Green pioneers: Barry Johnston

The Sunday Times
February 22, 2009
A firm in Orkney is testing a low-cost scheme to generate electricity from the sea -and make a profit

BARRY JOHNSTON, founder of a small Scottish start-up, thinks he has cracked a problem that has confounded some of the biggest energy companies in the world: how to harness the power of the sea to generate electricity without building huge, expensive structures.
His idea is deceptively simple and has already attracted some high-profile backers. Fred Olsen, the veteran Norwegian shipping and energy magnate, has, along with the Total oil company, sunk £6.2m into Johnston’s Orkney business, Scotrenewables, and in 2007 the firm won a £1.8m grant from the Scottish Executive.
At its heart is the idea that any energy producer must work with the sea rather than against it. “I’ve lived on Orkney all my life and I’ve spent my childhood on boats,” said Johnston, who formed the company in 2002. “I’ve always been very aware of the force of the sea and watching for the tide’s turn.”
Like other tidal projects, the technology Scotrenewables is testing is based on an underwater turbine - imagine a wind turbine placed under water like a propeller, which is turned by the tidal flow. But while companies such as SeaGen, which has tidal generators on trial in Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, secure these huge turbines to the sea bed with big concrete pillars, Johnston’s are fixed to a floating vessel anchored by cables to the sea bed.

Johnston said this technique promises lower construction and running costs. Scotrenewables’ turbines will not need sea-bed foundations that can only be built for an hour or two each day between tides. Nor does it need expensive floating cranes and barges to put the turbines in place. Its turbines will be built ashore and when afloat can be towed back for servicing, another potential money saver.
“There are huge capital investment and servicing costs involved in fixing turbines to the sea bed,” he said. “We know it’s possible to generate power from the tides but if it costs £5m to build a turbine that is expensive to maintain and generates revenues of only £200,000, it’s not viable.”
Tidal power could form a key plank of the government’s commitment to produce 20% of all its energy from renewables by 2020. According to Stephen Wyatt, head of marine energy at the Carbon Trust, which is helping to fast-track promising new green technologies, Britain is perfectly placed to take advantage of sea power.
Wyatt said: “We have amazing natural energy resources in our tides and seas. Renewable energy from the sea could generate 20% of the UK’s electricity and we have a tremendous skills base in this country to help harness it. Our great industrial and engineering resources in shipping and energy are complemented by a strong academic base and spirited entrepreneurs who can turn the ideas into commercial devices. All the links in the chain are there, which is why we are so excited by wave and tidal power.”
Despite the potential, Johnston warns against complacency: “A lot of people in this sector have overpromised. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes five to ten years before there is commercially produced energy.”
His own vision is still at prototype stage with scale models being proved in tanks in the European Marine Energy Centre on Orkney, and has yet to be put to the test in the tempests of the Pentland Firth, the channel between the Orkneys and the Scottish mainland. When fully functional, Johnston claims his system will have an output of 1.2MW – sufficient electricity for 700 homes.
Before that can happen there are still some formidable challenges. One of them is making a floating turbine that can take a beating during storms.
“There are a lot of problems to overcome. Nobody has ever put structures in such a harsh tidal environment. People don’t even put oil rigs in these conditions and you can’t just go to a shop and ask for the computer software to model them for you. That’s what makes this so challenging,” said Johnston.
And then there is the question of funding. Tidal power is not a technology for impatient private investors. Wind power took 30 years to develop and settle on one technology before it became possible to generate commercially viable energy. And like offshore wind power, someone must build and pay for the cabling and infrastruc-ture needed to carry power generated at Britain’s geographic margins to its urban centres.
“Getting funding has been an extremely inefficient process. We’ve been operating on a shoestring to get from one stage to another. It takes a year to get funding from anywhere. Meanwhile, we’ve had to do anything and everything to keep the company alive. It has been hellish.”
Although the government’s renewable-energy targets and general concern about climate change should help maintain investor and government interest, much greater commitment to renewable energy is needed to speed up its development, said Johnston, who ruefully observes the expensive clean-up of the decommissioned Dounreay nuclear reactor going on a few miles across the water from Orkney.
“Imagine the impact if the £150m being spent cleaning up there each year was spent on developing renewables. I ask myself if the government is really serious about this and also when my grandchildren grow up what kind of world will they be living in?”
Tidal race GREEN IDEAS
NEARLY a quarter of the electricity used by businesses might be wasted, says Energy Management Systems of Rotherham (www.ems-uk.org). It says most small firms’ equipment is designed for lower voltages than those supplied by the grid, meaning up to 25% remains unused. EMS’s Powerstar transformer optimises energy use for actual requirements, saving 10% in costs for every 5% drop in voltage.
Got a great green idea? E-mail it to us at greenideas@sunday-times.co.ukand share it with the world
SHOW ME THE MONEY
The final article in our series on funding your eco start-up looks at government and EU opportunities
IF YOU want to grow your eco business but don’t want to dive into the shark-infested waters of venture capital and the stock market, there are plenty of funds available from the government, its agencies, nongovernmental organisations and the European Union.
Where you go first for funding depends on your “technology-readiness level”, a government phrase that describes how close your eco product or innovation is to commercial exploitation.
For example, if you are still at the research and development (R&D) stage, the best place to go is the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (www.dius.gov.uk ), which works with the Technology Strategy Board (www.innovateuk.org), the seven Research Councils (www.rcuk.ac.uk ), and the Energy Technologies Institute (www.energytechnologies. co.uk).
These can provide funding for basic-level research and product development to help get your idea to the working prototype stage. However, there are lots of overlaps between these funding bodies and they often collaborate.
For example, this month the Technology Strategy Board announced a joint venture with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (www.decc.gov.uk ), and The Northern Way (www.thenorthernway.co. uk), a coalition of northern regional development agencies, to invest £15m in technologies for reducing carbon emissions.
The funding competition starts in June and is open to start-ups, research teams and established businesses alike. The government also provides financial help in the form of R&D tax credits, which reduce your taxable profits according to how much you spend on qualifying research and development.
Since April, the rate of relief has been increased to 175% of qualifying expenditure. Go to the website of the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (www.berr.gov.uk ) for more details.
Once you can demonstrate the potential of your product and convince people that it is reliable, you can move on to higher stages of funding. Berr and the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (www.defra.gov.uk ) jointly run a £400m Environmental Transformation Fund to support the development of low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies in the UK.
Regional Development Agencies (www.englandsrds.com ), as mentioned above, will also fund commercial-stage eco projects, as will the Carbon Trust (www.carbontrust.co.uk ) in conjunction with its four commercial business partners.
The European Union also offers many funding opportunities, including its €28m (£25m) Eco-Innovation fund (www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/address.html )for proven technologies in materials recycling, sustainable building and waste reduction.
The key to all this is making sure that your business fulfils the funding criteria and that your application ticks all the boxes.
This takes time and effort but could pay dividends in the long run.
Tidal race
Matthew Wall
IT has been three decades since Whitehall first looked into harnessing energy from the Severn estuary’s tides. At every turn it has been rejected for financial and environmental reasons. The newfound need to “go green” could finally push it over the line.
Last month the government breathed fresh life into the idea of building a “barrage” of up to 10 miles stretching across the waterway that it says could provide up to 5% of the country’s energy needs.
The plan for a barrage from Cardiff to Weston-super-Mare was one of five short-listed for consultation. Other ideas include tidal reefs and lagoons that would produce a fraction of the energy but cost much less and do less environmental harm.
Campaigners like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have railed against the destruction of vital habitats.
It could create as many as 18,000 construction jobs but some government and industry bean-counters argue that the £22 billion it could cost would be better spent elsewhere. The environmentally friendly lagoon and reef ideas, which would produce as little as a fifth of the energy of the big barrage, seem to fall short of the government’s stated goal of producing a “strategically significant” amount of energy from the project.
At a conference that the Institution of Civil Engineers is holding next week on the issue, Rod Rainey, head engineer at Atkins, the consultancy, will call on the government to resurrect the most ambitious idea of all, a barrage from Minehead to Aberthaw that would cost up to £30 billion to build – £10 billion more than the short-listed Cardiff-Weston project.
“It costs 50% more, but produces 50% more power,” he said. If history is a guide, the most likely outcome is that in another three decades the Severn’s tides will still be flowing free and unencumbered.