New report: How Scotland’s new energy company could revive renewable energy in Scotland

New report:  How Scotland’s new energy company could revive renewable energy in Scotland

In a new report published by Nuclear Free Local Authorities, Dr David Toke of the University of Aberdeen argues that the best business strategy for the Scottish Government’s proposed Energy Company will be to enable new renewable energy schemes to be established. To do this, the Scottish Government needs to offer long term guarantees of minimum electricity prices for electricity from new renewable energy schemes.

Dr Toke said “The Scottish Government has a great opportunity to become the UK leader in the supply of green energy. It can achieve this if its proposed Energy Company is able to offer long term power purchase agreements for new onshore wind and solar projects. But if the SG’s new Energy Company relies on the common practice of electricity companies of sourcing renewable energy from projects that have already been established on the back of Westminster based incentives then it will fail to impress – and also miss out on a great opportunity to steal a march on its energy supply competitors. The Scottish Government needs to offer guaranteed long term pries for electricity generated from new renewable energy schemes”

Executive summary

The Scottish Government’s commitment to start an energy company could re-energise renewable energy in Scotland and deliver electricity at competitive prices for the consumer. The key objective for a new Scottish Energy Company (SEC) must be, in marketing terms, to demonstrate how it can offer a superior product compared to its competitors at a price that is no higher than that offered by its competitors. The SEC could out-sell rival competitors by giving long term power purchase agreements to new renewable energy schemes. This will achieve a ‘quality’ selling point that will be unmatched by other electricity suppliers. Although various electricity suppliers boast that their supplies come from renewable energy, usually they only offer PPAs to renewable energy schemes that have been given support on Westminster incentive schemes, the Renewables Obligation and feed-in tariff - and which thus already exist.  The Energy Company initiative should be backed by activities of the Scottish National Investment Bank to offer loans to new renewable energy projects. There are a number of potential renewable energy projects that can be implemented for prices at or below recent levels in wholesale power prices meaning that the Scottish Energy Company could give PPAs to such companies and deliver electricity to consumers at the same or lower prices than other electricity suppliers.

A copy of the report can be accessed at http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/briefings/nfla-policy-briefing-177-how-scotlands-new-energy-company-could-revive-renewable-energy-in-scotland/

For some coverage see 
http://www.thenational.scot/news/16389541.expert-backs-plan-for-publicly-owned-scottish-energy-company/
and:

https://www.energyvoice.com/other-news/178109/scottish-publicly-owned-energy-firm-could-bring-cheaper-bills-expert-claims/

Renewables generated close to 30 per of UK electricity in 2017: set to top 50 per cent by 2025

Today's UK energy statistics reveal that renewable electricity generation increased by around 20 per cent in just one year so that 29.3 per cent of electricity consumed came from renewable energy in 2017. If at least 80 per cent of the offshore windfarms now in different stages of planning (let alone other renewable energy sources) come online, as could be expected, in the next 7 years, then renewable energy will comprise half of total UK electricity generation by 2025.

In 2017 renewable energy's proportion of electricity consumed increased from 24.5 per cent in 2016 to 29.3 per cent in 2017. Making up the 29.3 per cent figure around 15 per cent came from wind power, 4 per cent from solar pv, 2 per cent from natural flow hydro and 8 per cent from various biomass sources. All other major categories fell, with natural gas supplying around 40 per cent, nuclear 21 per cent, and coal just 7 per cent.

As if the massive and continuing increase of renewable electricity (up from around 3 per cent in the year 2000) wasn't enough of a slap in the face for the industrial establishment's earlier sneering at green energy projections, electricity consumption fell once again in the year 2017 compared to 2016. Electricity consumption is now 9 per cent less than it was in 2010.

Meanwhile over 20 GWe of offshore wind are in various stages of planning and construction. In total these would generate around 25 per cent of UK electricity. Since the Government are saying they will hold auctions for offshore wind and some other renewables in 2019 and 2021 this means that a lot of them will be built by 2025. Of course we are going to have substantially more onshore wind and solar by 2025 to buttress these figures (although the Government are doing very little to help) meaning that electricity generated from renewable energy will top 50 per cent of total consumption in 2025/6.

See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/729379/Ch5.pdf