Energy resources of Scotland

Stephen Richard — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 11:47:58 +0000

Energy resources of Scotland Stephen Richard Mon, 10/18/2021 - 12:47

Author or Creator

Common Weal

Scotland is blessed with remarkable renewable energy resources but has cold winters, a lot of inefficient housing, a very high reliance on gas heating and a particular reliance on transport. We need to tackle all of these. The hardest is heating – there is simply no easy solution to weaning ourselves off natural gas. Alternatives which use the same infrastructure (like hydrogen) are very expensive and alternatives like electric heating (also comparatively expensive) would require enormous amounts of work to replace existing household heating systems and would require a very big investment in both more electricity generation and the electricity grid. There is no quick, easy way to do this and retrofitting renewable heating (like Heat Pumps) to most existing houses isn’t realistic. So if we’re going to have to make a massive investment, let’s get it right.

The first step is that we must make our houses much more efficient so we don’t need to heat them so much in the first place, so a major programme of insulating and draft-proofing houses is the first step. Then we need to put in place a heating system which will last for many generations, is clean and efficient and inexpensive for households. The best option is a ‘district heating’ system, where heat is generated in lots of different ways (all renewable), collected in a heat store and then distributed to houses as they need it via a network of pipes. Households just need to switch their existing boilers for heat exchangers and the rest of their heating system should work as is. Make no mistake, this is a truly immense engineering project, but so is anything that heats our homes without feeding a climate emergency.

Electricity is more straightforward in Scotland because of our renewable resources – but we’re going to need more of it. To meet future demand and produce enough spare energy to ensure energy security we will need to double the amount of currently-installed renewable generation and put a lot of energy storage in place. But that’s not enough because if we also want to move to clean transport we’ll need more electricity again – in total about three times what we currently have. Thankfully this can all be achieved with onshore and offshore wind in Scotland, leaving our marine energy resources for other purposes. And if we do it right we can take not only all this new energy into public ownership but the existing energy as well – so we control our own energy system.

Which leaves transport. This too is a massive task – we need to replace the entire fleet of petroleum-based transport. It is almost certain the way to do this is to move to electric battery-power for smaller vehicles like cars and vans and to hydrogen for big vehicles like lorries and ferries. But to achieve that we’ll also need all that extra electricity, a source of clean hydrogen and major investment in charging and refuelling infrastructure.

So where do we get our clean hydrogen from? This is where Scotland’s marine energy comes in. At the moment almost all commercial hydrogen produces carbon dioxide, not when it is used but when it is created in the first place by breaking down natural gas. Clean hydrogen is made with electricity and water – but it needs a lot of electricity. Thankfully Scotland has massive wave and tidal energy opportunities and these can be used to make hydrogen for vehicle transport. Even more than that, it can give Scotland a world lead in hydrogen technology and because we have much more marine energy than we need for domestic transport it is also potentially an amazing export opportunity.

Keywords

Incentives and Opportunities Signalled by Transmission Charges in Scotland

Stephen Richard — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 07:46:17 +0000

Incentives and Opportunities Signalled by Transmission Charges in Scotland

Primary Author or Creator

Iain Wright

Stephen Richard Tue, 09/07/2021 - 08:46

Additional Author(s) / Creators

Common Weal

Date Published

Fri, 08/03/2018 - 12:00

Category

Energy

Type of Resource

Policy Paper

Fast Facts

Scotland is not well served by the UK’s National Grid and the current system restricts the development of Scotland’s renewable energy potential and leads to high charges for Scottish consumers.

More details

― The UK’s National Grid has been designed for an era where the fuel for power plants (chiefly coal and gas) could be transported more efficiently than the generated electricity. This has lead to a system of charging where power stations are incentivised to build close to major population centres such as the South East of England. In numerical terms, energy providers are charged a tariff of around £24/kW to connect a wind generator to the National Grid if the generator is installed in the North of Scotland. However, if the same generator is installed in West Devon and Cornwall, the provider would receive a subsidy of £4.79/kW.

― As renewable generators such as wind turbines must be built where the wind is at its highest power density and as their “fuel” cannot be moved in the way that coal and gas can, the current grid charging system makes no sense for the purposes of encouraging the development of Scotland’s renewable energy potential.

― The grid’s charging system takes no notice of the location of the end-users of the generated power. An energy customer in Scotland must pay the same price for power regardless of whether or not the power they are using is being generated elsewhere in the UK or by a wind turbine nearby.

―High energy intensity users such as aluminium smelters, chemical manufacturers and data centres have little incentive to build renewable generators on-site in order to reduce their energy costs.

― The paper therefore makes the case that the UK’s energy grid is reformed so that it better reflects the energy technology and economic needs of the 21st century. Tariffs should be re-calculated to better encourage the placement of renewable generators in areas where they can operate most efficiently and incentives should be developed to allow industries and communities to benefit from the renewable generators build either by them or on their doorsteps.

Resource Address (URL)

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Transmission-Charges.pdf

Keywords

National Grid

Renewable Energy

Wind power

Language English