Adam Bruce, RenewableUK
Release Date: 2009-11-16
Adam Bruce, Chairman of the British Wind Energy Association, was interviewed by GreenTechFocus to talk about the leadership of Great Britain in offshore wind, history of how the industry was emerging and shared his optimism concerning its prospects on the global market.The UK government is very ambitious in developing the wind industry. That hasn't always been the case. Why wasn't it developed earlier?
The BWEA (British Wind Energy Association) celebrated its 30th birthday last year, which perhaps tells you two things. First of all, that it's been, probably for the first two-thirds of it's life, trying to persuade the British government that renewables have a key role to play in the generation of energy, but at a time when Britain was bringing ashore a large of amount of very inexpensive natural gas from the North Sea. Unlike Germany, Spain, and Denmark, which equally had to look at how to generate their energy and didn't have those resources and so they moved to renewables, the UK went first to hydrocarbons, because of our experience in North Sea oil. So the wind sector remained very small. It remained, in essence really, in abstract. The BWEA was almost an academic institute and encouraged people to look and think about.
And then, I suppose, two things happened. First of all, the British government decided very clearly that it had to do more to tackle climate change, both nationally and internationally. Equally, it became rapidly apparent that our supplies of cheap hydrocarbons were running out. And then all of that came to a head last year when the European Union, as you well know, decided that by 2020, the overall total energy production in Europe should be 20% renewables; and in the UK, we've agreed on the target of 15%.
There's no doubt that Britain has been a follower, rather than a leader in onshore wind. That's not to say we haven't achieved a lot. We have. In my last guise, I was responsible for a team that delivered the Clyde Wind Farm, which is Europe's largest onshore wind farm. We have the resource and we have the land mass to build large scale onshore.
But our two real opportunities are offshore wind and marine energy, and marine energy, in particular in the UK, still retains the best advantage in the market globally. I think two very, very exciting things are going to happen in the coming decade. The first is that we will start building for large scale offshore wind and really begin to capture the wind resource that whistles around the UK, and equally, we will begin to develop an international supply chain in marine energy which we missed. We've been running to catch up slightly, but we're now roundabout fifth globally in terms of installed wind capacity, and we compete with Italy, France, Germany, the US, and China.
There's no doubt that the UK can and will be a market leader in some form of offshore and marine energy, and that is coupled with our recent history in the oil and gas sector. We have the experience of building large scale infrastructure offshore and maintaining it and operating it - taking people out in helicopters and dropping them on the top and all that stuff. However, the decision to press ahead with large scale offshore renewables does not mean that we've stopped developing onshore renewables. To get to the 2020 target, we have to deliver about another ten gigawatts of onshore wind energy. Now, seven gigawatts in the planning systems, so it's not actually a huge amount more to be delivered, but I suspect that the government would rather focus on offshore, because it's bigger and it's always more difficult, and hopefully we can deliver more offshore without the need to build onshore.
Of course, the offshore projects require very good grid connections…
Absolutely. Whatever we do offshore, by 2020 we will have to build a significant amount of new grid infrastructure in the UK. It's not the role of government to build it but the government has a definite role in painting the picture and saying this is what it's going to look like, this is when it has to be delivered, and this is how it's going to be paid for. Once it's said those three things, then the national grid and the two Scottish grid companies and others can come in a build it.
At the same time we have to put in place the regulatory framework to allow us to export that to other parts of Europe and when it's not windy in Britain to draw that power from Norway or Germany or wherever.
In the offshore wind, there's going to be a battle for who is going to be the capital for this technology in Europe. What is the UK's competitive advantage?
What is the UK's competitive advantage? We have location, which may sound trite, but it's hugely important. We have the expertise in offshore energy, and we actually have a very highly skilled workforce. What we don't have in wind is the first mover advantage that Denmark and Germany have, but we have that in marine energy, so we have companies in the UK building the wave and tidal devices that will be for us to deploy in large numbers across the world.
Don't think that there aren't a number of other British companies involved in the supply chain. In the west-midlands there are companies that for example, previously have been making automotive gearboxes and are making gearboxes for wind turbines. There are companies in the sub-sea cabling sector, in the electro-mechanical sector involved in wind energy but, because they don't make turbines, which ultimately are the bits that people see, may lead to believe that we don't have that supply chain.
The British government is very keen, as we are as a trade association, to increase opportunities within the supply chain, and it would be great, particularly for the offshore market, when we get specific offshore turbines manufactured in the UK.
I suppose I'm relaxed about the supply chain in offshore wind, by a factor of geography and nothing else, the ports and harbors of the east coast of the UK lend themselves to operations. Aberdeen is very actively competing. It has a grant from the European Commission in the European Rescue Package. There's a center of excellence in Northumbria. There's another nascent center of excellence in East Anglia and those will grow, it will happen.
And if you look at the east of England and look wider than just electricity generation, you have a growing biofuel sector in and around Norwich, with the sugar industry is very strong, so they're looking at generating renewable fuels as well. So you'll see clusters and that ultimately is what you'll see across Europe and across the globe - clusters of expertise in different technologies. We have a central advantage in some and not in others, but I think it's going to be a mix of technologies and mix of expertise.
That's the moment that the UK becomes very interesting for China as a partner and also for technology development. Then, perhaps the most ambitious Chinese turbine manufacturers, component suppliers, they will move to Europe in the future. In the past, for the UK government, the priority in the trade with China was financial services. Do you believe this is a unique opportunity for you to jump into this now?
I would like to see the turbine market opening up. I think that with the greatest respect to our current suppliers, we need to have greater competition in the market. It's always healthy. In my previous role at Airtricity, we were, and in terms of some still are, in detailed discussions with one, if not two, Chinese turbine manufacturers, to look at opportunities to install, on a test basis, Chinese turbines in European markets. The opportunity which we saw at the time was to go and sit down with them and work through the manufacturing process, so we were giving the developers insight and the intellectual capital, and partnering with the developer and the manufacturing ability in China. I think we're going to see more of that, and see manufacturing locations in Europe, but also the supply chain extending into China.
I'm convinced that the opportunities for European/Chinese supply chain growth is considerable in the renewable sector in both directions. Supplying into the Chinese market, which is growing very, very fast, and then Chinese technology being supplied into the European market. I think that's going to be good for both markets.
The UK is not the capital of manufacturing, but it's got a long history in many sectors in having the intellectual capital here. You have the project developers. You have the consultants here. How do you think the UK should use these companies, these people, and their networks in order to take advantage of this relationship with China and position yourself ahead of other countries that can manufacture, but not develop?
I think the UK is already doing that. I think the Goldwind experience, for example, gives you a small indication of the cooperation between British developers and Chinese manufacturers, and I think you'll begin to see that there are different levels in the supply chain. You're absolutely right that we have a history in the UK around what I think is rather loosely termed "invisible earnings". It's about intellectual capital, design, and all that stuff that's hard to see. There's a lot of work in designing and patenting the next device that's going to produce electricity in a cleaner, sustainable way. That could be made in Europe; equally, it could combine leading edge Chinese technology, and there's no reason why that combination shouldn't be made.
If we look into the future, the role the UK wants to play in the wind industry is underestimated. What is the biggest surprise that you believe the UK is going to come with in the coming years?
I think offshore wind is our big ticket, and I think that when we look back on the perspective 2020, we will see that the UK, as is the case in many other areas of the economy, will sit quiet for a while, look at how the market develops, and then find a part of that market where we can seize a leading advantage. I know that's happening already with offshore wind. We are the global leaders in offshore wind. We started at a low base, but we overtook Denmark this year. The UK is never going to lead in every sector of that area, but I think if we could identify one or possibly two parts of the market where we are recognized as global leaders, that will have a huge benefit, not only for the British economy, but for the global economy as well, because ultimately, we are a trading nation. We're very keen on trade and we're very keen on partnership and joint ventures. It doesn't matter whether that partnership happens in China, in Denmark, or in other parts of the world.
| Company: | RenewableUK |
| Position: | Chairman |
| Country: | United Kingdom |