The UK needs to build a lot of renewable energy capacity, and fast if it’s going to have any chance of reaching net zero by 2050. To do this we’ll also need to substantially increase the country’s electricity transmission capacity and build urban heat networks powered by electricity, significantly increase the UKs electric vehicle charging infrastructure, build hydrogen electrolysers and pipelines to transport captured carbon dioxide.
The new Labour government has pledged to double the UK’s onshore wind capacity, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030, in pursuit of a goal of decarbonising the power grid by that date. Its economy-wide net zero target will require clean transport, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage at scale.
But, as we noted in a recent blog questioning the wisdom of the 2030 deadline, it isn’t on course to meet its climate goals. Modelling by Cornwall Insights suggests that solar and wind will account for only 44% of power generation by 2030, far adrift of the 67% a fully decarbonised energy system will require.
That analysis considered the amount of time it takes for developers to bring projects to fruition, noting the tortuous permitting process and backlogs in connecting new capacity to the grid.
Planning purgatory
The UK’s recent history with infrastructure large and small illustrates the problem. The soaring costs of the HS2 rail project were, at least in part, due to Britain’s planning system: pro-growth pressure group Britain Remade claims that the environmental impact assessment for phase one of HS2 alone ran to 50,000 pages.
Similarly, EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant is years behind schedule and billions over budget. Conservative former environment secretary Michael Gove recently lit up a small corner of Twitter by noting that the company spent time and money considering a “fish disco” to deter marine life from swimming into (and then dying) in its cooling water intakes.
Big renewables projects can take decades to reach fruition. Utility SSE has just completed two landmark projects in the Shetland Islands – which it began planning just after the turn of the century. “If we are serious about delivering clean power by 2030 — less than 2,000 days away — then we need to make it much easier and faster to build this kind of mission-critical infrastructure,” said CEO Alistair Phillips-Davies.
At a much smaller scale, everyone from house builders to diversifying farmers face a planning system skewed towards the views of local people demanding that nothing is built in their backyards and environmental campaigners opposed to any and all development.
Voting for change
For the renewables sector, things are starting to change. As one of its first acts, the incoming Labour government amended planning rules that had acted as a de facto ban on onshore wind. These had set higher bars than those for other types of energy project, and essentially meant that any local opposition whatsoever could block a project.
However, the government notes that there is more to be done. It is to consult on bringing large onshore project proposals into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project regime, to support quick determination. It also wants to ensure that local communities benefit from hosting local renewable energy infrastructure, and therefore plans to update the Community Benefits Protocol for Onshore Wind in England.
Looking to Germany
As it considers clean energy planning, the new government might want to look to Germany, where a sclerotic renewables planning system has been dramatically overhauled. From 2022 to 2023, installations of wind and solar almost doubled, from 9.7 GW to 18.6 GW, as the country cut red tape and simplified its permitting processes.
Germany has, according to WindEurope, been “fast and rigorous” in implementing revisions to the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) intended to speed the development of renewable energy projects across the bloc, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its weaponisation of natural gas supplies.
Specifically, Germany now designates renewables projects as of “overriding public interest”, WindEurope notes, which makes legal challenges harder, and has defined “Renewables Acceleration Zones”, where permitting is further expedited. It also allows developers to take the whole populations of threatened species into consideration, rather than requiring them to focus on individual animals.
WindEurope also notes the importance of digitalising permitting processes, as is required by the revised RED. Before the reforms, developers would have to physically print thousands of pages of documentation for each application – 36,000 pages to secure approval for one three-turbine project in 2022, according to Bloomberg.
Grinding out grid connections
Beyond permitting. WindEurope sees easing grid connection as the next priority to ensure rapid renewables roll-out. It notes that the UK currently has more than 145 GW of wind energy projects awaiting an assessment of their application for a grid connection.
It calls for governments to apply filtering and prioritisation criteria to handle requests for grid connection, moving away from ‘first come, first served’ approaches. “The goal must be to reduce the number of projects in the queue, to sift out immature, speculative bids and to ensure a balanced allocation of grid capacity to all strategic net-zero technologies,” it argues.
Filtering criteria could include financial commitments and regular progress checks to ensure projects are moving through key milestones.
Speeding grid connections will also require the physical infrastructure to be put in place. Constructing new transmission lines will not be popular. The legal groundwork will likely need to be laid to ensure that new lines are not tied up for years in the courts.
Bulldozing the NIMBYs
Faster permitting, more renewables projects and new transmission lines will not be universally popular. The government will need to do a better job of selling the benefits of a net zero power system – not only in terms of mitigating climate change, but also its effects on reducing local pollution (through enabling the electrification of transport) and increasing energy security.
It will not be easy or politically without cost. But, as this government recognises, the stakes are too high to let a minority of NIMBYs and conservation zealots derail the net zero transition.