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Why Nimbys are wrong about solar farms

Opponents of solar farms often say that solar panels should be put on roofs and that fields should be left for agriculture so i asked the experts on whether they agreed

By Tom Bawden, Science & Environment , November 3, 2024 ,
https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/why-nimbys-are-wrong-about-solar-farms-3355702

Tory leadership loser Robert Jenrick said that solar panels are “for roofs not fields” when asked byi last month if he supported a proposed giant solar farm in his Nottinghamshire constituency.

He is by no means alone in that view, which is a common argument given by opponents of solar farms.

Those who protest against solar farm developments argue fields would be better used for growing food, while solar panels could and should be concentrated on roofs, of which there are quite literally millions in the UK.

“I’ve said that we must ban solar farms from prime agricultural land and I mean it. These facilities are despoiling our beautiful countryside and jeopardising our food security. We must end it,” Mr Jenrick added.

But since Labour came to power Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has approved four of the five biggest solar farms to be given planning permission in the UK.

Mr Miliband has vowed to take on “the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists” who oppose large solar and onshore wind development to help the UK meet its ambitious targets to make the country’s energy supply virtually carbon neutral in just six years.

As the Government steps up its campaign to drive through new solar and wind projects, it is likely we will be seeing more projects of a similar scale too that opposed by Mr Jenrick in the coming years.

i asked experts whether it was feasible for the UK to do without new solar farms and instead confine new solar panel installations to the rooftops of households, offices and other business properties, and what effect this could have on food security.

The sale of the solar challenge

Experts were clear that there needs to be a huge and rapid increase in renewable energy generation if the UK is to have any chance of meeting its highly ambitious climate targets.

And, as the cheapest source of renewable energy – now costing less than onshore and offshore wind, according to government figures – solar will inevitably play a key role in the transformation of the UK’s energy supply.

The Conservative’s British Energy Strategy in April 2022 outlines the need for 70 gigawatts (GW) of solar power to be installed by 2035 – enough to power 20 million homes, according to National Grid.

As of June 2024, the UK only had about 17GW installed capacity (powering around 4.5million homes), meaning the country needs to quadruple its solar power generation in the next 11 years.

Two thirds of the current solar power is generated by solar farms with panels on the ground – known as “ground mount” – with the remaining third coming from the rooftops of businesses and over 1.5 million homes.

Meanwhile, government advisor the Climate Change Committee estimates that we will need 90GW of solar by 2050 (5.3 times current capacity) if we are to hit our legally binding target of becoming Net Zero.

Dr Simon Harrison, a member of the Government’s new advisory commission to help make the UK’s power generation virtually carbon neutral by 2030, told i the task is so great that it’s “going to require vastly more renewable energy generation” – meaning that “in practice both solar farms and roof top solar will be needed at scale to meet our needs”.

“There’s a significant role for both,” added Professor Rob Gross, who also sits on the commission.

What are the advantages of solar farms?

The first major advantage of solar farms is the sheer amount of energy they produce.

The 600 MW Cottam Solar farm that was granted planning permission in September would be the UK’s largest – supplying 180,000 homes, or 1,500 homes for every 5MW of energy generated.

By contrast, large solar rooftop installs, say over an airport or large of space, typically generate hundreds of kilowatts (kW) potentially up to a few megawatts (MW).

While the average solar rooftop installation size on someone’s home for their own use is typically 4kW.

So the Cottam Solar project would generate at least 200 times the electricity of the very largest commercial roof top installations and around 150,000 times as much as a typical household solar panel setup.

Tony Slade, technical director of Beaverbrook Energy, which designs, finances and builds low-carbon energy generators, told i: “Ground mounted solar farms also suffer from less ‘shading’ (blocking of direct sunlight through obstacles and obstructions) and ‘directional losses’ by being angled in the wrong direction.

“About 50 per cent of roofs face the wrong way and of those that face the right way about 25 per cent suffer from shading issues,” he said.

Are solar farms cheaper than roof panels?

Yes, in part because they benefit from economies of scale. In other words, the bigger the solar farm, the cheaper each unit of electricity will be, as more panels can benefit from the infrastructure.

Professor Gross, who is also director of the UK Energy Research Centre coalition of researchers, told i “the principal advantages are economic”.

“It is far cheaper to install each solar panel in a large array of thousands of panels than it is to install a handful of panels on a roof.

“Ground mounted is cheapest, followed by larger arrays on commercial units, followed by new build, followed by residential retrofit. All categories are getting cheaper but it is impossible to get away from the fundamentals – the cheapest solar will always be the simplest to install, in the largest arrays,” he said.

“And ground mounted developers building large schemes may also be able to negotiate the best deals for panels and equipment,” he added.

Mr Slade explains that greenfield ground mount solar panels on fields typically cost two thirds as much, per unit of energy, as large scale solar panel arrays on commercial buildings such as warehouses, shopping centres and factories – as well as new build domestic and commercial buildings, where the solar panels are fitted as part of the original construction.

Meanwhile, installing solar panels above car parks is typically twice as expensive as wind farms and retrofitting homes is about three times as expensive, he said.

What about food security?

Opponents of large solar farms often argue that the land would be better used for agriculture and that too many of them could impact food security.

But the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero firmly rebuts those suggestions, arguing the amount of agricultural land involved would make very little difference to the UK’s food production.

“Our plans to boost solar power do not risk the UK’s food security. The total area of agricultural land used for solar is very small and is often the lowest grade quality for food production.

“Even in the most ambitious scenarios, solar would still occupy less than 1 per cent of the UK’s agricultural land, while bringing huge benefits for the British public and our energy security,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, in July, National Farmers’ Union boss Tom Bradshaw warned MPs against making “sensationalist” claims about food security.

“It’s a small amount of land which is being taken out of production,” he told the Politico Europe website.

The role of rooftop solar panels

“They can potentially play a very important role, accounting for perhaps 40 per cent of new installation of solar. But it’s important to be clear that rooftop and ground based are additive not competitive,” Professor Gross said.

Dr Harrison says “there are serious considerations to make on where solar is placed”, meaning that sometimes roof top solar power can be far more suitable than those in fields.

“In the simplest terms, there is more space in rural areas for solar panel installations and it is often easier to optimise their positioning for greater energy capture. But they are generally further from existing grid connections and with sometimes competing requirements for land use,” he said.

“On the other hand, rooftop solar, most commonly in urban settings, often avoids use of congested electricity networks, especially when combined with local batteries, and when used in homes tends to drive greater awareness and action by residents in other areas such as energy efficiency improvements, as well as reducing bills. In practice both will be needed at scale to meet our needs.”

The Government estimates there are 250,000 hectares of south-facing, industrial roof space across the country. That’s an area bigger than London and Manchester combined, with the potential for a vast amount of solar panels.

Even a very conservative estimate suggests that this commercial roof space could provide an area big enough to generate approximately 25GW of energy.

This amounts to nearly half the total amount recommended by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), according research by University College London for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).

Mr Ramandani agrees that fields and rooftops can play different, complementary, roles in UK energy generation.

“We need about 18GW more of rooftop solar to hit 70GW by 2035 to keep us on the right path to Net Zero. So it will play a massive role,” he said.

“Rooftop solar can power people’s homes and business onsite without needing to pull from the grid, and excess generation can be stored or exported back to the grid, which supports the flexibility and security of the grid. And they operate at a smaller scale with some export to the overall grid system.

“Solar farms, meanwhile, are not onsite generation – they operate at a much bigger scale and power the grid with greater quantities of energy, which is used by the whole system and not specific to a home or business (before they export the excess generation that they don’t use or store).”

Is there a big role for household solar panels?

UK households are already waking up to solar panels, receiving record sums last year for the amount of excess energy they generated that they sold back to the grid, Ofgem said last week.

Homeowners received more than £30m for the energy they didn’t need in the year to March 2024, four times the £7.2m they made the previous year.

Although this amounted to a relatively small amount of energy – enough to power 88,000 homes – experts say there is considerable scope to increase this and they expect this to happen in the coming years.

“There is definite major role for rooftop solar in the UKs future energy mix,” said Mr Slade. “As installations become cheaper and the market for excess generation becomes fairer to the home owner rooftop domestic solar will continue to grow,” he said.

Mr Ramandani says: “Onsite solar rooftop generation takes money off consumer’s bills as they purchase less from the grid, and excess generation can be exported to the grid for income. This in turn creates a stable grid system with less demand side pressure, as well as supplementary energy generation from homes and businesses.

For a typical house, installing a PV system could lower bills by the equivalent of nearly 330 every year over the 30-year lifespan of the system, according to a study by Cambridge University and the Think Three property development company for Solar Energy UK.

November 5, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear – not the way ahead

12 Oct 24 https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2024/10/nuclear-not-way-ahead.html

Renewable energies consistently outperform nuclear power in terms of cost and deployment speed and are therefore chosen over nuclear power in most countries’ – so says this years independent World Nuclear Industry status report (WNISR). It notes that in 2023, 5 new nuclear reactors (5 GW) started up and 5 were closed (6 GW), capacity thus declining by 1 GW. So overall it says that nuclear energy’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation declined from 9.2 % to 9.1%, little more than half of its peak of 17.5 % in 1996. In 2023, total investment in non-hydro renewable electricity capacity reached a record US$623 billion, 27 times the reported global investment decisions for the construction of nuclear power plants, with solar and wind power capacities growing by 73% and 51%, respectively.

Nevertheless, some countries are still pushing on with new nuclear, despite its poor economics, including the UK and Sweden. Sweden has mooted a new financing model but its critics say support for nuclear ‘is like throwing money down the drain’ since ‘the expansion of solar energy will make nuclear power obsolete and push it out of the electricity market by the 2030s’. In the UK, and also in France,  it has been argued that part of the reason for the political commitment to new nuclear is link between civil and military nuclear, with cross-funding and technical collaboration seen as beneficial.

However, be that as it may, Emeritus Profs. Stephen Thomas (University of Greenwich) and Andrew Blowers (OU) do not see nuclear civil power prospering in the UK, indeed they say that ‘it is time to expose the Great British nuclear fantasy once and for all.’ They claim that ‘no amount of political commitment can overcome the lack of investors, the absence of credible builders and operators or available technologies let alone secure regulatory assessment and approval. Moreover, in an era of climate change there will be few potentially suitable sites to host new nuclear power stations for indefinite, indeed unknowable, operating, decommissioning and waste management lifetimes. And there are the anxieties and fears that nuclear foments, the danger of accidents and proliferation and the environmental and public health issues arising from the legacy of radioactive waste scattered on sites around the country’.   

They go on to suggest backing off new nuclear projects. They do recognise that ‘abandoning Sizewell C and the SMR competition will lead to howls of anguish from interest groups such as the nuclear industry and trade unions with a strong presence in the sector. It will also require compensation payments to be made to organisations affected. However, the scale of these payments will be tiny in comparison with the cost of not abandoning them’. 

Certainly the cost of construction is vast- and expanding. The EPR being built by EDF  at Hinkley Point may in the event cost £35bn, with there’s still being a way to go- 2030 for unit 1 start up, maybe 2031 for Unit 2. And as industry commentators have noted ‘as the cost of Hinkley Point has increased, the backers have had to provide more funding. The souring of relations between Britain & China saw CGN stop providing any more money, leaving EDF to fund the shortfall. EDF has called upon the UK government to help out with the escalating cost but it has refused. EDF was fully nationalised in 2023, leaving the French taxpayer to pick up the tab for the cost overruns’. 

UK consumers will of course pay the high cost of the power when it comes on the grid. They will also be expected to shell out for the next EPR that is planned in the UK, at Sizewell, but this time in advanced of completion, under the RAB financing system. However, although the government has provided £5.5bn to move things along, the final (private) investment decision on Sizewell C keeps being delayed. EDF aimed to secure funding by the end 2024, but that may now be extended to 2025 – and EDF is still looking for £4bn to finish Hinkley Point!

All in all, with EDF’s finances in a mess, and few other companies keen to take risks with this technology, it looks a bit uncertain. Even the UK government seems to be having doubts, with plans for a new large project on Wylfa in Wales may be subject to a review.  Proposals are currently being considered for small modular reactors under a UK SMR competition, but the US NuScale PWR has just been eliminated from the race. It was once seen as the leader, but it had lost a US order. EDF had earlier dropped out. So that leaves Rolls-Royce, GE-Hitachi, Westinghouse, and Holtec Britain, with the newly formed agency, Great British Nuclear, expected to announce 2 winners later this year or early next year. Up to £20bn is at stake. However few see any power being available anywhere from SMRs until the early or mid 2030s. Despite a lot of hype, in reality it has been slow going. And there are risks. 

Overall then, the prospects for new nuclear in the UK, or indeed elsewhere, do not look too good. Even in China, renewables are expanding very much faster, with according to the WNISR/IRENA, at the end of 2023, there being over 1000GW of wind and solar and around 421GW of hydro in place, compared to just 53GW of nuclear. Given the scale and rate of deployment, and the costs, it’s pretty clear which should be the way forward in terms of energy supply there and everywhere else. 

Nuclear fission may have a small role to play in some isolated locations and in some applications, and fusion may be viable at commercial scale at some stage, but we have to be aware of hype and overselling in this area, and also in the wider nuclear debate, with nuclear sometimes being sold as the answer to climate change.  It’s not. As I have indicated in earlier posts, there is no shortage of studies from around the world confirming the view that nuclear is a costly and risky distraction from renewables, which are the main energy supply solutions to climate change. And Germany has shown how the exit from nuclear can be done, led by renewables. Although they do have some issues in terms of balancing, renewables, along with energy efficiency, demand management and storage, are the way ahead to an economically viable and sustainable energy future.

October 16, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Renewable Energy Surge Lowers UK Blackout Risk

The risk of blackouts in the winter months in the U.K. has fallen to its lowest in four years thanks to the rise of the country’s renewable energy capacity.

To ensure a steady supply of electricity to households, Neso will encourage consumers to reduce their energy use during peak times by offering financial incentives through its demand flexibility scheme.  

By Felicity Bradstock – Oct 12, 2024
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Renewable-Energy-Surge-Lowers-UK-Blackout-Risk.html

• The UK has significantly reduced its blackout risk by increasing renewable energy capacity and diversifying its energy sources.
• The closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power plant marks a major milestone in the country’s transition to clean energy.
• The government is actively encouraging energy conservation during peak times to further enhance grid stability.

The U.K. has been gradually boosting its energy security by increasing its renewable energy capacity while continuing to produce natural gas. It has done this while also moving away from the ‘dirtiest’ fossil fuel, coal. The diversification of the U.K.’s energy mix is helping the island country to develop its resilience and help it accelerate the green transition. Now, the government must ensure that the country’s transmission infrastructure is prepared for an influx of new clean energy projects in the coming years, and can reliably deliver clean energy to tens of millions of households across the U.K. 

The risk of blackouts in the winter months in the U.K. has fallen to its lowest in four years thanks to the rise of the country’s renewable energy capacity. The National Energy System Operator predicts that the U.K.’s winter power supplies will outpace demand by nearly 9 percent this year. Neso is the new company in charge of keeping the lights on, which was bought by the government in September from National Grid for $825.5 million. The boost in the power supply margin is supported by the recent deployment of large-scale battery storage projects, small-scale renewables and imported electricity, according to Neso. 

As well as producing greater quantities of clean energy at home, the U.K. has also begun importing renewable energy from Denmark through the world’s longest high-voltage power cable – the Viking power link. This cable now provides clean electricity for around 2.5 million U.K. homes, showing the significant potential for clean power sharing across countries. 

The optimistic forecast comes in spite of the closure last month of the U.K.’s last coal­-fired power plant. At the beginning of the year, the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal plant was used to provide 2.3 percent of the country’s electricity supply during a period of cold weather. Britain kept its coal facilities on standby following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russian energy, mainly natural gas, to ensure there would be power even in the face of severe gas shortages. However, there will be no such backup this year, and, according to Neso, no such need for a backup. 

Gas reserves across Europe have been restored to around 95 percent full. The U.K. is no longer dependent on Russia for its gas, having doubled down on its long-standing relationship with Norway for its LNG supply. Britain will now import gas via Norwegian pipelines and tanker from the U.S. and Qatar during the winter months to use in its power plants, factories and residential buildings. To ensure a steady supply of electricity to households, Neso will encourage consumers to reduce their energy use during peak times by offering financial incentives through its demand flexibility scheme. 

The U.K. was finally able to close its last coal-fired power plant in September, a target which was stated during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, after 142 years of reliance on coal. The U.K. was the birthplace of coal power, and it is the first G7 country to end coal production. The rapid transition away from a dependence on coal is impressive given that coal contributed 39 percent of the U.K.’s power in 2012. The U.K. established its first legally binding climate targets in 2008, which supported the phasing out of coal. In 2015, the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, stated that the country would stop using coal within the next decade. This has been made possible by the rapid expansion of the U.K.’s renewable energy capacity, with green energy rising to contribute over half of the country’s power in the first half of 2024, from just 7 percent in 2010. 

Most of the U.K.’s electricity came from renewable energy sources for the first time in 2020, at around 43 percent. The green energy mix consists mainly of wind, solar, bioenergy and hydroelectric sources. In 2023, wind power contributed 29.4 percent of the U.K.’s total electricity generation, biomass contributed 5 percent, solar power accounted for 4.9 percent and hydropower added 1.8 percent of the mix. While the U.K. is currently depending on a mix of homegrown green and fossil fuel energy, as well as imports of energy from renewables and natural gas, the government plans to dramatically increase its renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade to solidify the country’s energy security. This includes increasing offshore wind output to 50 GW and solar capacity to 70 GW, as well as developing new nuclear plants.

Investing in the diversification of the U.K.’s energy mix has helped the country boost its energy security, as well as move away from a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. As the U.K. undergoes a green transition, the government is working in collaboration with utilities and regulators to ensure that the country does not face shortages, particularly in the winter months. This is further supported by strong energy agreements with other countries in Europe, North America and the Middle East, which will help to alleviate the burden of instability associated with renewable energy sources.  

October 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, UK | Leave a comment