Good, But Not Good Enough

The Staff — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:44:27 +0000

Energy Secretary John Huttton MP has announced a massive drive for offshore wind power, providing all the electricity for Britain’s homes by 2020.

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) applauds the government for recognising the urgency of climate change and the potential of offshore wind farms in Britain’s future energy mix.

In its zerocarbonbritain report released earlier this year, CAT detailed how the UK could generate all its energy from renewable sources by 2027, meeting around 50% of this demand with offshore wind farms.

This would require approximately 140 offshore wind farms the size of the 1GW London Array spread out around our 8,000 mile coastline. This is more than four times the Government’s proposed 33GW from offshore wind.

Zerocarbonbritain details the policies and technologies that could reduce our emissions from fossil fuels to zero within 20 years. The report demonstrated how we could reduce our energy use by 50% through energy efficiency measures, then deploying a wide range of renewable energy technologies to meet the reduced demand.

“Crucially, we need to reduce our energy demand significantly in the first place,” CAT Engineering Consultant David Hood said. “The government plans to produce 20% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020 – but if we used energy more efficiently, we could produce around 40% of our total energy needs from renewables by this date, en route to becoming 100% renewable by 2027.

“Reaching zero carbon emissions is now clearly a scientific necessity; this report shows that doing so is technically possible – it now needs to become socially and politically thinkable,” he said.

On top of the offshore energy provision, approximately 30% of electricity would come from marine technologies such as tidal and wave power, and the rest from a mix of biomass-fuelled combined heat and power (CHP), building-integrated photovoltaic panels, onshore wind turbines and hydroelectric schemes. Heat could come from CHP, solar thermal, ground-source heat pumps, biomass and efficient electric systems.

Balancing a completely renewably-powered is the biggest engineering challenge for a fossil fuel-free Britain – but there are many emerging technologies detailed in the report which can solve this problem.

Following the success of zerocarbonbritain, CAT (in collaboration with the Public Interest Research Centre) is planning a Europe-wide zero-carbon energy strategy, mapping out a pathway to show how the entire EU could rapidly decarbonise – watch this space for zerocarboneurope!

wind power | ukwatch.net

Good, But Not Good Enough