Realising A Green Energy System

• Published date: 24 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Energy and Natural Resources, Energy Law, Oil, Gas & Electricity
• Law Firm: Marks & Clerk
• Author: Mr Robert Carpmael

The UK is one of the shining lights on wind energy. According to the article below, "wind power supplies more than a quarter of the UK's electricity needs.The UK had the world's largest fleet of offshore turbines until 2021, and is now second only to China. In 2022, 90 per cent of new global offshore wind was built in China and the UK, which are expected to lead the world until at least 2030".

This in itself should be cause for patting ourselves on the back, although the UK being an island certainly helps us here, as we are not short of offshore locations for wind turbines. However, is being a leading light enough, when there is so much more room to improve? Is it true that red tape is significantly slowing down the deployment of new wind turbines in the UK?

I have concerns that it may well be true. Certainly with landbased wind turbines, there are notorious difficulties in getting planning permission. The same is true for solar parks. However, is public opinion now at a point where this red tape needs to be cut away, or is it not just the red tape that is slowing down the deployment of these alternative energy solutions?

One area where I believe that there is a huge opportunity to expand the turbine or solar network is on farm land, yet it is very difficult to secure permissions to do so. However, I like wind turbines, and consider the lack of them around the countryside to be something that needs to be addressed.

According to public statistics, there are roughly 216,000 farm holdings in the UK, and they are very well spread out across the country: the utilised agricultural area is approximately 17.2 million hectares of land: 71% of the UK land total. That is a lot of space into which wind turbines and solar panels could be beneficially deployed. Such installations would allow localised power production across the entire network. There would also be a need for energy storage solutions such as electrolysers and hydrogen storage, and/or lithium and sodium ion batteries, for smoothing out supply and demand issues, but surely it could be a viable option?

As for the number of installations required at each farm, I have done some simple calculations:

The total UK energy demand is approximately 300 bn kWh per year...