UK To Miss Clean Energy Goals On Govt Under-Spend
Date: 10-Jun-09
Country: UK
Author: Michael Szabo and Nao Nakanishi
LONDON - Britain will miss 2020 clean energy targets and the supporting certificate scheme "will die" if the government does not spend more to support renewables, the CEO of clean energy developer Climate Change Capital said on Tuesday.
The UK's Renewables Obligation scheme forces utilities to generate an increasing proportion of their electricity from low-carbon sources, including wind and biomass energy, in an effort to meet a 2020 target of 15 percent renewable energy.
If utilities are unable to generate renewable energy, they must buy Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) from generators that have excess low-carbon energy to sell.
"Between now and 2020 we're not even going to come close to hitting our targets, but between 2020-2025 I think we'll reach them," said Mark Woodall, speaking at a conference held by Project Finance International, a leading source on project finance intelligence owned by Thomson Reuters.
"If we have a bigger gap (between the UK's actual level and its target), as is likely, the ROC system will die by 2015 as it will be far too expensive for each kilowatt of power."
The UK's goal forms part of a European Union-wide pact agreed last December to source 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020. Currently, the UK gets around 2-3 percent of its energy from low-carbon sources.
A panel of speakers at the conference agreed that a lack of government spending on the necessary infrastructure to support the renewables commitment is the mean reason the country will miss its targets.
As an example, Woodall noted "if you're betting on offshore wind, we don't even have the vessels to install it."
"It's not really ROC system's fault, it's everything else that's the problem -- the planning system, the grid system -- that's what's stopping the Renewable Obligation system from being effective," said Gordon Edge of the British Wind Energy Association, adding he was confident that wind energy's share of the obligation was "doable."
"The UK has a fundamental problem with planning and it is not on the political radar of any party," said Tom Murley, head of renewable energy at HgCapital.
Woodall said the main issue looming on the UK's horizon was energy security, not climate change.
"Lights are genuinely potentially going to go out in the UK in the next five to 10 years ... That's a hard reality acknowledged by both (of the two main political) parties, but neither of them seem to have the solutions," he added.
(Editing by James Jukwey)
