Top planner aims to push renewable energy

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent
Published: May 1 2009 22:46

Unblocking the bottleneck in wind farm applications – blamed for stalling the UK’s renewable energy industry – is the biggest challenge facing Sir Michael Pitt after he began work as the government’s chief planning official on Friday.
Sir Michael gained plaudits for conducting the review of the disastrous 2007 floods, but faces an uphill task in removing big obstacles to improving the UK’s infrastructure.
The figures on wind speak for themselves: so far this year, 10 wind farms have been approved and 10 refused, according to the British Wind Energy Association. The industry body says there are 8.3MW worth of wind projects applying for planning permission, which is two-and-a-half times as many as have yet been built. At the same time, competitor countries, such as the US, are investing heavily in a low-carbon economy.
The approval rate in the past few years has been about 40 per cent, compared with an approval rate for other projects that need planning permission of about 75 per cent. It takes an average of two years to get a decision, compared with the 70 per cent of other infrastructure projects that are approved within 16 weeks.
“There is still a problem with planning, and it is still very slow,” said Charles Anglin of the BWEA.
‘The UK has the best wind resources in the world, but not the wind farms to match’Torben Sommer, Piper Jaffray
With the government relying on wind for most of the 35-40 per cent of electricity that must come from renewable sources by 2020, the failure to gain approval for more wind farms is crucial.
Just as importantly, the failure is also jeopardising the government’s ambitions to create hundreds of thousands of “green jobs”, many in renewables. This week, one of the UK’s few renewable equipment makers, Vestas, said it would cut more than half of its 1,100 UK jobs.
Announcing the cuts, Ditlev Engel, chief executive of Vestas, accused the government of failing to ease the path of wind developers.
In his sights were local opponents to wind farms: “Local politicians have a tremendous say, and what national politicians say means nothing when the decisions are made.”
Vestas is considering closing down its Isle of Wight plant – currently the only wind turbine manufacturing plant in the UK of any significant size. Many of the turbine components made there were destined for the US market, because of a lack of opportunity in the UK market, Mr Engel said, and now it made more sense to move manufacturing to the US and China.
Torben Sommer, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, said: “Companies have to build wind turbines where there is a market, as it’s very expensive to transport them. The UK has the best wind resources in the world, but not the wind farms to match.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009