How Scottish independence will boost green energy

If, as now seems likely, Scotland becomes independent in the next 5 years, green energy should get a major boost. A Scottish Government will have the unconstrained ability to offer contracts to supply low cost renewable energy which could be sold not only to England but also to a European continent eager for renewable energy. Meanwhile Scottish electricity consumer prices could be reduced by avoiding the extra costs of building nuclear power stations in England and Wales.

Offshore wind power costs and also onshore wind power costs have fallen since 2017 so that today windfarms can be built for no more than around £40 per MWh compared to over £90 per MWh for nuclear power and around £60 per MWh for natural gas fired power plant.

Opinion polls are showing more consistent support for independence these days, and the UK Government consistently talks to an English audience rather than a Scottish one as it negotiates the fallout from Brexit. The story from London that surely the Scottish people prefer being run from Westminster than being run from Brussels indicates just how little they understand Scottish nationalism. Many nationalists would say that they would prefer to be run over by a bus than run by Westminster!

It is uncertain as to what level of integration with the EU would transpire, but there would certainly be a lot of interest in building more interconnectors to trade with the European continent, perhaps via Norway. The Germans in particular may well be interested in boosting their renewable energy by buying in wind power from Scotland. Although there are still substantial potentials from onshore wind, and also lots of potential for solar power, even this is dwarfed by the massive amounts that could come from Scottish offshore waters, especially using the developing floating wind technologies. If, on top of sufficient renewables to power Scotland's own energy consumption, say  40GWe of offshore wind was installed, Scotland could earn a billion pounds a year if the Government charged £5 per MWh export levy. This would be a very useful sum, although only around a tenth of the income that used to come from oil and gas revenues in good years.

It seems most likely that Scotland would continue to be part of the British Electricity Transmission and Trading Arrangement (BETTA) - tearing up lots of expensive transmission arrangments does not seem to make much sense to either England or Scotland. OFGEM would be responsible for electricity trading throughout Britain while control over dishing out electricity generation contracts in Scotland would revert to the Scottish Government (SG). At the moment under the terms of Electricity Legislation regulations covering electricity generation are the preserve of the Westminster Government.

The SG would have the ability to issue its own long term contracts for electricity supply (and also set up trading in demand side management). Importantly Scottish electricity consumers would not have to pay surcharges to fund new nuclear power. Hinkley C will not be online anyway by the time of independence, and certainly nothing else in the way of new nuclear. Westminster could still threaten to stop the payments of renewable energy obligation certificates for Scottish windfarms (it did in 2014), but by 2024 all of the windfarms will have paid off the bulk if not all of their bank loans anyway.

Meanwhile the Scottish Government could issue many contracts for large amounts of renewable energy contracts for wholesale power prices that are no higher than what would be paid anyway. Currently the power to issue such contracts - called contracts for difference (CfDs) are held by the Westminster Government. But in the case of Scottish independence this power would be held by the SG.

In the extreme event that Westminster demands that Scottish people pay for English new nuclear power stations as a condition for continued participation in BETTA (the ending of which would disrupt English electricity markets), then, at least in the medium term, Scotland could have its own independent electricity supply system.

Scotland could balance the offshore wind variability with various methods, including bigger use of batteries to even out daily renewable fluctuations, but it could easily be 100 per cent renewable using ammonia or some other substance as a means to store renewable energy in the longer term. The renewable energy would be stored at times when electricity prices, and therefore the costs of the renewable energy. Then the stored energy would be generated using what are very cheap gas turbines or gas engines when there was not enough renewable energy, battery or interconnector based etc supplies to meet demand. An ammonia based long term storage system is not just fantasy. It is coming soon. A facility to convert renewable energy into ammonia as a means of storing hydrogen is actually going to be deployed in Saudi Arabia. See also coverage by 100percentrenewableuk.

Indeed, for those of us that support 100 per cent renewable energy, we could almost wish the Westminster Government to throw its rattle out of its pram and scrap BETTA. That could make Scotland a world leader, perhaps the world leader, in clean energy technology.

Why we should enthusiastically back solar farms in the countryside

As far as the prospect of solar farms in the countryside are concerned, I simply say 'the more the merrier'. Surely if we are facing a climate crisis then we should do our best to welcome cheap, clean, energy sources. And large scale solar farms that are now being proposed in quite large capacities are coming in very cheap to the extent that they are being developed on a 'subsidy free' basis.

Solar farms already constitute a very important contribution to renewable energy in the UK.   A little over half of UK based solar electricity is generated from them, the rest coming from domestic solar installations or on commercial properties. I do often hear the refrain 'they should put the panels on roofs, not on farmland' - too often as far as I am concerned. 

Well I'm certainly in favour of clearing away the contractual and regulatory obstacles that get in the way of putting solar panels on as many roofs as we can. However it is simply wrong to imply, if that is what people mean, that if planning consent for a solar farm is refused, then somehow the panels will magically reappear on some suitable roof somewhere else. They won't. We shall simply have that much less solar power generation. Neither are the solar farms easily transferable to some other piece of land that maybe preferred - land availability that is sufficiently proximate to the right electricity connections is in short supply.

Some say solar pv should not be on farmland. I disagree. Yes, there's a balance to be struck between localised food production and clean energy production - but in this case there's not really much of an argument that I can see, and not much of a balance. A small proportion of farmland in the UK will generate a massive amount of solar electricity.

Around 66 per cent of the UK is farmland, yet it would take coverage of  barely 1 per cent of the UK's land to generate the equivalent of the UK's entire current electricity production. That's not much of a sacrifice really - the benefits of the clean energy surely outweigh the loss of a very small proportion of farmland. Are we really, seriously arguing, that in the teeth of what we call the climate crisis, that this is beyond the limit of what we can sacrifice. Surely not!

I am afraid also that I completely fail to understand the aesthetic arguments that are sometimes posed against solar farms. I must say I have no sympathy with the landscape objections to wind power either, and think that the noise issues are invariably overstated, but surely the local impacts of solar farms are even less? You cannot see them from a long distance, and indeed, when you can see them from a medium distance you can hardly often distinguish them from strawerry net cloches and polytunnels. I haven't heard many people complaining about the sight of them!

 I don't see any biodiversity arguments against solar farms on farmland. Indeed, if they are placed on so-called 'prime' agricultural land they are almost certainly giving the land a break from the large quantities of chemicals that sterlise the land! I have heard arguments that solar farms will actually improve the biodiversity compared to intensive agriculture. What I am certain about is that they cannot be worse in ecological terms! The main difference will be that the land will be used to generate lots of clean energy rather than soak up chemicals!

If there are ever any ecological doubts about solar farms, it won't (in my view) be about the ones that are farmlands; rather this will be about the impact on areas of special wildlife interest. 

Indeed recently there was a planning controversy about the Cleve Hill solar park, which was given ministerial approval in May. The Kent Wildlife Trust were very concerned about the proximity of the solar park to protected wildlife areas. However, there were some changes made and the Trust commented: 'we have secured larger buffers to the ditches, more mitigation land and better management, so even if it gets permission it will not be as bad as the initial application, and some species may even be better off'. Now that's hardly a ringing endorsement, as they say, but it doesn't suggest to me that it is the end of the world either. 

On balance I am clearly minded to support this project. It is a project that is going to use come cutting edge technology, and it will also install some batteries that will help the balancing capabilities of the electricity grid. At 350 MW capacity this will add a substantial amount of solar generation. The UK's solar generation is currently up to around 4 per cent of UK electricity demand(from about 13.5 GW), as measured  on an annual basis.

And also I'm glad to see there should be steady flow of larger solar farms coming up in the future. Australian owned company Macquarie is planning an initial 1 GW.  It really should be a cause of great celebration that companies are planning solar pv farms without even any contracts being offered by the Government. We should be cheering, not wringing our hands over this.

Ten years to save the planet - Jonathon Porritt's new book

Dave Toke has interviewed Jonathon Porritt about his new book 'Hope in Hell - a decade to confront the climate emergency'.

Porritt talks about 100 per cent renewable energy, opposition to nuclear power, electric cars, clean meat and the need to tackle population growth. To see the interview, go to:  https://100percentrenewableuk.org/blog

Jonatthon Porritt is the most influential green political thinker in the UK and has occupied various leading positions in the green movement including Chair of the Green Partry in its earlier years, Director of Friends of the Earth in the period of its most rapid growth, Director of Forum for the Future and Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission.

He has written 10 books, starting with the seminal 'Seeing Green' in 1984, and in 'Hope in Hell' he mixes reviolutionary objectives and zeal with some reformist methods.