John Fitzgerald
Scotland’s world leading research institutions and offshore wind energy offer perfect opportunity to innovate the technologies required for tomorrow’s grid.
COP26 will soon kick off in Glasgow. It happens against the backdrop of growing concerns about energy prices and security of supply. Electricity costs in many parts of the world are at historical highs, caused by a perfect storm of low gas stocks, high demand following COVID and low wind energy and hydro power production in Northern Europe.
In a few weeks the eyes of the world will be turning to Scotland to look for ideas and solutions to one of mankind’s biggest and most urgent challenges: How do we reverse climate change in time to avoid the most destructive effects of a heating Planet?
“We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation,” French philosopher and historian Voltaire wrote in the 18th century.
And world leaders would do well to look to Scotland for ideas. It was one of the first nations to declare a ‘climate emergency’ and Scotland has taken the lead in adopting some of the world’s most ambitious climate goals, promising to become carbon neutral by 2045. In 2020, Scotland produced electricity from renewables, equivalent to 97.5% of its total demand, only narrowly missing its target of 100% by 2020. Remarkably, it did so utilising only a fraction of its largest energy resource: offshore wind.
Just over 1 GW offshore wind capacity has been installed to date, and the government has approved more than 5 GW of projects and recently increased its target for offshore wind from 8 GW to 11 GW by 2030. Considering that Scotland is already meeting all its domestic demand for power, it has clearly adopted a strategy of becoming one of the largest exporters of highly cost-competitive renewable energy. Wind energy is already cheaper to produce than fossil fuels in most nations and Scotland has one of the richest wind resources in the world, giving it a distinct competitive advantage.
For that renewable energy export strategy to work, Scotland must ensure that the necessary grid is in place to distribute the energy throughout a European region less rich in wind energy. When wind resources are lower the same grid could ensure security of supply by importing renewables from other regions. This pooling of resources needs to be done in close cooperation with European neighbours, not just the wider UK but also the nations to the North, East and West of Scotland. Scotland, as guardian of one of the world’s richest renewable energy resources, has a central role in the rapid planning and deployment of a European-wide Supergrid for the efficient delivery of power, that would benefit consumers and producers alike.
Europe has all the prerequisites to make the necessary transition towards a decarbonised economy based on renewable electricity. The European Commission has shown through scenario analysis that offshore wind energy in Europe must increase 15-fold in order to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement targets of limiting atmospheric temperature change to an increase of 1.5 degrees. €800 billion must be invested in offshore renewables before 2050. Two thirds of those investments will be in grid infrastructure, with one third in generating capacity.
Building an innovative grid to enable a renewable powered system and significantly reducing constraints is the challenge. Whether Europe manages to build out its electricity infrastructure in time will be the main determinant of its ability to decarbonise its economies. It requires deep cooperation. In a recent paper, researchers from Imperial College found that €30-60 billion could be saved by building an integrated offshore Supergrid, connecting windfarms in the EU, UK and Norwegian waters. In addition to the cost savings, it concludes, such an approach would reduce the number of onshore connections and their associated environmental impacts.
In order for the Supergrid to become a reality, more innovative cable technology is needed, capable of transferring large amounts of power over long distances with minimal losses. The limitations of current cable technology are losses and scalability, which are interrelated as the resistive losses generate heat proportionate to the square of the current which limits the amount of power transfer of remote renewables over long distances such as those connecting offshore wind farms and interconnectors between countries.
Scotland and its world leading research institutions should again lead the world in developing a route to market to allow the commercialization of its huge offshore renewable resources.. Scottish industry would also gain significant benefit from helping to innovate the technology required to build tomorrow’s European Supergrid. The logic behind pooling resources is more compelling than ever in a meteorologically powered renewable energy system.