The winds of change: UK renewables set record, but not without dirty bioenergy

The winds of change have certainly blown hard this week, hard enough in fact that on Wednesday they helped to set a new record for renewable energy. National Grid was able to report that wind, nuclear and solar power combined had produced more electricity than fossil fuels combined, for the first ever time.

This was a landmark moment, and is perhaps the mirror image of other recent headlines marking the rapid demise of coal power in this country. For example, in April the UK produced power without any coal whatsoever for the first ever time. The very exciting decline in our reliance on coal, thanks the growing availability of renewables, means that the Government commitment to phase out coal power represents common sense at a time when our power system is ready to move beyond it anyway. In fact, analysis by the Committee on Climate Change suggests that if the UK were to prioritise the ‘dispatch’ of renewable energy ahead of others then the UK might be able to cope without coal now, rather than the phase out date they have committed to of 2025.

Even more renewables, but in harmony with nature

If the UK is to continue to celebrate such milestones, there needs to be a secure investment environment for the renewables industry. This relies on a clear plan for the UK’s efforts to cut its emissions, and at the moment we are still awaiting the long-delayed Clean Growth Plan which will set out how we will meet our climate targets to 2032. It also relies on clear funding mechanisms for renewable energy. For more mature technologies this could even help some of them reach a point in the near future where they could be built and operated without subsidy. We hope that announcements in the Autumn Budget will provide greater investment certainty for a high renewables future.

At the same time the Government’s enthusiasm for fracking is not taking our energy system in the direction we need. The Conservative manifesto promised, for example, that non-fracking drilling could be eligible for ‘permitted development’. Non-fracking drilling could in fact include fracking as long as it doesn’t use more than a certain amount of water. Such sweeteners for fossil fuel companies are a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who understand the urgent need to transition to a net zero carbon energy system.

Of course, renewable energy installations are not without their risks either, and we hope that future deployment will not come at the expense of the natural environment. Our Energy Vision reports last year showed that it is possible to deliver renewable energy in harmony with nature, but only by applying an innovative strategic spatial mapping technique to avoid high risk areas. We hope that new technologies such as floating offshore wind might be able to make a significant contribution to delivering future renewable energy capacity. Floating wind could open up areas of the sea much further offshore which may have lower risk to seabirds, but first we need much better data on marine wildlife and seabirds in order to fully understand the risks.

Burning trees for electricity is a hollow victory

Whenever these renewable energy records are broken, there’s an elephant in the room. The news this week was no different: with hydropower and bioenergy included, the UK got just over half of its electricity from renewables. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of this bioenergy comes from the combustion of wood for electricity, in particular at Drax, the UK’s largest power plant. Drax has made a name out of its ‘green’ transition of half of its boilers from coal to biomass in recent years. This involves the burning of millions of tonnes of wood pellets per year that are shipped from the US, where forests are being cut down for this purpose. As research by the RSPB and others has shown, burning trees to make electricity harms wildlife and forests, and can also be terrible for the climate.

New research (building on years of existing scientific evidence) published in recent months by research institute Chatham House, and then by the European Academies Science Advisory Council, further debunks the notion that bioenergy from wood is ‘carbon neutral’ (as claimed by some) and in fact concludes that in the short and medium term using forests in this way to produce energy could in fact be causing emissions to increase compared to the fossil fuels that are replaced.

Furthermore, evidence suggests that bioenergy is a more costly renewable than wind or solar power, even once the costs of balancing the system (due to the intermittent nature of renewable) have been taken into account.

If we want to continue celebrating renewable energy milestones then it’s important that we (particularly National Grid, the Government and the media) recognise the true climate impacts of burning trees for electricity, rather than lauding hollow victories. But, that’s not to take away from the importance of reflecting on and celebrating the significant shift in the UK’s power system that is already underway, symbolised by the inevitable decline of coal and the growing main role played by renewable energy sources.