By Paul Homewood
Ed Miliband is preparing to scrap the UK’s much-vaunted target for building 55 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by 2030, according to reports.
Chris Stark, who previously ran the government’s advisory Climate Change Committee, and who now works for Mr Miliband’s “Mission Control” leading on decarbonisation, is to publish recommendations that could revise the pathways to cutting UK emissions.
A report from Bloomberg suggested that senior government figures were questioning the 55 GW target.
It follows warnings from industry that the offshore wind target was unachievable because of insufficient supplies to build the required number of wind turbines and a shortage of ships and crews needed to install them, along with the associated infrastructure.
Mr Stark told Bloomberg: “Reaching the 2030 goal of clean power is more important than getting to those exact targets.”
Achieving the target would mean installing 2,000 to 3,000 of the largest new wind turbines by 2030 – a rate of about 1.5 turbines a day. In reality, such work can only be done when the weather allows, so the constraints are much tighter.
The current rate of installation is far below 1.5 turbines a day.
Tom Smout, an analyst at Aurora Energy Research, said: “There is no real chance that this Government would hit the deployment rates in its manifesto.”
Even if the UK did hit its target, Mr Smout said the UK’s power grids would not be able to carry all the electricity generated – meaning many wind farms would get paid for switching off.
He said: “Fifty-five GW is simply much more capacity than is necessary to decarbonise the energy system. If we hit 55 GW we would essentially have been building wind farms just to curtail them.”
Mr Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero disputed suggestions that the 55 GW target was being dropped.
A spokesman said: “We are committed to making Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030 by doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power and quadrupling offshore wind.
“The Energy Secretary is working with industry to accelerate ways the contracts for difference scheme can be expanded even further, so that more renewable energy, including offshore wind, can be connected to the grid, and quicker.”
The UK has 43 operational offshore wind farms with 2,765 offshore turbines installed around its shores, according to data from Renewable UK, the industry trade body.
They have a collective capacity of about 15 GW and produced about 15pc, or 49 terawatt hours (TWh), of the 317 TWh needed by the UK last year.
The machines installed to date have an average capacity of 5 MW, but this is small by the standards. The latest wind turbines typically have a capacity of 10-15 MW.
The UK holds a renewables auction round each year where offshore wind operators are offered a minimum price for the power they will generate, thereby encouraging the development of new projects.
Last year’s auction was a disaster with no companies bidding because the previous Tory government set the price too low.
A similar auction announced this week saw just under 4 GW of new projects approved – an improvement but not enough, say experts.
Sam Hollister, head of economics, policy and investment at analysts LCP Delta, said the results meant auctions next year and in 2026 would each need to procure 14 GW of offshore wind to meet Mr Miliband’s target – a massive and unlikely increase.
He said: “The Government certainly would have hoped for more new-build offshore wind in this week’s auction, and that has put its ambition for 55 GW of offshore wind in doubt.
“There just might not be time to procure and build the remaining gigawatts required within just six years.”
Tim Dixon, a senior consultant at Cornwall Insight, said: “The reality is that there remains a significant gap between contracted capacity and the amount needed if the government is to meet its ambitious 2030 targets.
“Renewables projects take years to build and become operational and there are just five years left to achieve a decarbonised electricity grid.”
A Renewable UK spokesman said the official targets remained unchanged.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/06/ed-miliband-poised-to-scrap-wind-power-target/
Only this morning I predicted that Miliband would sooner or later drop his 2030 deadline to decarbonise the grid.
If the Telegraph is right, he is already backing away from his offshore wind target. He has obviously realised that there is physically no way the UK can build enough wind farms in that time. The new projects signed up in AR6 won’t be operational until 2029, so he would need to contract another 14GW in next year’s auction, There simply would not be the investors or construction capacity to handle it.
Moreover Labour’s manifesto promised to quadruple offshore wind power, which would imply about 60GW.
And without his offshore wind, he cannot hope to decarbonise the grid.
Therefore he will use this as an excuse to put back his deadline, and as I suggested, he will blame it all on the Tories for not building more renewables in their time in office. He will, of course, have to answer why he put such impossible promises in his manifesto, when he already knew full well they were unachievable.
But I also suspect he will see this shortfall in offshore wind as a get out of jail card, given that even with more wind farms his decarbonisation target was always pie-in-the-sky.
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