Seminar discusses implementing EU renewables law in Scotland
On 4 December Scotland Europa and the University of Dundee's Centre for Energy, Mineral and Petroleum Law and Policy (CEMPLP) held a seminar on the new EU renewable energy Directive and its implementation and implications in Scotland.
One year ahead of the implementation deadline for the new renewables law, and days ahead of the beginning of the UN international climate change summit in Copenhagen, the seminar offered the opportunity to discuss what needs to be done for Scotland to realise its renewable energy potential and contribution to EU climate change and energy goals.
The potential of the EU renewables law and integrated target as a basis to challenge the current UK transmission charging scheme emerged as a key issue, raised by most of the session's speakers. Following a detailed introduction to the provisions of the new EU Directive by Professor Kurt Deketelaere from the CEMPLP, Michael McElhinney (Head of Energy Projects) gave a Scottish Government view. He assured that, despite the negative reaction from the European Commission, discussion on the transmission charging issue will continue. For him, this is a key issue to be addressed in realising Scotland´s renewable energy potential; stressing that this could be up to 60 GW, including 14GW from marine energy sources. Alyn Smith MEP - who shared his speaking slot with Rob Gibson MSP - echoed the sentiments on keeping up pressure on the transmission charging case, confident that the locational pricing system´s days are numbered.
Professor Peter Cameron from the CEPMLP elaborated on challenges for the renewable sector, presenting “five hurdles” for clean energy development in Scotland:
- Infrastructure, without which the potential for renewables generation is meaningless.
- Planning, which can cause a huge lapse before actual implementation.
- Price: In moving to clean energy, we are necessarily moving to an era of higher cost energy.
- Support mechanisms, and choosing which form of support is best.
- Supply chain bottlenecks as a result of the length of time required to produce new technologies.
Euan Dobson of Scottish Enterprise and Keith MacLean of Scottish and Southern Energy responded to this assessment of the “hurdles” to realising Scotland’s renewables potential. Euan Dobson presented the Scottish Renewable Energy Infrastructure Plan, focusing on infrastructure investment needs for Scotland’s potential offshore and marine energy capacity. This looks especially at port-side infrastructure needs to make these fit for purpose to the renewables sector. According to the plan, investment needs to be focused in a number of identified locations, particularly those where new infrastructure will also be useful for oil and gas decommissioning.
From the industry viewpoint, Keith MacLean stressed that price, and financing, are the big issues in enacting a shift to clean energy. For SSE, capital spending is currently greater than profits. Mr. MacLean explained in greater detail how the UK transmission charging system adds an additional financial barrier to renewables investments in Scotland. He stressed that renewable energy generation is inflexible to locational signals in the current pricing scheme, so there is therefore no value in the current system as generators cannot choose to locate where transmission charges are less. He noted further that the current methodology of basing costs on capacity is unfavourable for back-up load, necessary to support renewables. The system should therefore be more flexible by looking at actual uses rather than simple capacity.
On a more positive note for the stakeholders engaged in the issue, it was noted that National Grid is currently considering amendments to the transmission charging scheme to better take account of wind energy. This would recognise the intermittent nature of wind energy and its differing load. This could see wind energy generators benefit from halved transmission charges. The lower grid connection costs for wind energy may also be reflected in an amended scheme.
Nonetheless, Scottish industry and policy makers have made clear they are not willing to let drop the issue of a more fundamental revision to the locational pricing scheme.
The agenda, participants list and presentations from the event are available at the links below.
Author:
Scotland Europa
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Article date:
8 Dec 2009
Expiry date of the article:
8 Dec 2014