Tony Lodge: We have wasted billions on wind power; now let’s find a way we can make it pay

Twenty years since the UK opened one of its first commercial wind farms, at Ovenden Moor near Halifax, it can now be said with certainty that not only has Britain undisputedly tried to make wind energy work but in the process it has squandered billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on a unpredictable and erratic energy source.

Nearly 3,500 turbines later, wind still regularly provides under three per cent of UK electricity supply at any one time.

Perhaps policy-makers should consider this recent statement by a senior Cabinet Minister: “When the facts change, the responsible thing to do is to examine the decisions you have made and be willing to change your mind, however inconvenient that may be. It is about doing what is right for Britain, not burying your head in the sand and ploughing on regardless.”

They were spoken by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond when he changed policy in Parliament last month over the choice of aircraft for the Navy’s new aircraft carriers. It is a credible statement and the U-turn was right.

This approach must now be applied to wind energy policy, as a priority, in the interests of hard pressed consumers.

Recent opinion polls claim that a majority of those polled support more wind turbines. Polling is the art of asking a certain question to determine and secure a certain answer. Were interviewees asked about supporting rising electricity bills to support more wind turbines, their dismal output performance and the need to keep carbon intensive gas-fired power stations running to shadow their unpredictability? Of course not; but this would not have secured a majority in favour.

The Chancellor’s desire to cut subsidies for wind energy is timely and can help the sector strip fitter and earn a better return for the consumer. Implementing the Government’s green ambitions, originally signed up to by Tony Blair in 2007 (against the advice of his Ministers) have already increased the price of electricity by 13 per cent; achieving its target for 2020 would increase prices by 25 per cent.

The number of “fuel poor” households in the UK has increased from two million in 2004 to six million in 2009 and will increase significantly, driven in part by green measures. This is not affordable alongside our desire to reduce our national debts.

Wind generation and other weather dependent generation such as solar have a low load capacity value because the likelihood of them meeting peak demand is impossible to manage due to their unpredictability.

Although Britain has a relatively good wind resource, it is not uniform across the country. Official statistics show that less than one third of onshore wind energy developments in Scotland achieved a load capacity of 30 per cent or more, in Northern Ireland only 25 per cent did so; in Wales the figure was less than 20 per cent; while in England the figure was just 15 per cent.

The low load performance means that there are more wind farms than necessary to produce a given output. Consequently, building more rather than fewer better located schemes clearly increases the resource costs of equipment and land required to produce a given output and raises the point that wind farms are being too generously subsidised if the present policies clearly support low efficiency wind farms, as is the case at Ovenden Moor which managed just 22 per cent in 2011.

The Chancellor should now consider a policy where existing wind farms which receive subsidies but achieve load capacities well below 30 per cent could be scaled down or withdrawn.

One approach could be to offer a proportion of the full subsidy for developments achieving load factors between 30 and 35 per cent; a lower proportion for those achieving a load factor between 30 and 25 per cent and nothing below that.

Government should also cease payments to wind companies for “constraining off” which is when the grid cannot take surges of electricity from wind farms due to insufficient national energy demand. It must then compensate the companies.

It is with this approach that the Chancellor can save money, reduce the subsidy for wind and consequently guarantee that developers are proposing wind developments at the best sights so to secure the best subsidy.

That developers presently want to build on sites which have such a low performance shows the subsidy at present is far too high.

Not until we can efficiently store renewable energy will wind power and other weather dependent energy sources be able to effectively meet peaks in demand and therefore play a valuable role in a demand-side managed electricity grid.

But if the Government is to slash the subsidies it gives to wind farms it must tread carefully in light of the debacle with its attempts to reduce the feed in tariff for all solar schemes in 2011, without allowing for adequate consultation.

It must set out the policy alternatives for a leaner and more efficient wind sector which is forced to take its snout out of the renewable money trough and deliver electricity to the grid from high performance sites in appropriate locations.

If the wind energy sector wants a future, then it should work ambitiously with the Government to deliver a lower cost and more efficient solution before it has no choice.