Wind Power Suffers Blow

Sarah Crown
Wednesday March 10, 2004
The Guardian

The renewable energy industry suffered a setback today with the publication of a report showing that electricity from offshore wind farms will cost at least twice as much as that obtained from conventional sources.

According to research carried out by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), the cheapest electricity, costing just 2.3 pence per unit, will be generated from gas turbines and nuclear power stations, compared with 3.7p for onshore wind and 5.5p for offshore. The Academy also emphasised the need to provide backup for wind energy to cover periods when the wind doesn't blow. The study assumed the need for about 65% backup from conventional sources, adding 1.7p to the cost of wind power, bringing its price up to two and a half times that of gas or nuclear power.

Coal generation, however, faces an uncertain future, looking increasingly uneconomic as the financial impact of the need to curb carbon dioxide emissions kicks in.

Last July, the trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt announced plans for a second round of offshore wind licensing, worth £6bn and intended to provide fuel to one in six households by 2010. The move was designed to allow the government to fulfil its aim to generate 10% of the UK's electricity from greenhouse gas-free sources by the end of the decade.

It also followed on from concern expressed by the Institution of Civil Engineers that Britain could be facing power cuts unless something was done to replace the country's languishing power supplies. This concern will be voiced again tonight in a BBC Two programme, 'If ... The Lights Go Out', on which an expert who advises the government on energy policy predicts that the UK could experience energy supply problems within the next two years if the current dependence on gas for electricity is not addressed.

RAE vice-president Philip Ruffles acknowledged that the findings may sound surprising, especially as the cost of nuclear decommissioning had been included in the research.

"The weakness of the government's energy white paper was that it saw nuclear power as very expensive," he said. "But modern nuclear stations are far simpler and more streamlined than the old generation and far cheaper to build and run."

The British Wind Energy Association, who last year gave full backing to the government's wind, questioned the reliability of the data which the RAE used: "BWEA assumes that the figures quoted for nuclear power are based upon reactors that are yet to be built and is not aware of any market experience that proves the costs claimed by the Royal Academy of Engineering," it said.

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