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UK offshore windfarm capacity to triple in ‘one of country’s biggest steps towards net zero’

Posted on January 20, 2022 by dishanth

Offshore wind farm capacity in the UK is set to triple in what has been hailed as “one of the country’s biggest ever steps” towards achieving net-zero emissions.

Scotland has agreed to lease thousands of square kilometres of its seabed to new projects, which are set to bring in £700m for the country’s government.

The ScotWind programme has given the go-ahead to new wind farm developments which are forecast to boost capacity by 25GW.

According to government figures, the current offshore wind capacity installed in the UK is around 11GW.

Melanie Onn, from trade association RenewableUK, said it marked “the start of a new era” for the country’s offshore wind industry. “ScotWind represents one of the country’s biggest ever steps towards net zero,” she said.

ScotWind is the first auction for wind farm developments to take place in Scotland in a decade.

It was announced yesterday that 17 applications had been accepted, with SSE Renewables and Shell New Energies among the successful bidders.

Ms Onn said the new capacity “is two and a half times the UK’s entire current offshore wind capacity” and equal to “the entire current operational offshore wind capacity for the whole of Europe”.

RenewableUK’s deputy chief executive added: “It will scale up exponentially our ability to slash emissions. In the long term, it will also help to reduce the UK’s vulnerability to international gas prices which are hurting consumers.”

The UK is currently facing an energy crisis amid soaring gas prices, with estimates that millions could see their bills increase by more than 50 per cent.

As Scotland revealed the successful applications for wind farms in their waters, first minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “The scale of opportunity here is truly historic.”

She added: “ScotWind puts Scotland at the forefront of the global development of offshore wind, represents a massive step forward in our transition to net zero.”

The Scottish government has set a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2045, while 2050 is the goal for the UK as a whole.

Towards the end of last year, Boris Johnson said all electricity in the country should be produced from clean sources by 2035.

Speaking about the ScotWind project, Dustin Benton from the Green Alliance think tank said expanding wind power was “crucial” to meet this target, as well as reach net zero by the set date.

The 25GW increase in capacity is much higher than the 10GW initially hoped to be created by ScotWind.

The new wind farm developments are also estimated to create thousands of new jobs.

Crown Estate Scotland, which was behind the leasing round, said the announcement of the successful bids was only the first stage of a long process that the developments must go through “before we see turbines going into the water”.

Source Independent

Scottish auction for offshore windfarm permits expected to raise £860m

Posted on January 18, 2022 by dishanth

Scotland’s largest-ever auction of permits to construct offshore windfarms is expected to raise up to £860m when the results are announced on Monday.

Crown Estate Scotland, which is running the auction, hopes that windfarms with as much as 10 gigawatts of new generating capacity will be built over the next decade, effectively doubling the amount of electricity generated in Scottish waters in a transition which has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs.

The programme, known as ScotWind, has attracted frenzied interest from domestic and international bidders, and could set new records for values placed on the plots of seabed being leased for turbines.

In the first ScotWind leasing round, 8,600sq km of Scottish seabed is on offer across 15 areas, enough to develop windfarms which could power every Scottish household and save more than 6m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

The windfarms could more than double the capacity built or planned in the seabed around Scotland over the coming decade. At the moment, offshore windfarms in Scotland generate about 1GW. Projects that have received consent and those being built amount to less than 10GW.

The Moray East windfarm has become Scotland’s biggest source of renewable energy, generating up to 950 megawatts from 100 turbines. It will be overtaken by Seagreen next year with 1GW of capacity. Located around 27km off the Angus coast, the £3bn windfarm is a joint venture between Perth-based SSE Renewables (49%) and France’s TotalEnergies (51%).

The winning bids – and the prices paid – are expected to be announced at 10am on Monday. Crown Estate said in July that 74 offers had been submitted for ScotWind. Many come from consortiums.

Among them is Denmark’s largest energy company Ørsted, which pioneered the first ever offshore windfarm in 1991 and has teamed up with Italy’s Falck Renewables and the floating wind expert BlueFloat Energy.

Other bidders include renewable energy investment funds such as Australia’s Macquarie Bank Green Investment Group, which has partnered with the Scottish offshore wind developer Renewable Infrastructure Development Group; big utility companies involved in existing projects, such as SSE and Scottish Power; and large oil companies, including Shell, France’s Total, Italy’s ENI and Norway’s Equinox.

Crown Estate Scotland lifted the cap for the auction bids from £10,000 to £100,000 per sq km last year. If every bid is submitted up to that maximum cap, the sale could raise £860m.

Melanie Grimmitt, global head of energy at the law firm Pinsent Masons, said this leasing round had shown that there was significant appetite for investment from within the UK and abroad, which bodes well for a second ScotWind seabed leasing round later this year.

“This is crown state Scotland’s first seabed leasing round and marks an important chapter for Scotland’s offshore market, but with proposed windfarms from the leasing round expected to save in excess of 6m tonnes of carbon emissions, it is also an important milestone for the UK’s overall net zero commitments,” she said.

“Developers will be keeping an eye out to see if and how the application process and criteria for the next round might differ from this one given how popular and competitive it has been.”

Crown Estate Scotland is a separate organisation to the crown estate, which manages the Queen’s assets in England and Wales, and its profit is passed to the Scottish government. Some of the proceeds are expected to be ploughed into preparing the workforce for the switch from North Sea oil and gas to wind power. The transition to renewable energy means that as fossil fuel jobs disappear, thousands of workers will need retraining.

Source The Guardian

Bus depot bid to be UK’s largest electric vehicle charging hub

Posted on June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 by dishanth

Scotland’s biggest bus operator has announced it is building the UK’s largest electric vehicle charging hub.

First Bus will install 160 charging points and replace half its fleet with electric buses at its Caledonia depot in Glasgow.

The programme is expected to be completed in 2023 with the first 22 buses arriving by autumn.

Charging the full fleet will use the same electricity as it takes to power a town of 10,000 people.

The scale of the project means changes are needed to the power grid to accommodate the extra demand.

First Glasgow managing director Andrew Jarvis told BBC Scotland: “We’ve got to play our part in society in changing how we all live and work. A big part of that is emissions from vehicles.

“Transport is stubbornly high in terms of emissions and bus companies need to play their part, and are playing their part, in that zero emission journey.”

First Bus currently operates 337 buses out of its largest depot with another four sites across Glasgow.

The new buses will be built by Alexander Dennis at its manufacturing sites in Falkirk and Scarborough.

The transition requires a £35.6m investment by First with electric buses costing almost double the £225,000 bill for a single decker running on diesel.

But the company says maintenance and running costs are then much lower.

The buses can run on urban routes for 16 hours and be rapidly recharged in just four hours.

This is a big investment which the company wouldn’t be able to achieve on its own.

Government grants only cover 75% of the difference between the price of a diesel and an electric bus so it’s still a good bit more expensive for them.

But they know they have to do it as a social responsibility and because the requirements for using Low Emissions Zones are likely to become stricter.

The SNP manifesto committed to electrifying half of Scotland’s 4,000 or so buses within two years.

Some are questioning whether that’s even achievable in the timescale, given the electricity grid changes that would be necessary for charging.

But it’s a commitment that environmental groups will certainly hold them to.

Transport Scotland is providing £28.1m of funding to First Bus as part of the Scottish government’s commitment to electrify half of Scotland’s buses in the first two years of the parliamentary term.

Net Zero Secretary Michael Matheson said: “It’s absolute critical that we decarbonise our transport system and what we have set out are very ambitious plans of how we go about doing that.

“We’ve set out a target to make sure that we decarbonise as many of the bus fleets across Scotland as possible, at least half of it over the course of the next couple of years, and we’ll set out our plans later on this year of how we’ll drive that forward.”

Transport is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Scotland which are responsible for accelerating climate change.

In 2018 the sector was responsible for 31% of the country’s net emissions.

First Glasgow has been trialling two electric buses since January 2020.

Driver Sally Smillie said they had gone down well with passengers because they were much quieter than diesel buses.

She added: “In the beginning it was strange for them not hearing them coming but they adapt very easily and they check now.

“It’s a lot more comfortable. You’re not feeling a gear change and the braking’s smoother. I think they’re great buses to drive.” – Sally Smillie

By Kevin Keane – Environment correspondent BBC Scotland

Source BBC

Hollow mountain: Highlands hydro storage plant to undergo £1m efficiency upgrade

Posted on August 18, 2020 by dishanth

Drax eyes key role for Cruachan pumped hydro storage station in managing growing levels of renewable electricity on the grid

A hydroelectric power storage facility built into a hollowed-out mountain that towers above the Scottish Highlands is to undergo a £1m upgrade in a bid to boost its efficiency, operator Drax Group announced yesterday.

For almost 55 years the Cruachan Power Station has provided electricity storage for the grid by using its turbines to pump water from Loch Awe in the glen below to an upper reservoir built on a plateau a short way up Ben Cruachan mountain. The stored water can then be released back through the turbines to generate power quickly when demand increases.

The plant’s 440MW capacity provides high levels of flexibility for the grid, which has proved particularly useful during the coronavirus lockdown when low electricity demand in Scotland coincided with periods of high wind power, according to Drax.

Last month, Cruachan to provided critical support services to National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), which is responsible for balancing electricity supply and demand services in the UK. Such power storage and flexibility services are becoming increasingly important as the energy system shifts towards more intermittent, greener forms of power such as wind and solar.

As such, Drax is investing £1m in modernising the power station’s turbine control system, replacing its existing programmable logic controller computer system with a new design aimed at drastically boosting its efficiency.

“Cruachan plays a critical role in supporting renewable energy in Scotland and stabilising the electricity grid,” said Ian Kinnaird, Drax Group’s head of hydro. “As the country continues to decarbonise, the station’s flexibility has never been more important. This upgrade will ensure the Hollow Mountain can deliver the fast, flexible power that hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses rely on for many decades to come.”

The upgrade to the plant’s systems will be carried out by control system builders ITI, previously known as Servelec Controls. The firm has worked on the site since 1987, previously building a control system which enables the Lanark and Galloway Hydro Schemes to be remotely managed from a single interface located in Cruachan’s underground cavern.

“We’ve been working at Cruachan Power Station for over 30 years now, and in that time have developed a deep understanding of their assets, their systems and their operational requirements,” said Bryn Thomas, sales director at ITI. “It is these strong relationships with our customers that enable us to work with them on developing transformative solutions that enhance their operations, improve safety and support sustainable green energy production,”

By Toby Hill

Source: Business Green