Nuclear power hogged the headlines today as the British government unveiled its energy bill. Business Secretary John Hutton told Parliament "the government believes that the new nuclear power stations should have a role to play in this country's future energy mix alongside other low-carbon sources." He assured sceptics that it was "clean, secure and affordable", and had been proved over decades of safe and reliable energy provision. The bill sets out new measures to entice investors, requiring that they demonstrate sufficient funds for decommissioning and waste handling, but promising emergency aid if a power station should run into trouble. The government is also adamant that no subsidies will be offered, despite the fact that there isn't a nuclear power station anywhere in the world that has been built without them.
However, I don't want to talk about nuclear power (we've covered this well already), because in the rush to write the big headlines about the nuclear power white paper, we're overlooking the fact that the bill also addresses renewables. I trawled a number of news sites tonight looking for information on the bill's greener side, and there's almost nothing to be found. Even the official press release talked about nuclear power, presumably figuring they couldn't dress it up any other way. I had to go and read the bill itself to find what it says, and then read the explanatory notes...
Anyway, there's actually a fair bit about renewables in the bill. Firstly, there are changes to the Renewables Obligations, the mandatory percentages of renewable energy that suppliers had to source. The changes will encourage genuine investment in renewables and place tighter controls on the trade in Renewable Obligations Certificates.
Another section deals with CSS, laying out licensing for carbon capture and storage. It provides the legal frameworks to use existing offshore installations for carbon storage. The North Sea oil platforms are for the most part redundant technology in supplying the UK's energy needs, but the infrastructure is still there. Theoretically, the same oil platforms and undersea networks could be used for sequestring carbon. That the energy bill makes note of this, even in passing, is encouraging news. It's not sexy politics, but the legal structures have got to be in place before any investment in CSS can happen.
Changes to the transmission of the electricity also features, with the national grid being extended to reach offshore installations. This is an important development that will go some way to solving the problem of getting power onshore, one of the big sticking points in investment in this area. As the explanatory notes to clause 156 say (and you really need those explanatory notes) "the overall objective of the regulatory regime for these transmission assets is to enable large amounts of electricity from renewable sources generated offshore to connect to the onshore electricity network in a safe, economic and efficient manner, whilst maintaining the integrity of the electricity system as a whole." And, while the building of offshore wind and wave power generating facilities is encouraged, new guidelines will ensure that these are properly decommissioned and removed from the seabed, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
These aren't the headline makers, and there's more that can be done, but the foundations are slowly being laid for large scale renewable energy in the UK.
