wind Energy Association said wind farms with nearly 10GW of capacity - four times the amount built so far - were awaiting planning decisions, most stalled by local objections.
The government’s drive to increase the energy generated by renewables will generate 160,000 new jobs, the prime minister will announce today.
But as ministers prepared to unveil a consultation document on renewables today, the Department for Business admitted many of these would be abroad.
The UK has little wind turbine manufacturing capacity, in contrast to countries such as China, Germany, India, the US and Denmark, so the orders for wind turbines will go overseas. The jobs created in the UK are likely to be in erecting and maintaining the turbines and manufacturing some components.
Last night the Department for Business said it could not estimate how many of the jobs created would be in the UK, but said: “We will try to make it as many as possible.”
DBERR said 27,000 of the new jobs were forecast to be in installing and maintaining microgeneration, such as solar panels, and farming and food processing jobs associated with biofuels.
The government will also leave open the possibility of meeting some of its EU targets by buying renewable energy abroad. Under the EU proposals, countries can buy credits from investing in renewable energy projects in other EU countries, where they may be cheaper.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008