Renewables are 'only answer' to energy gap

Published on Wednesday 27 April 2011 15:57

SCOTLAND must embrace renewables as there is no alternative to new forms of energy generation, given the world's dwindling reserves of oil, coal and uranium, a senior industry figure has argued.

Rick Eggleston, the managing director of wind turbine manufacturer REpower UK, threw his weight into a debate that has been raging since First Minister Alex Salmond vowed to see renewables produce 100 per cent of Scotland's electricity by 2020.

Last week industry experts lambasted the SNP's policy as being "impossible" and a threat to the Scottish landscape but others, including Ignacio Galn, the head of Spanish power firm Iberdrola, which owns ScottishPower, said the ambition was "entirely credible".

Eggleston, whose firm is working with Scottish and Southern Energy to develop a 35-turbine wind farm at Gordonbush in Sutherland, agreed that renewables are currently among a cluster of "expensive" ways to produce energy, which has an impact on the price charged to customers.

He said: "Cost is a big area of concern, but equally a lot of people aren't considering the alternatives.

"A lot of people are saying it's impossible, can't do it, that he (Alex Salmond] is off his head, but what are the alternatives? Because hydrocarbons are finite they are going to run out, and uranium is finite, so what else are we going to do? There is only one cheap way to generate electricity and that is coal, and if we do anything other than coal it is expensive."

"Nuclear is expensive, wind is expensive and offshore wind and tidal will be expensive," Eggleston added.

But increasing reliance on renewables will reduce the cost, he argued.

"The cost of wind is coming down. Turbine prices have come down significantly over the last few years as the industry matures," said Eggleston.

"In countries where wind is much more mature than in the UK, places like Denmark and Germany, they have reduced subsidies year on year as it becomes more cost effective."

Critics of the ambitious renewables target fear that meeting it will require that Scotland's countryside be "devastated" by wind turbines. Eggleston admitted that some inland wind farms "are maybe not desirable".

The answer, said Eggleston, is offshore wind, which he expects will provide "major growth opportunity", particularly for Scotland which has built up expertise in the offshore oil and gas industry.

"One of the ways to resolve (landscape impact] is to go offshore. But that is more expensive than onshore and always will be," Eggleston added, saying that business has been picking up for REpower UK, a subsidiary of Germany-based REpower Systems AG, after a tough few years in which projects were delayed.

And while essential bank finance to the industry is easing up, the process of lending is still "tortuous". Eggleston said: "Although the banks say they support the industry, when it comes to negotiating the contract and finance terms they have all the contracts under a much finer microscope than they would have done three years ago."