Green targets threaten to turn out the lights, warns Aggreko chief

Published on Wednesday 25 August 2010 17:47

THE coalition government's testing targets for renewable energy generation are putting Britain at greater risk of the lights going out, according to one of Scotland's foremost businessmen.

Rupert Soames, chief executive of temporary power firm Aggreko, fears the UK will face major supply shortages over the next five to ten years unless the new government undoes the errors of the last administration and makes some swift decisions on a fresh generation of power stations.

Although Aggreko - which is the world's biggest supplier of temporary power - would in theory benefit from potential shortages, Soames said the UK faces a "huge challenge" in ensuring that it has a reliable and constant source of energy.

While few contest the UK and Scottish governments' ambition to increase the amount of energy generated from renewable sources, Soames has joined a chorus of private sector voices warning that so-called "green" projects - which are often hampered by an element of unpredictability - need to be backed up by more traditional forms of power generation.

"There is a huge challenge facing the UK over the next ten years and I think the increased targets for renewables raise the bar on that challenge still further," Soames told Scotland on Sunday.

He said his concerns "come from the experience that power stations, particularly the big complex ones, tend to take longer to build than people think they do when they start out."

Earlier this year, Soames called on the newly formed coalition government to give the nod to a new fleet of power stations to avoid a major crisis in the near future. The new energy minister, Chris Huhne, delivered his first statement last month, but Soames said his concerns had not been eased.

Peter Hughes, chief executive of Scottish Engineering, backed Soames. "He's absolutely spot on," Hughes said. "Renewable energy is fine and everyone is for it, but there are all of the planning and infrastructure problems that need to be sorted. If we don't also invest in tried and tested forms of electricity generation then there's a very real danger the lights could go out."

Many energy experts warn that the new power stations will be needed to fill the gaps when wind farms in particular suffer from unpredictable conditions.

But supporters of renew-ables insist that a combination of non-polluting wind, wave and tidal power would make a reliable contribution to the energy needs of the UK.

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