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Jason Ford
News editor
Renewables take centre stage
Scotland’s first marine energy park is set for launch today with Greg Barker, minister for energy and climate change due to deliver a speech welcoming the new facility.
Eleven tidal and wave energy sites with a combined output of 1.6GW have already been announced by the Crown Estate at the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters Marine Energy Park.
E.ON, Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) Renewables and Scottish Power Renewables, along with MeyGen will spearhead the larger of the 11 schemes. Pelamis and Marine Current Turbines will have smaller marine energy schemes on their own.
The purpose of the park, which incorporates the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), is to create a collaborative partnership in the region to help speed up progress of marine power development.
According to DECC, energy from waves or tides has the potential to generate 27GW of power in the UK by 2050, equivalent to the power generated from eight coal fired power stations.
Still with renewables and news that changes to Feed-in-Tariffs come into force this week.
The tariff for a small domestic solar installation will be reduced from 21p to 16p per kilowatt hour, decreasing on a three month basis thereafter, while the export tariff increases from 3.2p to 4.5p.
FITs have been designed to provide a subsidy, paid for by consumers through energy bills, enabling small scale renewable and low carbon technologies to compete against higher carbon forms of electricity generation.
In the business world, BP and BAE Systems are set to publish second quarter results and half-yearly reports respectively.
BP recently announced plans to sell its 50 per cent shareholding in Russian energy company TNK-BP following years of arguments with its partner in the business, Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR).
The combination of BP’s and AAR’s Russian and Ukrainian gas and oil assets was completed in 2003, leading to the creation of TNK-BP. In 2008 the board was restructured, a move that saw Bob Dudley stand down as chief executive.
Last week BP confirmed that it would start negotiations with Rosneft for the sale of its share of TNK-BP.
Defence company BAE Systems will announce its interim results on Thursday, six months after the company announced a 14 per cent drop in sales for 2011 and just over two months since it announced up to 620 potential job losses in its UK land systems business.
In February this year BAE’s CEO Ian King attributed the 14 per cent drop to £19.2bn on defence cuts in Britain and the US, adding that the company was set to instigate aggressive cost reductions.
Readers' comments (11)
David Mayer | 30 Jul 2012 12:37 pm
Does the Government REALLY expect the general public to take up solar schemes with feed-in tariff's so pitifully low? Where's the incentive to take the risk and pay upfront for equipment that is going to take up to 20 years to pay for itself? A business wouldn't make an investment in machinery, based on those sort of terms !
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Chris Bull | 30 Jul 2012 1:08 pm
I agree with you David. M. The government does not really care, as long as there pockets are full !
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Carolyn Knight | 30 Jul 2012 1:11 pm
Domestic renewables are grossly overpriced in the UK They are sold by high-pressure type sales operations who vastly inflate the prices. Even so, can we be surprised to find solar has a very long payback in a country with so little direct sunlight? We must concentrate in areas where payback is commercially realistic, and where we have the resource in abundance. Tidal, and methane have that potential. so far, the politicians have gone for the methods with the biggest lobby, rather than the best economics.
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Dean Newton | 30 Jul 2012 1:18 pm
I totally agree with David Mayer. I am a member of the Energy Management comitee within my organisation, and therefore I'm always looking at ways of reducing our carbon footprint. But when it comes to Solar PV, the figures just don't add up.
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Anonymous | 30 Jul 2012 1:31 pm
As an investment (20 year payback), it is not on, but why should David Mayer expect the rest of UK comsumers to pay for this through our power bills? Personly I would not invest, so why should I help others through a high FIT?
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Anonymous | 30 Jul 2012 1:45 pm
Agree completely with David Mayer. Every time solar is starting to be attractive the government is doing its best to make it unattractive again.
I had a solar company here last month telling me that the payback time for a 2 kW installation on my property is 14 years!!!
There was a poll published recently with 2% agreeing with the governments view that it is the greenest government ever. 2% says it all.
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Bryan Leyland | 30 Jul 2012 1:45 pm
Why should any sane government force consumers to pay huge subsidies for solar and wind power?
Remember the objective is to reduce CO2 and this is done more cheaply and effectively with switching from coal to gas and nuclear power.
But, in a world that has not warmed in the last 15 years or so and where it is predicted that we are are heading for sunspot induced cooling, why on earth does anyone need to reduce CO2 - a harmless gas that is essential to plant growth?
The whole affair is a serious fraud on the consumer.
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Philip Baker | 30 Jul 2012 2:38 pm
Once again we have a huge amount of renewable chatter.
It reminds me of evening bird song, when in the last moments of the day, the bird chatter goes berserk, and then suddenly stops, as the light goes down.
This scenario could well be the fore bearer of our future electrical generation.
As the real lights start going out due to the collapse of our system.
This happens when we have a insufficient, peak load power to fill the missing base load power whilst the nation takes tea, during a commercial break, as we are about to win a gold medal at some future Olympics.
Yes, alternative energy chatter to the death.
The lights will go down and take weeks of power restrictions to bring it all back up.
As we squabble over why we let the GREEN lobby determine our energy policy.
Let’s keep chattering to our peril.
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Silvia Leahu-Aluas | 30 Jul 2012 3:33 pm
The FIT should be equal to the external cost of the displaced non-renewable, high GWP (global warming potential). What are the current values in UK for coal, oil, gas, etc?
The UK government is implying that the external cost has been reduced for individual consumers by 24%. How can we verify that? It would be very useful to understand the change.
I wish great success to Scotland's first marine energy park and all the people who have worked and will work on it, an energy project for the future, a clean, carbon neutral future.
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David Mayer | 31 Jul 2012 11:21 am
I'd query that 14 year payback. Most solar companies I spoke to were quite economical with the truth. For example, how many of them advise you that some of the equipment such as the inverters only has a 7 year life - and so could need replacing AT LEAST TWICE during the 20 year payback period. Also, the PV cells drop in efficiency, year on year. Again, nobody was factoring this into their payback costs.
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Richard Annett | 7 Aug 2012 10:19 am
I really lend my support to those pumping their time and resources into wave and tidal devices. If tidal is successful then we can use it as base load.
I hope investors have the savvy to put their money into the schemes too.
Good luck to them all.
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