UK sees wind power undercut fossil fuel in 20 yrs
Date: 02-Nov-01
Country: UK
The government's Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU), currently undertaking a root-and-branch review of the country's energy needs, predicts electricity from onshore wind power will cost between 1.5-2.5 pence per kilowatt hour (p/kWh) in 2020.
This is less than for coal, gas and nuclear power stations which are forecast to cost between 1.8-4.5 p/kWh.
Britain wants green electricity production to grow to 10.4 percent by 2011 from 2.8 percent currently to help cut greenhouse gas emissions, seen by many scientists as contributing to global warming. The government aims to cut such emissions by 23 percent by 2010 from 1990 levels.
"The UK could meet a significant proportion of electricity needs from renewable sources in the medium term - 20-30 percent by 2020 may be feasible," the PIU document said.
Alison Hill of the British Wind Energy Association welcomed the backing the report gave to wind power.
"Wind has undoubtedly been the success story of the last 20 years. We have already seen onshore wind costs drop by a factor of four in the last 10 years to about 2.0-3.5 p/kWh," she said.
But Hill said there were concerns the PIU cost estimates were overly ambitious.
"We're not entirely sure the PIU target is actually achievable by 2020 - we feel a more realistic and comfortable figure is two pence (per kilowatt hour)."
The PIU projections estimate the cost of offshore wind power to be between 2-4 p/kWh against current levels of around 5.5 p/kWh.
Among the other technologies assessed by the PIU were biomass, wave and photovoltaic (PV) solar power.
The forecast was for biomass costs to drop to 3.0-4.0 p/kWh from 8.0 p/kWh currently, for wave to fall to 3.0-6.0 p/kWh from 4.0-8.0 p/kWh while PV should see significant reductions to 10-16 p/kWh from 70 p/kWh.
