The episode represents a milestone that highlights both the progress of Britain’s renewable energy industry and the potholes in the road to replacing fossil fuels. Just six months earlier, world leaders met in Glasgow with renewable energy on the agenda. In the year since Cop26, the case for a rapid transition to green energy has strengthened beyond decarbonisation, as countries seek to replace Russian gas, bills have risen and the concept of ‘energy security’ has catapulted the public agenda. However, stopgap measures, such as keeping coal-fired power plants active to see them through the winter, threaten to undermine and slow down the energy transition. As Cop27 approaches, progress since last year’s iteration has been uneven. “Everything has changed and nothing has changed,” says Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower, speaking at the supplier and developer’s London offices. “We have a cost of living crisis, energy is weaponized and the discourse is now around energy independence. And how do you solve energy independence? You’re investing in renewables, which can be controlled and built quickly.” He adds: “Moving faster and faster to renewables will provide security, lower prices and tackle climate change.” Casimir Lorenz of consultancy Aurora Energy Research says: “Most people now know that if we had invested much more and much faster in renewables, we would not be so exposed to Russian gas.” He adds: “Renewable energy developers have faced renewed pressure to complete projects and get them online while market prices are very, very high.” However, this task was not simple. Rampant global inflation and post-pandemic transportation headaches have strained supply chains. For solar manufacturers, the boom in demand over the past year has also left companies demanding sharp elbows – and the companies are trying to differentiate themselves from some Chinese suppliers amid allegations they used forced labour. In the UK, the renewable energy industry has been caught up in the political drama at Westminster. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss has set her sights on blocking solar farms being built on farmland, while indicating restrictions on onshore wind farms will be lifted. The fate of both initiatives remains uncertain under her successor, Rishi Sunak. Lorenz says a similar picture has been seen across Europe: “Renewable energy growth has been held back by economic factors, but also by regulatory and public resistance to renewables. This has escalated with political resistance, where we have seen populist countries go against the onshore wind to bring people on board.” European orders for wind turbines fell 36% in the quarter to October compared with the same period a year earlier. Some renewable energy companies have also come under fire from governments after they profited excessively from the rise in the wholesale price of electricity, which is linked to rising natural gas prices. “Regulators need to provide a stable investment platform,” says Richard Crawford of InfraRed Capital Partners, the investment manager of the London-based Renewable Infrastructure Group, which has projects across Europe, from the UK to Sweden and Spain. “They have to manage the cost of electricity but also create a suitable environment for investors. We’ve had many periods in the past where prices were below expectations and there was no return on investment.” Crawford adds that revenue caps can act as a “negative investment signal” – making the cost of borrowing capital higher. As the industry is dominated by multinationals with projects in different countries, this may convince some companies to simply invest in an alternative market. Economics must be attractive to policy makers. In a UK auction earlier this year, offshore wind farm operators agreed to sell their power at record low prices of just £37.35 per megawatt hour, 5.8% below the lowest bid in the previous auction in 2019. Anderson argues that an age-old issue is holding back Britain’s renewable energy industry: planning. “If I can build a large, complex infrastructure project in 12 to 18 months, then surely we’ll have a design system that can deliver at the same time,” he says, shaking his head. To illustrate his point, he recounts how a planning official challenged the location of the East Anglia One North offshore wind project 12 years after permission was granted by former prime minister Gordon Brown in 2009. National Grid announced this summer that it was carrying out a £54bn upgrade to its electricity grid, the biggest since the 1960s, to help connect offshore wind farms more easily and allow battery storage facilities to connect to renewable energy storage. energy, a critical issue in the industry. The most important stories on the planet. Get all the week’s environmental news – the good, the bad and the must-haves Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Getting local consent is another factor putting the brakes on Britain’s fight for renewable energy. In April, Octopus Energy launched an effort to prove the nation’s desire for onshore wind with a project called Plots for Kilowatts that paired landowners with residents willing to agree to a wind farm in exchange for lower prices. Lorenz, who is based in Berlin, says that in Europe the public has been annoyed by “the fact that local people are not benefiting from falling costs for renewables – and can even pay more for higher grid fees in some cases ». In terms of ambition, the UK is on par with its European counterparts. The UK aims to get 100% of its energy from renewables by 2035. The government has increased its target for offshore wind capacity from 40GW to 50GW by 2030, while it hopes to triple solar capacity by 2030 .Plans are also underway for floating wind farms off the coast of Cornwall and Wales. Germany, exposed by its dependence on Russian gas, has increased its clean energy target from 65% to 80% by 2030, but the EU’s improved EU-wide energy target is still just 45% by 2030 . In France, attitudes to offshore wind have softened, while its nuclear fleet has struggled this year at an unfortunate turn of events. In the second quarter of 2022, renewables accounted for 38.6% of UK electricity generation, a slight increase on the previous year, but lower than the 41.9% recorded for fossil fuels. EU figures show Sweden has the largest share of renewable energy at 60%, ahead of Finland, Latvia and Austria. Meanwhile, industry technology continues to evolve: in Kent a strawberry farm that supplies Wimbledon uses vertical transparent solar panels to power its greenhouse, while a vineyard in central Spain can now adapt solar panels to provide correct levels of shade to improve the quality of the grapes. Crawford says wind farms are gradually becoming familiar with retrofitting blades to improve the “wake effect” for turbines downwind of the first turbine and increase their productivity. As the industry heads to Sharm el-Sheikh, Anderson says the competition between nations to invest in renewables is fierce. “The UK is doing better than anyone else so far. But we are almost back to square one again after the pandemic and the current energy crisis. America is a very clear, structured environment for investment. Europe is preparing very, very quickly. So we have to ask: are we ready to do it?’
