UK trails EU league for renewables

Britain is Europe's 'most glaring failure', says Greenpeace, with only 1.3% of needs sourced from clean energy in 2005

Alok Jha, Green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 June 2009 18.44 BST

The UK is third from bottom in a league table of renewable energy across Europe, with only Luxembourg and Malta sourcing less of its energy from clean sources such as wind or sun.
The table, showing the percentage of renewables in EU countries, was published by the government in response to a parliamentary question by the former environment minister Michael Meacher. It showed that the UK received 1% of its energy from renewables in 1995 and just 1.3% a decade later. Only Luxembourg, at 0.8% and 0.9%, and Malta, which has no renewable energy, came lower on the list.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge facing the UK as it attempts to meet a commitment to source 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, part of binding European climate targets.
"We've got the best renewable resource in the country so, in terms of missed opportunity, the UK is the most glaring failure within the European Union, especially when you consider our economic power," said Robin Oakley of Greenpeace UK. "We've got 10 years of development in there and almost no change ... there have been lots of targets and talk, big numbers being spoken by government, but delivery has been a failure throughout the period."
Top of the EU list was Sweden, with 35.7% of its final consumption of energy coming from renewables in 1995 and 40.8% in 2005. Romania jumped from 9.3% to 19.2% over the same period, while Denmark went from 8.3% to 17%. Portugal dropped from 22.8% to 17% and France from 11.4% to 9.5%, though both are still comfortably ahead of the UK.
The growth of renewables in the UK has been slow despite much vocal support from the government. Since 1995, measures to stimulate the sector have included renewables obligation certificates to subsidise the introduction of clean technologies, EU directives on renewable energy targets and a commitment from Labour, when it came into power in 1997, that renewables would be a priority. In addition, the energy white paper in 2003 also prioritised the renewables sector.
"It is a disgrace that we generate such a pitiful amount of energy from renewables," said the shadow energy and climate secretary, Greg Clark. "Countries like Germany, Romania, and Estonia have made big increases in their contribution of renewables over the last 10 years, while Britain has made too little progress and is worse than any other country except Malta and Luxembourg. This failure reflects the government's decade-long absence of an energy policy. It is characteristic of Labour's approach to government – to sign up to targets, but have no plan to achieve them"
Oakley said Labour's policies on renewable energy had left project developers uncertain; the renewable obligation certificates, for example, had not stimulated much growth because, since they are market-based products, investors never knew how much money they would make from it in the long term. "If you're an investor, you're going to look at the German or Spanish market where there's a feed-in tariff and you know immediately how much you're going to make back on a project, whereas in the UK it's never been clear. That's meant the whole cost of doing renewables in the UK has been artificially higher – it costs more to borrow the money because interest rates are higher on loans and people are more wary of making the leap because of the risk."
A spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said several wind farms had become operational in the UK since 2005 and that the proportion of renewable energy in the country had risen from 1.3% in 2005 to about 1.8% now. "Our [2020] target is ambitious but achievable. It's good for the climate to have more low-carbon energy, and good for our energy security to have more home-grown energy.
"We've started from a low base, but we have made big progress. There was an increase of 26% in onshore wind power generation from 2006 to 2007 and a 20% increase in offshore wind. The UK is now the world's leader on offshore wind, underlined by the green light given to the world biggest offshore wind farm, the London Array, thanks to the extra support in the budget."
The spokesperson added that the UK needed to "make more progress quicker on renewable electricity, transport fuels and heat and we'll publish our final renewables strategy in July to take us to our targets."
Oakley said the government could take further lessons from the countries that demonstrated the biggest growth between 1995 and 2005, where he said the governments had brought in forward-looking policies. "Those are countries where they set really strong targets, where they set a really clear support mechanism and where they really looked at engaging the public and having a solution to planning problems and investing in putting renewables first on to the grid."