Plans to build massive wind farms off the coast of Britain are in doubt due to an obscure piece of legislation that means oil companies can force turbines to be moved if fossil fuels are discovered in the area.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM GMT 03 Nov 2010
The Government want to build up to 7,000 turbines offshore over the next decade.
However the rules laid down for leasing the sea bed currently state that wind turbines have to be moved if a licence to drill for oil is given in the area.
Dilemma of encouraging Service careers when the military covenant is brokenEnvironmentalists fear the little-known clause will deter energy companies from building turbines in case oil is discovered and are lobbying the Government to change the law.
There are already tensions between the powerful fossil fuel lobby and the growing green industry over the future of the seas around Britain.
Oil companies are complaining that wind farms disrupt mobile drilling rigs and helicopter flights and there are fears they may be ready to bring legal action.
Now the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has uncovered an obscure legality that could mean the turbines are not built in the first place.
The Crown Estate, that leases the sea bed on behalf of the taxpayer, states that existing rights granted to offshore wind farm operators will be terminated whenever the government declares a license for oil and gas exploration in the same area.
Nick Molho, Head of Energy Policy at WWF-UK, said the legislation could stop the wind energy companies developing wind farms for fear they will lose the lease in future without any compensation.
He called on the Government to reverse the clause in the up-and-coming Energy Bill so that wind power is given the priority.
“For decades, the oil and gas industry has benefited from a very favourable environment with tax breaks, which are still being granted today, and more recently with an exemption from the licensing requirements of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. The Government really needs to shift the focus of its energy policy away from oil and gas and instead unambiguously support the renewable energy industry, which is the industry of the future,” he said.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman confirmed that there is a clause that enables all or part of a lease to be terminated, but the situation has not actually yet occurred where by this has actually happened.
“Government believes that both the offshore wind farm industry and the oil and gas industry are needed and can successfully co-exist in our seas to ensure the nation’s energy needs are met,” a spokesman said.
“In the very unlikely event that it proved impossible to access an oil or gas find without an adjustment to an already consented wind farm, there is a clause in the wind farm site lease which enables all or part of the site lease to be terminated by The Crown Estate at the request of Government.
“If it was necessary, a first step to resolving any issue would involve commercial negotiations between the companies to find a reasonable commercial solution to be put to the wind farm owner. It would not be our preferred policy to intervene”.
:: Just one in three proposals to build onshore wind farms are being given the go-ahead, because of local protesters campaigning against turbines, according to a new study.
Last year more than 50 per cent of wind farm developments on land were approved, compared to a third this year.
Older generations are far more likely to oppose developments than people under 35.
Renewable UK blamed local campaigners who use the planning process to block developments.
The lobby group for the wind industry said England could gain over £1.3bn in investment by 2030 if all onshore wind farm developments currently seeking approval are agreed.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Are older people blocking wind power?
A survey of 500 people suggested that the over 55s are much more likely to oppose windfarms than those from younger groups
"Older people blocking wind power for future generations" is the headline of a new piece of research.
The survey of 500 people suggested that the over 55s are much more likely to oppose windfarms – only six out of 10 support them, compared with 86% of 16-34 year olds, and no under-24s objected.
The company that commissioned the phone poll, IPB Communications, hypothesises that older people are more likely to have time to spend opposing planning requests, which explains why they are the effective army behind the high and rising rate at which such plans are rejected.
"It's not about attacking older people, it's about motivating young people to get engaged in the planning process," said John Quinton-Barber, a senior consultant at IPB (who perhaps didn't have approval of the headline above).
There are the obvious concerns about a phone poll of 1,000 people, in which half agreed to answer the questions.
Foremost is that when divided into six age groups the percentage differences equal pretty small numbers of people (who already had to be willing to answer a phone survey), though when divided between even more categories by region the results were fairly uniformly 75% in favour (also the pretty equal split between the sexes).
There are interesting questions that were not asked too. Perhaps most pertinently: to what extent are the results also skewed by the fact that older people are more likely to live in the rural areas where windfarms will be built, and might spoil the view. As David MacKay points out in his long-titled but very readable book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air: "People love renewable energy, unless it is bigger than a fig-leaf" – especially when it's on their doorstep.
And when people were asked why they objected, the list of possible responses appears not to have included what many might feel – rightly or wrongly – that wind turbines in general, or at least in a particular location, might be an ineffective and expensive way to generate clean energy. Interestingly, the older age categories were more likely to answer "other" to this question.
Given wind power is seen as such a vital part of the UK's ambitious targets for renewable energy in the next decade or so, and the increasingly tough job investors are having persuading anybody to let them build them, it is a serious issue that needs to be better understood.
Helpfully IPB have offered to put the full results from pollsters NEMS market research on their website as soon as possible.
"Older people blocking wind power for future generations" is the headline of a new piece of research.
The survey of 500 people suggested that the over 55s are much more likely to oppose windfarms – only six out of 10 support them, compared with 86% of 16-34 year olds, and no under-24s objected.
The company that commissioned the phone poll, IPB Communications, hypothesises that older people are more likely to have time to spend opposing planning requests, which explains why they are the effective army behind the high and rising rate at which such plans are rejected.
"It's not about attacking older people, it's about motivating young people to get engaged in the planning process," said John Quinton-Barber, a senior consultant at IPB (who perhaps didn't have approval of the headline above).
There are the obvious concerns about a phone poll of 1,000 people, in which half agreed to answer the questions.
Foremost is that when divided into six age groups the percentage differences equal pretty small numbers of people (who already had to be willing to answer a phone survey), though when divided between even more categories by region the results were fairly uniformly 75% in favour (also the pretty equal split between the sexes).
There are interesting questions that were not asked too. Perhaps most pertinently: to what extent are the results also skewed by the fact that older people are more likely to live in the rural areas where windfarms will be built, and might spoil the view. As David MacKay points out in his long-titled but very readable book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air: "People love renewable energy, unless it is bigger than a fig-leaf" – especially when it's on their doorstep.
And when people were asked why they objected, the list of possible responses appears not to have included what many might feel – rightly or wrongly – that wind turbines in general, or at least in a particular location, might be an ineffective and expensive way to generate clean energy. Interestingly, the older age categories were more likely to answer "other" to this question.
Given wind power is seen as such a vital part of the UK's ambitious targets for renewable energy in the next decade or so, and the increasingly tough job investors are having persuading anybody to let them build them, it is a serious issue that needs to be better understood.
Helpfully IPB have offered to put the full results from pollsters NEMS market research on their website as soon as possible.
Scotland launches £70m wind energy fund
Funding for ports and shipyard upgrades will stimulate the offshore wind industry and create 28,000 jobs, Alex Salmond says
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 November 2010 16.38 GMT
Ports and shipyards in Scotland are being given £70m to help tackle a multibillion pound funding gap facing the offshore "green economy", Alex Salmond has announced.
The first minister said the investment fund would allow Scottish ports and windfarm factories to upgrade their facilities to meet the immense challenge of building and installing the vast offshore wind and marine energy farms planned by ministers.
"We are a nation with considerable natural and human resources and the political will needed to deliver a green energy revolution that can build sustainable economic recovery and reduce Europe's carbon emissions," he told to the RenewableUK annual conference in Glasgow today.
He said the £70m fund would help "leverage" further private funding for ports at Leith in Edinburgh and Dundee, and fabrication yards at Nigg near Inverness and Methil in Fife, which are among the sites most likely to win support from the fund.
It would allow Scotland to create around £7bn and 28,000 jobs from green energy over the next decade, but business leaders and banks have warned the UK's facilities are too poor and fragmented.
Around 7,000 wind turbines are expected to be built offshore around the UK over the next 10 years, with Scotland expected to see 40% of the UK-wide investment. Scottish Enterprise, the investment agency, estimates at least £222m is needed immediately to upgrade 11 key Scottish green energy sites.
Last month, the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) announced a very similar £60m fund for ports and fabrication yards in England; Salmond said his larger fund will be "open for business immediately", while the Decc funds will become available next April.
His announcement is the latest in a series of high-profile green energy statements by Salmond in his campaign to make Scotland the "Saudi Arabia" of the renewables industry, and to project his nationalist government as one of the world leaders on renewables.
In September, he set a tougher green electricity target of 80% by 2020, and claimed Scotland could generate 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.
However, Salmond's decision to set up this £70m fund marks a defeat for his ambitions to create a larger Scottish "green investment bank" worth at least £360m with help from the European investment bank (EIB) and other major institutions.
Salmond had thought that George Osborne, the chancellor, was sympathetic to his pleas for the Treasury to release £190m accrued to Scotland from its share of the fossil fuel levy on energy bills.
The first minister hoped to use that cash to kick-start the green investment bank and get the EIB to match it with European renewables funding; the £360m would then be used for a massive investment programme in Scottish renewables ports and infrastructure.
But to the first minister's fury, the Treasury has decided to stick to its traditional rule that the money would be counted as part of the Scottish government's block grant from the UK government. In other words, if it paid out the £190m from the levy, it would lose £190m from its block grant.
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 November 2010 16.38 GMT
Ports and shipyards in Scotland are being given £70m to help tackle a multibillion pound funding gap facing the offshore "green economy", Alex Salmond has announced.
The first minister said the investment fund would allow Scottish ports and windfarm factories to upgrade their facilities to meet the immense challenge of building and installing the vast offshore wind and marine energy farms planned by ministers.
"We are a nation with considerable natural and human resources and the political will needed to deliver a green energy revolution that can build sustainable economic recovery and reduce Europe's carbon emissions," he told to the RenewableUK annual conference in Glasgow today.
He said the £70m fund would help "leverage" further private funding for ports at Leith in Edinburgh and Dundee, and fabrication yards at Nigg near Inverness and Methil in Fife, which are among the sites most likely to win support from the fund.
It would allow Scotland to create around £7bn and 28,000 jobs from green energy over the next decade, but business leaders and banks have warned the UK's facilities are too poor and fragmented.
Around 7,000 wind turbines are expected to be built offshore around the UK over the next 10 years, with Scotland expected to see 40% of the UK-wide investment. Scottish Enterprise, the investment agency, estimates at least £222m is needed immediately to upgrade 11 key Scottish green energy sites.
Last month, the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) announced a very similar £60m fund for ports and fabrication yards in England; Salmond said his larger fund will be "open for business immediately", while the Decc funds will become available next April.
His announcement is the latest in a series of high-profile green energy statements by Salmond in his campaign to make Scotland the "Saudi Arabia" of the renewables industry, and to project his nationalist government as one of the world leaders on renewables.
In September, he set a tougher green electricity target of 80% by 2020, and claimed Scotland could generate 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.
However, Salmond's decision to set up this £70m fund marks a defeat for his ambitions to create a larger Scottish "green investment bank" worth at least £360m with help from the European investment bank (EIB) and other major institutions.
Salmond had thought that George Osborne, the chancellor, was sympathetic to his pleas for the Treasury to release £190m accrued to Scotland from its share of the fossil fuel levy on energy bills.
The first minister hoped to use that cash to kick-start the green investment bank and get the EIB to match it with European renewables funding; the £360m would then be used for a massive investment programme in Scottish renewables ports and infrastructure.
But to the first minister's fury, the Treasury has decided to stick to its traditional rule that the money would be counted as part of the Scottish government's block grant from the UK government. In other words, if it paid out the £190m from the levy, it would lose £190m from its block grant.
Biofuel power stations in planning pipeline
Two plants in the south of England would run on palm oil, a crop critics say contributes to deforestation and drives up food prices
Juliette Jowit guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 November 2010 10.05 GMT
Two new power stations that use a fuel critics say contributes to the destruction of rainforest in south-east Asia may be built in the UK through subsidies added to customer bills.
The two plants in the south of England would run on palm oil, which in many cases is sourced from plantations sited on cleared rainforest land.
They are among more than 30 new power stations at various stages of the planning process that propose to burn wood and other plant materials, as owners try to take advantage of hundreds of millions of pounds of subsidies to cut reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, experts have warned that as well as being linked to tropical rainforest destruction – and the survival threat to the orang-utan in the wild – crop-fuelled power stations will push up food prices by competing for land, and in many cases will not even cut greenhouse gas emissions.
UK government policy insists companies use only "sustainable" sources, but campaigners claim the rules are too relaxed and it is too hard to enforce such standards on plantations far from the UK, especially when other – non-certified – land could be cleared of forests to make way for displaced food growing.
"The trouble is their sustainability standards amount to little more than greenwash: they claim to set a standard but all they are saying is you need to comply with a couple of criteria in European law that are vague," said Harry Huyton, head of climate change for the RSPB. "Once you build them [the plants] they are here to stay: they have a shelf-life of 30 years or longer and they need biofuel to feed them."
Campaigners are now urging ministers to review the policy on bioenergy that is currently expected to deliver more than half of the government's target to generate 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Doubts about the policy are made more likely by the appointment of David MacKay as chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). Before he took the job in 2009, MacKay wrote a book on sustainable energy which said biofuels often competed with other land uses and had questionable environmental benefits, adding: "Biofuels made from plants, in a European country like Britain, can deliver so little power, I think they are scarcely worth talking about."
The energy company W4B has been given permission to build a 17.8MW plant at Portland in Dorset to burn palm sterin – a by-product of palm oil – and oil from jatropha plants grown in tropical areas of Africa. It is also waiting for the result of an appeal over a second such 50MW plant near Bristol.
The Salisbury-registered company website says it hopes construction will begin on one or both plants next year.
The two W4B plants are among more than 30 bioenergy plants which the campaign group Biofuel Watch has recorded as between proposal and construction stages – the vast majority of which would burn solid fuel – and are being built near ports including Liverpool, Swansea, Southampton, Tilbury and Teeside. According to the group, another seven are in operation already, and one has been rejected.
A forthcoming report by the RSPB estimates that by 2020 UK bioenergy plants would need imports of 19m tonnes of fuel and be paid subsidies of £1.2bn a year, equivalent to around £40 per household per year.
The chief criticisms of the plants are that there is too little space to grow the crops without creating huge pressure to clear forests and other land which could be used to grow food; and that in many cases they will generate more carbon dioxide than they will save. That is because it will take many years – sometimes centuries – of regrowth to "offset" emissions from burning wood and other plants in the generators. Where there is limited space for fast-growing woody crops on otherwise unusable agricultural land, they should be used for biofuel for transport, especial aeroplanes, for which there are fewer alternatives, say critics.
The opposition is backed by a number of recent expert statements questioning the assumption by many governments and international treaties – including the European Union and the United Nations' Kyoto protocol – that biomass is "carbon neutral", also because of the varying speed of regrowth. These include a letter signed by 90 leading scientists in the US, and a report by Austrian-based Joanneum Research, who also work with IEA Bioenergy, a research and development organisation set up by the International Energy Agency.
The Guardian could not contact W4B, but minutes of the Weymouth and Portland council planning meeting in January, after which the Portland plant got the go-ahead, show the company described some criticisms as "extremist views". Fuel oil would not be taken from food products, development would benefit third world countries, and a local monitoring group could make sure people were happy about the fuel sources, it said. Longer term, the company hopes to use algae for fuel.
A spokesperson for Decc said: "It is essential that all feedstocks for energy generation are responsibly and sustainably produced. We are introducing mandatory standards on sustainability that come into force next year. These standards apply to all feedstocks, wherever they were grown."
In a more unusual protest, 600 workers at a wood panel plant in north Wales last week took part in a Europe-wide protest against biomass subsidies, which they claim threaten a worldwide shortage of timber and the future of millions of European jobs in the industry.
Juliette Jowit guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 November 2010 10.05 GMT
Two new power stations that use a fuel critics say contributes to the destruction of rainforest in south-east Asia may be built in the UK through subsidies added to customer bills.
The two plants in the south of England would run on palm oil, which in many cases is sourced from plantations sited on cleared rainforest land.
They are among more than 30 new power stations at various stages of the planning process that propose to burn wood and other plant materials, as owners try to take advantage of hundreds of millions of pounds of subsidies to cut reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, experts have warned that as well as being linked to tropical rainforest destruction – and the survival threat to the orang-utan in the wild – crop-fuelled power stations will push up food prices by competing for land, and in many cases will not even cut greenhouse gas emissions.
UK government policy insists companies use only "sustainable" sources, but campaigners claim the rules are too relaxed and it is too hard to enforce such standards on plantations far from the UK, especially when other – non-certified – land could be cleared of forests to make way for displaced food growing.
"The trouble is their sustainability standards amount to little more than greenwash: they claim to set a standard but all they are saying is you need to comply with a couple of criteria in European law that are vague," said Harry Huyton, head of climate change for the RSPB. "Once you build them [the plants] they are here to stay: they have a shelf-life of 30 years or longer and they need biofuel to feed them."
Campaigners are now urging ministers to review the policy on bioenergy that is currently expected to deliver more than half of the government's target to generate 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Doubts about the policy are made more likely by the appointment of David MacKay as chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). Before he took the job in 2009, MacKay wrote a book on sustainable energy which said biofuels often competed with other land uses and had questionable environmental benefits, adding: "Biofuels made from plants, in a European country like Britain, can deliver so little power, I think they are scarcely worth talking about."
The energy company W4B has been given permission to build a 17.8MW plant at Portland in Dorset to burn palm sterin – a by-product of palm oil – and oil from jatropha plants grown in tropical areas of Africa. It is also waiting for the result of an appeal over a second such 50MW plant near Bristol.
The Salisbury-registered company website says it hopes construction will begin on one or both plants next year.
The two W4B plants are among more than 30 bioenergy plants which the campaign group Biofuel Watch has recorded as between proposal and construction stages – the vast majority of which would burn solid fuel – and are being built near ports including Liverpool, Swansea, Southampton, Tilbury and Teeside. According to the group, another seven are in operation already, and one has been rejected.
A forthcoming report by the RSPB estimates that by 2020 UK bioenergy plants would need imports of 19m tonnes of fuel and be paid subsidies of £1.2bn a year, equivalent to around £40 per household per year.
The chief criticisms of the plants are that there is too little space to grow the crops without creating huge pressure to clear forests and other land which could be used to grow food; and that in many cases they will generate more carbon dioxide than they will save. That is because it will take many years – sometimes centuries – of regrowth to "offset" emissions from burning wood and other plants in the generators. Where there is limited space for fast-growing woody crops on otherwise unusable agricultural land, they should be used for biofuel for transport, especial aeroplanes, for which there are fewer alternatives, say critics.
The opposition is backed by a number of recent expert statements questioning the assumption by many governments and international treaties – including the European Union and the United Nations' Kyoto protocol – that biomass is "carbon neutral", also because of the varying speed of regrowth. These include a letter signed by 90 leading scientists in the US, and a report by Austrian-based Joanneum Research, who also work with IEA Bioenergy, a research and development organisation set up by the International Energy Agency.
The Guardian could not contact W4B, but minutes of the Weymouth and Portland council planning meeting in January, after which the Portland plant got the go-ahead, show the company described some criticisms as "extremist views". Fuel oil would not be taken from food products, development would benefit third world countries, and a local monitoring group could make sure people were happy about the fuel sources, it said. Longer term, the company hopes to use algae for fuel.
A spokesperson for Decc said: "It is essential that all feedstocks for energy generation are responsibly and sustainably produced. We are introducing mandatory standards on sustainability that come into force next year. These standards apply to all feedstocks, wherever they were grown."
In a more unusual protest, 600 workers at a wood panel plant in north Wales last week took part in a Europe-wide protest against biomass subsidies, which they claim threaten a worldwide shortage of timber and the future of millions of European jobs in the industry.