In response to the Minister of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s announcement that auctions for offshore wind projects will be held every two years, Kate Blagojevic, Head of Energy at Greenpeace UK, said -“Offshore wind’s enormous cost reduction makes it the logical choice to provide the backbone of the UK’s energy needs, and we welcome the government providing certainty for investors. But this fall in price is far from unique. Onshore wind is also getting cheaper all the time, and is now the UK’s cheapest electricity source. Solar has been dropping for so long that it has actually reduced in cost by an astonishing 99% since the technology was commercialised. This makes the government’s huge financial support for nuclear, the one low carbon source which keeps going up and up in price, all the more confusing and irrational. The government needs to listen to the recommendations of its advisers and ditch nuclear in favour of renewable energy, benefitting bill payers and the climate.”
Greenpeace 23rd July 2018 read more »
THE President of the United States may have an intense dislike for the offshore wind farm that, he insisted, ruined the view from his Aberdeenshire golf course, but increasing numbers of people are coming to the realisation that renewable energy is an idea whose time has come. Earlier this month, it was reported that that very windfarm had generated its first power. Elsewhere, positive news in favour of renewable news is in plentiful supply. The first three months of 2018 were the first quarter in which British windfarms provided more electricity than the country’s eight nuclear power stations. Britain has been powered for more than 1,000 hours this year without coal, with the renewables sector generating record amounts of electricity. The Sierra Club, the US environmental organisation, reports that the American city of Atlanta is looking to run entirely on renewable power by 2025, including its international airport. The Westminster government’s National Infrastructure Commission has urged ministers to build only one new nuclear power station after Hinkley Point C in the next decade, arguing that solar and wind could enjoy the same generating capacity as nuclear at the same sort of price. Yesterday’s announcement about Scottish islands being poised to share in a renewable energy boom is thus to be welcomed. Wind-power projects on some of our furthest-flung outposts could soon be able to apply for subsidies which would abolish the element of financial risk that is part of building away from the mainland. It is potentially good news for such projects as a proposed 103-turbine windfarm on Shetland. Scottish Renewables makes the telling point that the economic impact of large, onshore winds on these remote islands may be utterly transformational.
Herald 24th July 2018 read more »
