Earlier today Nick Clegg today launched another plank of the party’s green economic policies for the general election, pledging to create 57,000 jobs by investing £400 million in upgrading disused shipyards so that they can produce off-shore wind turbines.
It’s a triple win: boost the economy, help parts of the country which have been hit the hardest and improve Britian’s environmental record.
The party’s news release explains some of the details:
Current plans to expand wind farms in the North and Irish seas could see every one of the 6,400 turbines needed brought in from abroad, as there are currently no turbine manufacturers in the UK.
British ports are ideally located to host turbine manufacturers due to their proximity to the off-shore wind farms; however, they are currently unable to invest due to the lack of appropriate docks with suitable space.
The proposals to invest in physical infrastructure to support a greener economy also include a pledge to invest £100million in training and testing facilities, including at universities with specialist engineering research facilities such as Loughborough, Durham and Newcastle.
Nick Clegg told Left Foot Forward:
Refurbishing seven of the ports will be a shot in the arm to increasing industry and manufacturing that will benefits regions like the North East.
You can watch Nick Clegg talk about the policy in this YouTube clip:
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10 Comments
this is exactly what we should be doing as a party – not only does this policy tie together economic recovery and environmental concerns, seems to me to be a smart move politically given the potential impact on communities that have suffered years of economic decline.
good stuff!
It would be an excellent policy if offshore wind turbines made economic sense, but they don’t: according to the Carbon Trust about £60bn in Renewables Obligation subsidy would be required to build 29GW of capacity, which is approximately double the cost of building the same capacity of nuclear power. (Plus nuclear power will run nearly at capacity all the time, while wind is more variable and so the average power produced will be lower for any given maximum capacity.)
Nick Clegg’s main argument against nuclear has been the (historically reasonable) one that they always drink public subsidies. So what are we to make of offshore wind power on that basis? Either the costs of offshore wind must be substantially cut, or we should reconsider our anti-nuclear position.
Niklas,
That’s only part of the story. Yes, offshore wind turbines are expensive to build about £2.5-3m per megawatt – about the same as nuclear. The difference though is that once a turbine is built it has virtually no operating costs as trhe wind is free – while nuclear has the fuel & decommissioning costs to take into account as well.
In fact because it has such low usage costs wind actually reduces electricity bills – as has been shown in Denmark, Germany, Spain and Ireland. Nuclear may well have a part to play in the UK’s future energy mix – but if it does it shouldn’t be at the expense of providing a renewable altenrative to fossil fuel dependency.
The difference though is that once a turbine is built it has virtually no operating costs…
What about maintenance costs out in the North Sea? What has the experience been from existing offshore windfarms? We need to remember that onshore wind is essentially free to operate (and would be profitable without subsidy at any reasonable level of carbon tax), but that we can’t assume the same of offshore wind.
Though I do see your point about fuel and decommissioning costs for nuclear power; it would make sense to make the builders of new nuclear plants to make a down-payment to cover decommissioning costs 50 years later (or whatever the life of new nuclear plants is nowadays). As I said, there is an urgent need to find ways of reducing the cost of offshore wind, for example by making floating turbines (one is currently being tested off Norway). Another alternative to look into is wave power harnessed through buoys.
Do we really think that, long term, we are likely to be price competitive at producing standardised manufactured goods like this compared with Korea or China? And that the lack of port capacity is all that is standing in the way? If so, why have the RDAs not spent their money on this already? Looks like a good headline and a bad policy.
Niklas,
Offshore operating costs are indeed higher than onshore but experience shows not nearly as problematic as you suppose. The cost of offshore wind has been largely driven by a combination of historically high commodity prices, the falling exchange rate ( as manufacturing is based in the Eurozone) and a lack of competition in the supply chain ( as offshore is only 1% of the global wind market at the moment).
The answer to Tim’s point our competitors here are not China & Korea – the transportation costs involved are something like 25-30% of the overall costs. That means that the European offshore market (which is 90% of the global market) and which the UK has 50% of the capacity, will be supplied by European factories. those factories will either be based in the UK or on the other side of the North Sea – and yes manufdacturers will tell you that the decisive factor in their final hoice of site will be the quality of quayside facilities.
The point about competitiveness should surely be dynamic: we have areas in the UK steeped in industrial decline and unemployment, we need energy, wind power is a viable way (surely we should learn from stern and count external benefits of climate mitigation?) – so we should help get our industries to be world class.
State procurement, as they do in the USA on many issues, would be a great way to achieve it. But we also need the infrastructure and training, so this proposal will certainly help.
Sorry, that should have been 15-20% of production costs – thats the danger of writing these posts late at night!
I would have thought the existence of advanced engineering companies, many of whom are presently expanding, in locations across the UK is evidence that, in spite of global competition, there’s still demand for British products and expertise?
Is there somewhere to find out what the existing state of British industry is? We often hear that we don’t make things any more, but I think that is simply untrue – whilst it is true that many of previously ‘British’ firms are now owned by ‘foreigners’, much is produced and developed here under the aegis of foreign companies, or simply unkown ones (i.e. not consumer goods).
The debate about industry would surely be improved if people knew what they were talking about, and to be honest, I have no idea about the majority of the UKs production.