Dash for wind power leaves Britain with £15bn funding blackhole

Ben Webster, Environment Editor, and Raf Sanchez
Britain's electricity network is not ready to cope with a plan announced today to massively expand offshore wind generation, experts have claimed.
A 'Super Grid', the first stage of which would cost £10-15bn to build, would be needed before the country's electricity network could deal with the huge peaks associated with wind power.
The Crown Estate today announced nine sites around Britain for wind power generation with the aim of producing up to 32 gigawatts - enough to power 20 million homes - from 6,400 offshore turbines.
But those close to the project warned that generating capacity was leaping ahead of plans to distribute the power.

Eddie O'Connor, chief executive of Mainsteam Renewables which today won the right to develop one of the biggest offshore windpower zones off the coast of Lincolnshire, said: "Britain has created an enormous lead in offshore wind but if there is a weakness it is in the grids built so far.
"If we are going to deliver on our vision for northern Europe we do need a 'Super Grid' and we really haven't seen coherent plans yet emerging from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
"We can't deliver on the 32 gigawatts without seeing the 'Super Grid'."
The 'Super Grid' would work by linking the electricity networks of Britain, Germany, Norway and Denmark to allow the power generated on windy days to be distributed across the countries.
On days when there is excess capacity the energy could stored or used to pump water at hydroelectric sites to create generating capacity when the wind drops.
Mr O'Connor added that a lobbying body pushing for the creation of the 'Super Grid' would be formed in March - it is to be called "Friends of the Super Grid".
It is unclear how the super grid will be financed and how much each country would contribute to what would eventually be a pan-European network of undersea cables.
The companies building the new wind farms would contribute a substantial proportion of the cost but they themselves will be supported by public subsidies for wind power paid for by homes and businesses through higher energy bills.

Mr O'Connor said the 'Super Grid' would be developed in stages and cost 750 billion Euros by 2050, when it would carry 40 per cent of Europe's electricity.
Gordon Brown said the world’s biggest expansion of offshore wind power, costing £75 billion, would create up to 70,000 jobs in Britain by 2020.
However, the Government has failed to persuade any of the major wind turbine manufacturers to open a factory in Britain and none of the companies granted licences today will be obliged to source any parts from domestic manufacturers. Most are expected to buy turbines made in Denmark or Germany.
A taskforce of officials from Downing Street, the Treasury and the business and energy departments has held talks with suppliers in recent months including Siemens, Vestas, Mitsubishi and General Electric, but none is yet willing to commit to manufacturing in Britain.

The country’s only turbine blade manufacturer — the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight — closed last summer after the company said that the British market for turbines had been too slow to develop.
Almost all the manufacturing contracts for London Array, the biggest wind farm in British waters approved before today, have been awarded overseas. Less than 10 per cent of the £1.7 billion investment will be spent in Britain. Clipper Windpower is developing one of the world’s biggest turbines at a research centre in Blyth, Northumberland, but it is several years away from starting commercial production.
The nine farms announced will generate enough electricity to power more than half of Britain’s homes, but only when the wind blows. The Government has said windpower has the potential to meet more than a quarter of Britain’s energy needs.
The turbines will be twice as large as those on land, typically rising 170m (557ft) from sea level to the tip of the blade. They will stand in up to 70m of water, compared with only 10-25m for existing offshore turbines.
They will also be much farther away from the coast, with the biggest, Dogger Bank, starting 130 miles off the North East coast. Residential platforms will be built near the turbines to accommodate hundreds of workers who will carry out servicing and repairs. Construction on each of the nine sites is expected to begin between 2013 and 2015.
The developers, which include E.ON, RWE Npower, Scottish Power and Centrica, have pledged to build enough turbines to create 25,000 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of 21 Sizewell B nuclear power stations. There are currently 228 offshore turbines with a capacity of 688 megawatts.
The timetable for the construction will depend on how quickly the finance can be raised and what happens to the price of the fossil fuels with which wind energy competes. None of the farms is likely to be generating electricity before 2015.
The British Wind Energy Association said yesterday that the cost of building wind turbines had doubled in recent years, partly because of the fall in the value of sterling and a growing reliance on imports. Each megawatt of wind capacity announced today will cost up to £3.1 million, compared with £1.5 million for the first offshore wind farms approved a decade ago.
John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, said: “The Government’s role is clear: train and equip Britain’s workforce to ensure that the thousands of jobs that will be created are filled by British workers, and provide the economic certainty investors need to complete these projects on time and on budget.”