Renewable energy? It's an offshore thing

Radical plans are afoot in Britain to build wind farms in the North Sea. Terry Macalister sees how it works in Lillgrund, Sweden
Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 October 2009
Imagine what it is like to open the bonnet of your car, stand on top of the engine and be hoisted 85m above the North Sea on a perilously narrow pole. The view on a clear day is breathtaking, but when the wind is blowing so hard the whole contraption swings 4m from side to side, it is grim – even for Leif Bolther.
This 51-year-old Swede, with forearms that would shame Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a seasoned technician in the wind industry. Blooded in the Norwegian offshore oil sector, Bolther has worked in the remotest parts of China and India, but still admits: "It can be hard up there in the terrible cold and freezing rain."
The tough but affable Swede is part of a burgeoning workforce promising a renewable revolution far out to sea. It will replicate the earlier North Sea oil industry, except that it is carbon-free and a vital tool in the battle against global warming.
Bolther works for the turbine manufacturer Siemens in Danish and Swedish waters, where much of the early running has been made in the offshore wind industry. Lillgrund, located 10km off the coast close to the median line with Denmark, is Sweden's biggest wind farm. The 48 turbines produce 110MW of power, enough to light 60,000 homes.
But this week Britain will unveil much more radical plans for this side of the North Sea. The Crown Estate on Wednesday will give briefings on what is known as Round Three (R3) licensing awards, which will take the industry out into much deeper waters. Shortlists have been drawn up and the Crown Estate will soon announce which companies and consortia have been chosen. Nine areas, including the Dogger Bank, acreage off Norfolk and the Firth of Forth, have been designated for development.
The third licensing round is a step change for the UK offshore industry, offering developers the chance to build 25GW of new power. Under rounds one and two, which started in 2000, 8GW can be developed. Combined, the total of 33GW would represent more than 10 times what is produced from wind power today. That would help Britain meet its European Union-agreed targets of producing 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Today it is a tiny fraction of that, while wind already provides Denmark with 20% of its power.
Deep water areas are convenient in that they are far from centres of population and so free in theory from the kind of opposition that has dogged onshore wind farms. But there are still planning issues because of birds and radar, while putting turbines up in the North Sea is costly and time-consuming. They need specialist floating cranes, cable-laying vessels and even platforms to support them.
The Carbon Trust, a government-funded agency set up to promote clean technology, has predicted that a successful R3 could propel Britain towards a £70bn wind and wave market that would support 250,000 jobs. "These technologies are not green 'nice to haves' but are critical to the economic recovery of the UK," says chief executive Tom Delay.
Butwhile R3 is needed to help the government meet its carbon emission targets, developers are wary about the economics. The London Array, much closer to shore off Kent, has been dogged by worries that it cannot be commercial even with enhanced public subsidies. There are also concerns about who will develop and pay for the grid connections and whether the whole enterprise will be undermined by ministerial commitment to nuclear.
Siemens is keen to build one new turbine manufacturing plant in Europe, but has not decided where. René Umlauft, chief executive of its renewable energy division, says the successful launch of R3 is vital to the decision-making process. "We are looking at two locations [for factories] in the UK, one in Denmark and one in Germany. Great Britain has the advantage of R3, which could result in a huge market," he told the Guardian.
GE and Mitsubishi are also considering a turbine plant in Britain, while Clipper has just been awarded a government grant to develop a new generation of blades at a factory in Blyth, in the north-east of England.
Siemens claims it is already involved in commercially competitive wind farms in New Zealand and expects to do the same in Mexico and Brazil. Umlauft says parts of Scotland could see a similar situation unfold in eight years' time, depending on the relative cost of oil and other fuels.
But that is onshore. For offshore wind to thrive, certainly without state support, there needs to be a lot of technological innovation. That is why Clipper, Siemens and others are working flat out to find ways to cut operating costs. There is also a need for investors. The green energy sector has been hit harder than most by the credit crunch, with stocks seen as speculative and uncertain.
The big utilities can develop wind farms out of their own balance sheets, but the smaller independents are heavily dependent on banks that have retreated from what they see as riskier schemes.
New figures out last week suggest a bounceback in confidence, however, for the wider clean technology sector. The London-based consultancy New Energy Finance says $26bn of new investment was made in the three months to September 30, double the amount seen in the first quarter of 2009. The WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation index, a basket of stocks covering wind, solar and fuel cells, has risen by 40% this year.
The renewed optimism comes as global leaders prepare for the Copenhagen climate change talks in December. This should pave the way for a wider successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which started the ball rolling for Co2 cuts and the development of low-carbon energy programmes. The squabbling about who pays what goes on but the world's biggest carbon polluters, China and the US, are playing far more constructive roles than they have in the past.
In the meantime the wind industry continues with its work. Dong Energy of Denmark, one of the companies hoping to win R3 licenses, has just started up its 91-turbine Horns Rev 2 scheme in the North Sea. This is the biggest offshore wind farm in the world, but it is a measure of the pace of the sector that it will only hold that record until the 140-turbine Greater Gabbard field comes on stream off Britain next year. And after that it will be 340 turbines on the London Array.
This has brought contracts for Siemens and is all potential work for Bolther, even before R3 kicks in. Despite having to climb those 85m towers, the Swede is happy: "It's relatively well paid and it's better than the oil rigs. I like to think I am doing something worthwhile: working on clean energy."