Britain's renewable energy targets are 'physically impossible', says study

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers' 'battle plan' for climate change includes geo-engineering and nuclear power

Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 November 2009 18.38 GMT
It will be physically impossible for the UK to meet its renewable energy targets in both the short and long term, according to a group of engineering experts.
In a new study, they called for the government to adopt a "war-time" mentality in their approach to dealing with climate change and consider experimental approaches such as artificial trees that soak up carbon dioxide to buy the time needed to build the required level of low-carbon infrastructure in the UK.
The engineers, from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), said the government should invest in geo-engineering technologies that would either bounce sunlight back into space or soak up CO2 in the atmosphere. Some of the more exotic ideas include launching orbiting mirrors in space or seeding artificial clouds over the oceans, but the report advocates more research on artificial trees; growing algae on the side of buildings to make renewable fuel; and painting the roofs of buildings white to reflect sunlight.
The government has committed to cutting the country's carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, both relative to 1990 levels. To achieve this, ministers have outlined plans to build thousands of wind turbines by 2020 and, this week, gave the go-ahead for 10 new nuclear power stations, with the first coming on line in 2018.
But, according to the engineers, building the massive amounts of low-carbon infrastructure in time to meet the government's targets will be impossible. "Current predictions are that we will be unable to service the current plans for offshore windfarms by 2013 because we won't have the construction vessels to do it and, by 2018, we'll run out of manufacturing capacity," said Tim Fox, lead author of the report and head of environment and climate change at the IMechE.
In a report published tomorrow, the engineers instead outlined a "battle plan" for tackling global warming, which includes adapting to rising temperatures and investing in geo-engineering technologies, as well as current plans to invest in green energy technologies. "The institution believes it's time to go to war on climate change – the climate is about to attack us and it's time for us to fight back," said Fox.
He said that, even if the UK could cut its energy demand in half by 2050 through efficiency improvements, the country still needs 16 new nuclear power plants between now and 2030, and an additional 4 by 2050. Around 27,000 wind turbines would need to be built by 2030 and an additional 13,000 by 2050. That would be in addition to ramping up solar power, waste and biomass plants and developing a smart electricity grid and advanced energy-storage technologies.
To work out how this would be built, the IMechE assembled a team of engineers, economists and civil servants. "For the UK, if we want to decarbonise at the rate necessary for the climate change act between now and 2050, assuming a 2.5% annual increase in GDP, it will take a decarbonisation rate of 5% per annum to achieve that," said Fox. The best the UK has ever achieved was during the 1990s in the "dash for gas", when the UK was commercially-driven to change from coal-fired power stations to gas-fired power stations. Back then, the UK decarbonised at a rate 2.3% a year. Since then, the best has been around 1.3% a year.
"The ability to undertake the size of the task needed to meet the 80% target is not possible within a modern industrialised democracy," said Fox.
Kevin Anderson, head of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, welcomed the IMechE's proposals. "We are now in a situation of mitigation emergency and we do not have the luxury of the timeframes we had at Kyoto to bring about the changes necessary. In the wealthier parts of the world, we have a handful of years to turn our rising emissions around and bring them down at incredibly rapid rate. The UK has demonstrated a lead with the climate change act but this has not been accompanied by policies with teeth or a coherent strategy or roadmap."
A spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said the report was too negative. "The Institute of Mechanical Engineer's can't do, won't do attitude is sending out a defeatist message ahead of the crucial climate change talks in Copenhagen. The truth is that if we act now we can not only beat climate change but gain from the green benefits that will flow in terms of jobs and investment from going low carbon."
But Fox said that the government's assumptions were based on an unrealistic idea of the number of engineers available. "We're competing on an international stage and, if you look at the scale of engineering challenge worldwide, we're going to compete in the marketplace for the manufacturing of the wind turbines and the specialist vessels that are needed for their construction."
To manage the future response to climate change, the engineers proposed that the mitigation, adaptation and geo-engineering should be brought together in a beefed-up version of Decc. "It should bring together all the climate change activities from across all government departments into one new department called the Department for Energy and Climate Security. That department would be charged with appropriate powers to bring together all the necessary actions that are currently not being brought to bear on climate change," said Fox.