Scotland has a long history of harnessing energy from its surroundings and continues to develop its huge renewable energy programme. Wind, wave, and tide make up 80 percent of its potential. At the end of 2014, the country had 7316 MW of installed renewable energy. The realization of that potential is of significant importance to communities across the land.
The Low Carbon Economic Strategy (LCES) is an integral part of the government's economic strategy to secure sustainable economic growth, and a key part of the broader approach to meet the country's climate change targets and secure the move to a low carbon economy. It is closely linked to:
- The draft Climate Change Report on proposals and policies setting out actions to deliver emissions reductions to 2020 and beyond
- The Public Engagement Strategy, explaining the approach to getting the people involved in what they can do to help and take firm action on climate change
- The Energy Efficiency Action Plan, describing a programme of activity to improve energy
efficiency in households, businesses, and the public sector
The LCES seeks to establish strong policy direction around Scotland's key low carbon economic opportunities and strengthen business confidence in exploiting them. It sets out:
- The global economic opportunities that will arise in making the transition to a low carbon economy
- The drivers and barriers to the development of these opportunities and growth of a low carbon economy
- The role of government and wider public sector in supporting business to overcome the barriers
Scottish Renewables is the representative body for the renewable energy industry in Scotland. It provides a united voice for more than 320 member organisations working across the full range of technologies delivering a low-carbon energy system integrating renewable electricity, heat, and transport
The electricity network exists primarily to ensure that power is available when required by providing a physical route to market' and enabling interaction between generators, suppliers and customers. As a result, it provides the means by which the Secretary of State can meet the obligation to ensure that all reasonable demands for electricity can be met1 and plays a key role in delivering the overriding objectives of:
- Maintaining security of supply, both by ensuring there is sufficient margin of supply
to meet demand at all times and also by reducing our reliance on imports of fuels from volatile markets
- Ensuring that unnecessary costs are not passed on to current and future consumers
- Enabling industry, consumers, and government to source a sufficient proportion of
their energy demands from low carbon generation in order to meet carbon targets. National Grids Future Energy Scenarios2 provides a comprehensive assessment of the range of possible configurations of a low carbon electricity network, taking into account the changing preferences of consumers, economic growth and technology development and our ability and willingness to meet carbon budgets.
The limitations of the network must therefore be assessed against the ability to deliver the outcomes above. However, the relationship between the network and the market are closely related, requiring a delicate balance to be struck to ensure that the long term development of the network is consistent with the requirement of a changing energy market.
With this in mind, Scottish Renewables' response focuses on a number of areas where action is needed in order to ensure that the electricity network does not act as an unnecessary barrier to the ability of the market to achieve carbon budgets, minimize costs to the consumer, and maintain security of supply. These include:
- Delivering required infrastructure upgrades on time
- Setting the right incentives to encourage a greater uptake of active network management' solutions
- Increasing system flexibility through increased deployment of storage and demand side response
- Continued scrutiny of existing transmission charging arrangements
What will a low carbon network look like, what are the challenges for Government and other bodies in achieving it, and what benefits (environmental, financial or otherwise) will it bring to the UK?
National Grid identifies four possible scenarios (gone green, slow progression, no progression, and low carbon life) of how the network may develop in the long term, in light of changing market dynamics:
- Gone green describes an electricity system that is not constrained by financial limitations and new technologies are introduced and embraced by society. Under these conditions renewables output is equivalent with conventional power generation by 2025/26
- Slow progression describes an alternative where economic restricts market conditions and available capital directed towards low cost long-term solutions. As a result, annual sales of hybrid electric vehicles would reach 50,000 by 2019 and offshore wind capacity would double every five year until 2025/26
- No progression is a scenario that focusses on maintaining security of supply at the lowest possible cost which sees that by 2035/6 gas output for electricity increasing by 15% and solar output comparable with that of coal
- Consumer power describes a world of relative wealth with high levels of R&D and innovation driving small-scale generation to meet 40 percent of the power supply capacity by 2035
While the number of scenarios highlights the significant uncertainties and the diverse requirements placed on network development, it is clear that any low carbon network will be required to source a significant proportion of generation from renewable energy sources.
Renewable energy currently supports over 11,000 jobs in Scotland. The Scottish Government has an ambitious but achievable target for renewable energy in Scotland to generate the equivalent of 100 per cent of gross annual electricity consumption and eleven percent of heat consumption by 2020.
Renewable generation in Scotland is enough to power the equivalent of every household in Scotland.
Boosting renewable energy will also make a significant contribution to a sustainable economy.
Wave and tidal
Scotland has an estimated 25 percent of Europe's tidal potential and 10 percent of its wave potential.
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) celebrated ten years of real-sea experience in 2013. There have been more grid-connected marine energy converters deployed at EMEC than at any other single site in the world and the centre remains the world's only accredited marine energy laboratory.
The Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters is the site of the world's first commercial scale leasing programme for marine energy.
The Crown Estate, which owns the sea bed, has awarded leases for just over 1.6 gigawatts of marine projects in the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters - potentially enough to power 750,000 households.
Wind
Onshore wind power has recently overtaken hydro power as the most common form of renewable energy in Scotland. Figures published in June 2013 show wind generation in the first quarter of 2013 reached a record high, up by 11.5 percent year on year. Scotland boasts 25 percent of Europe's offshore wind resources. The siting of turbines is often an issue, but surveys have generally shown a high level of community acceptance for wind power. There are many onshore windfarms, both planned and operating, which are in community ownership.
Hydro
Scotland was the one of the first countries in the world to harness electricity from its waters. That legacy is still visible - Scotland's ambitious hydro building programme in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in infrastructure which still produces electricity today. More hydro schemes are in the pipeline and the Scottish Hydropower Resource Study found that there could be as much economically viable untapped hydropower potential to power a quarter of Scotland's homes.
Distributed, decentralised energy systems, incorporating heat networks, across Scotland and the UK are a substantial part of the solution to building a truly modern, low-carbon energy system and to achieving carbon and energy targets.
1 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/29/contents
2 https://fes.nationalgrid.com
