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BWEA warns on UK renewables policy as Germany leads the way

Posted: 08/01/2007

Whilst Britain tinkers with it's Renewables Obligation, Germany continued to be a world leader in the use of renewables during 2006. Wind power, hydropower, solar energy, bio energy and geothermal renewable energy sources became more popular than ever last year, according to the German Federation of Renewable Energy(BEE).

Thanks largely to substantial government subsidies, the share of renewables in Germany's energy consumption increase to 7.7 percent in 2006 from 6.8 percent the previous year, the BEE said in its annual review. The biggest increase was in the use of solar energy (30 percent), followed by bio energy (20 percent) and wind power (10 percent), according to Deutsche-Presse-Agentur.

The energy supply derived from sustainable sources grew to more than 200 billion kilowatt hours, enough to meet the electricity, heat and fuel needs of more than 10 million households.

UK renewable output is substantially less, and BWEA (the British Wind Energy Association) have warned that levels of support for renewable energy must increase if government targets are to be met. The organisation has made a critical response to the Government’s consultation on reforming the Renewables Obligation (RO), jointly prepared with the Renewable Energy Association (REA), which proposes significant change to the RO, the support mechanism for renewable power in the UK.

While BWEA welcomed the Government’s intention to increase the quantity and diversity of renewable energy delivery to the grid, the Association believes that the attempt will succeed only if financial support is increased.

Commenting on the reform proposals, BWEA Chief Executive Maria McCaffery said: “The RO has been highly successful in bringing forward the cheapest renewables: onshore wind, landfill gas and biomass co-firing. The Government’s plan to ‘band’ the RO could allow more technologies to share in this success, particularly offshore wind but this cannot be at the expense of onshore wind’s current strong growth. Accommodating the more expensive technologies whilst trying to get to a 20% target in 2020 – using the same amount of money as a 15% goal – is like trying to extract a quart from a pint pot. It just doesn’t add up.”

In addition, by banding the system so that more technologies are economic, this 20% would have to include capacity that is more expensive than would be brought forward by an unreformed system. Thus Government is attempting to get a third more renewable power, with a mix that includes significant quantities of technologies that are not economic under the current system, for the same amount of money. This is unrealistic.

BWEA also finds Government’s call for ‘net neutral banding’ to be problematic. Under net neutrality, the number of units of renewable electricity and the number of Renewable Obligation Certificates would be the same – currently 1MWh=1ROC, but banding breaks this link; Government would like to manage the system so it continues to balance. However, in order to do so, what is given to more expensive technologies has to taken from the less expensive, and the ‘spare’ resource in the system that can be reallocated is not enough to incentivise large quantities of, for instance, offshore wind.

Finally, getting right through to the nitty gritty, the Association has also pointed out that the majority of difficulties that renewable developers face are nothing to do with the RO. If the issues of gaining planning permission and a grid connection could be resolved swiftly, then the UK could be making much better progress towards its renewable energy targets, even without reform of the RO.

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