Onshore wind in a pickle

Windy Conservatives and fear of heights are leaving the UK onshore wind industry stuck in the 1990s.

Last week the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), led by Eric Pickles, refused consent to another onshore wind farm.

The proposed Molesworth scheme would have powered around 6,000 homes in Cambridgeshire using just three turbines. It had local support and approval from the planning authority according to the developer RWE Innogy. But at the final hurdle, Pickles and his cronies took the wind out its sails – or blades.

It’s not an unusual turn of events. This year around 88 per cent of proposed onshore wind schemes have met similar fates so far in 2014, a step up from around 48 per cent in 2013.

Why so?

Primarily, the decline in successful onshore wind projects can be attributed to the gusty nature of political favour and the vagaries of departmental influence over supposedly apolitical planning decisions according to Mike Parker, head of onshore wind at RWE Innogy.

While the Lib Dems and Labour are both still advocates of onshore wind the Conservatives have become staunch adversaries in recent years and Parker believes Tory MP’s are unfairly “skewing the outcomes” of onshore wind applications by exerting influence at DCLG and influencing the supposedly apolitical decisions of the Planning Inspectorate.

The impact of this cronyism on the onshore wind industry is immense since, by an unfortunate twist of fate, if you overlay a map of the windiest areas – and therefore most attractive onshore wind sites – in the UK, you find they largely match blue constituencies. (No scientific correlation has yet been proven between windiness and Conservatism.)

But this is not the only factor stopping onshore wind from proving itself according to Parker.

Another flaw in the planning system is keeping the performance of onshore wind stagnant at a 1995 level of efficiency – despite advances in technology which could see it making far greater contributions to the grid and lower the cost of deployment.

The average tip height of UK onshore wind turbines is 135m, while in Europe, particularly Germany, where the environment is more favourable, turbines increasingly reach tip heights of 200m.

There’s no official ban on higher turbines in the UK. The preference for lower turbines is simply due to a less mature understanding and residual nervousness about the technology in the planning system and among the public who hold instinctive reservations about the visual impact of bigger turbines.

But this resistance in the face of technological progress misses some critical points says Parker.

The onshore wind industry is not blindly upholding a ‘bigger is better’ mentality, he explains. Taller turbines are more efficient turbines. They can access more and ‘cleaner wind (without low level turbulence) and can support bigger blades which generate a much higher motion to power ratio. For every 10m you add to a blade you generally increase output by around 10 per cent and the same goes for height.

Opening people’s minds to the benefits of taller turbines in the UK would therefore actually reduce the number of turbines needed in order to meet UK renewable power generation targets and reduce the cost of deployment in two ways. Firstly, fewer but bigger bits of kit results in a small economy, but more importantly, UK developers would no longer have to pay European manufacturers over the odds to keep producing outdated equipment when their order books are largely occupied with bigger interests.

Furthermore, while aesthetic perceptions may vary, artists representations and working sites in Europe put forward a strong argument that the visual impact of taller turbines in in fact less than that of their smaller cousins.

So far, so bleak for UK onshore wind prospects. But are there changes which could be made to soften political influence and brighten the industry’s future?

Parker is hopeful that expanding schemes for community ownership of onshore wind assets, and other mechanisms for community engagement in developments, will help the UK industry realise more of its potential. Furthermore, repowering projects are opening the way to prove the benefits of bigger turbines. For example a repowering of an RWE Innogy win farm at Kirby Moor in Cumbria will halve the number of turbines on site, replacing outdated models with newer, taller ones and tripling the output of the farm.

There is also some hope that more projects will be approved in 2015 under Contracts for Difference though Parker suspects that being lumped together with solar in the £50m annual pot for established technologies, will put onshore wind at a disadvantage due to “overbidding”.

What Parker really feels would help onshore wind however is a reinstatement of recognised development zones – such as currently exists in Wales and used to exist in the UK under the previous administration. “[In Wales] as a developer it is really easy for me,” comments Parker. “Because I know which areas are acceptable for onshore wind.”

Until this clarity is reintroduced, infers Parker, onshore developers will continue to be hamstrung by “low level local opposition” being disproportionally represented to DCLG who will continue to meddle in the affairs of the Planning Inspectorate. This will result in developers becoming unwilling to invest time and resources in bids which have consent withheld at the last moment as Molesworth did. And without a strong onshore wind contribution to UK generation, Parker insists that hope of achieving the government’s 15 per cent renewables target is dim.