The appeal of being able to depend exclusively on energy that is clean, cheap and – most important of all – endlessly renewable, is undeniable, but is that actually going to happen any time in the forseeable future? A growing consensus of energy experts within Europe is not only answering ‘no’, they are adding that although renewable energies could form a significant part of total energy use internationally within a decade, even stretching that to 20 or 30 years ahead doesn’t suggest they’ll top 50%. If the EU’s new energy policy succeeds, then by 2020 a fifth of Europe’s energy will come from renewables – up from 8.5% at present. But some experts question even this relatively modest assumption.
Enzo Gatta, chairman of Assoelettrica, the Italian Association of Electricity Enterprises has said for instance that the 2020 renewables goal for the EU countries is "extremely ambitious" and would require the mobilisation of "huge economic and technological resources." For Italy itself, the target of 17% "is de facto unreachable," he added in a public statement. The French president Nicolas Sarkozy has called the plan "neither effective, nor equitable, nor economically sustainable." Governments Germany, Spain and Denmark have told their respective national press that the renewables scheme could impact on their feed-in systems which oblige electricity utilities to purchase renewable energies at above-market rates.
Britain has signed up to the renewables plan – its own target is 15% - but the UK does not have impressive form in this sector and there is some suspicion among green groups that the government will not show the zeal required. What seems likely is that the UK will seek to meet its EU target by buying permits from other countries with spare renewable capacity under the proposed mandatory trading permit system – a perfectly legal approach but perhaps lacking the environmental fervour of others.
What also suggests a measure of cynicism about renewables on the UK’s part however is the government’s declared friendliness to coal and its apparent intention to approve the E.ON coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in the near future. As the UK business secretary John Hutton said this month (March) "we should be under no illusion: generation from fossil fuels will continue to play a key role." Britain had to accept the reality that "even in meeting our EU 2020 renewables target, fossil fuels will still play a major part for the next couple of decades at the very least. And there is nothing wrong with that – provided we are meeting our international obligations to reduce our carbon emissions."
In 2006, the report "A Framework for Clean Coal in Britain" claimed that the adoption of clean coal technology, together with a new carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), would help the UK meet its EU target for the reduction of CO2 emissions. It looked forward to "a new generation of environmentally-friendly clean coal-fired power stations, linked to a new CO2 pipeline." The report noted that although it has become customary to scoff at coal as a "dirty" fuel in recent years, it is cheap, reliable and abundant throughout Europe and, with the help of CCS, could come to stake a claim as a leading "strategic" fuel within a generation or so.
By contrast, the renewables lobby is confident that its time has now come. According to EurObserv'ER, (rpt spelling EurObserv'ER) a consortium of four European organisations promoting renewable energies, the binding target of 20% for 2020 is "realistic." It admits that the share of renewables across Europe has fluctuated for several years but this covers a period when there have been no binding targets, in contrast to the run-up to 2020.
In fact, experience shows that EU targets tend to be hit-and-miss affairs and it is not unreasonable to suppose there might be some slippage in the renewables timetable. Will this matter and if so what might be done about it? The European Commission itself is not unduly concerned. "Remember that these are mandatory targets that have been accepted [in principle] by the member states and if they are missed then that member state will face disciplinary action," said Ferran Tarradellos, the Commission’s energy spokesman. "The member governments will have to say how and when they’ll reach the targets and some have said already that the targets are not ambitious enough. But there is provision for a member state to reach the target outside their own territory. There can be no excuse for a state to fail," he told Modern Power Systems.
The renewables target should nevertheless be looked at in the context of the Commission’s energy and energy and climate change package which has various elements including a plan to ensure security of supply and to promote energy efficiency, said Antonia Mochan, the Commission’s science and research spokesperson. "In the short term we’re looking at energy efficiency, in the longer term at security of supply and there we’re looking at renewables, yes, but also at issues like CCS and nuclear. We’re not chucking all our eggs into the renewable basket."
In fact the Commission claims that CCS, if deployed in all industry sectors, has the capacity to reduce CO2 emissions in Europe by 50% by 2050. Alone it will not solve the problem but certainly it has to be classed as a huge potential contributor, and one moreover that surely lies behind the renewed interest in coal – easily Europe’s most plentiful power source.
It’s easy to see why attention has focused on renewable energies though: they exist already, they’re familiar and comprehensible, and most operate within a developed industrial framework. By contrast, said a Commission briefing paper, there has been no real industry or consumer push for innovation in new as yet untested energy sources. No pattern of investment in novel energy sources has been built up in recent years.
The energy innovation process, from initial conception to market penetration, suffers from structural weaknesses, says the European Commission. There is neither a natural market appetite nor a readily discernible short-term business benefit for such technologies while public energy research budgets in the EU member states "have generally declined substantially since the 1980s." Brussels has called for a major change of approach – "a new mind-set to avoid the serious risk that the objectives will not be met, or that the technology to do so will come from outside the EU."
However, it has not been idle and the Commission suggests that EU money could be forthcoming for such projects as early as this year.
At the heart of this drive is the Commission’s Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan), designed to "accelerate energy technologies for a low-carbon future." Europe's potential to develop a new generation of de-carbonised energy technologies, such as off-shore wind, solar technology, or second generation bio-mass, is enormous, stressed the Commission, but it risks being held back by a fragmented and generally inadequate research effort.
The SET-Plan is underpinned by a technology map that quantifies the potential contributions of key technologies to the major challenges - CO2 emissions, security of supply, fossil fuel refinement, competitiveness and energy costs – listing their current status, potential share of demand and the barriers facing their development. The technologies are not ranked in any order and these are only thumbnail sketches but the list does span an impressive range.
Rewards here take a long time to arrive however. The development of new energies "suffers from unique structural weaknesses: it is characterised by long lead times, often decades, to mass market due to the scale of the investments needed and the technological and regulatory inertia inherent in existing energy systems," said the Commission paper. But here, if anywhere, are to be found the new technologies that will step into the gap if renewables fail to materialise in time and fears of an energy crunch prove justified.
Alan Osborn
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