The development of renewables is essential for climate protection and an important part of our growth strategy. At the same time, our expertise gives us insight into the challenges and obstacles facing renewables.
How we manage the transition to a lower-carbon economy is one of the most important challenges facing the UK. We have a short-term goal of cutting our CO2 emissions by 26 per cent and delivering 15 per cent of our total energy from renewable sources by 2020, and a longer-term one of reducing CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Renewables have a key role to play to moving to a low carbon society and wind, biomass, solar, marine power – all have a part to play in lowering emissions.
However, achieving our Renewables target is not without challenges. Providing lower carbon energy is crucial but we must also factor in two other key drivers: we need our energy to be affordable and we need it to be secure.
Wind is intermittent and without a workable energy storage system, wind power can’t be always relied upon for energy when we need it so other sources need to be available to plug the gap. Renewables also tend to be more expensive as can be more time consuming and difficult to build. Offshore wind farm projects for example, are highly dependent on weather and sea conditions and all delays add to the cost of each project. A lack of suitable suppliers can also delay projects being developed and constructed.
