Paul O'Brien, Scottish Development International
Release Date: 2009-11-23
Paul O'Brien, Senior Executive for Renewable Energy Development in Scottish Development International, was interviewed by GreenTechFocus to discuss the current prospects and challenges of the Scottish wind industry, uniquely positioned to develop its potential of generating renewable energy, and its strategic focus areas.Scotland has its own Parliament. To what extent it has its own green policies and how can you summarize the ambitions of Scotland in the field?
Basically, although we fall under the UK Renewable Obligation (RO), it is not identical in Scotland as elsewhere. We have 50% target of electricity from renewables by 2020 which is much higher than the rest of the UK. Also our support mechanism in the renewable obligation in Scotland for wave and for tidal is much higher. For tidal we’re offering three ROs instead of two in the rest of the UK and five for wave. Wave is the technology that we’re very keen to encourage because currently Scotland is the world leader in tidal energy. We aim to keep tidal, so we have to assist the industry in every way we can and accelerate the delivery. RO is one of the methods to do it.
The other big area that we’re keen on and for which our focus is in China is the offshore wind industry. We’re looking to attract the Chinese companies into the UK with Scotland as the centre of manufacturing and assembling and actually enter the offshore wind market.
You’re developing offshore wind, wave and tidal industries while you already have one offshore oil and gas industry centre in Aberdeen. How are you combining these industries?
One of our strategies, part of Scottish government development plan, is to utilize the expertise in oil and gas to help us deliver offshore wind and tidal technologies. The offshore industry has years of expertise in operating in a very rough and hostile environment, and therefore we want them to apply this knowledge so that the offshore wind industry and the wave and tidal industry would have no aftercuts through the safety barrier.
While you want to develop Scotland as a base for the offshore wind industry, there are other players in this game such as Denmark, Germany, Holland, probably England as well. Some of them have domestic wind turbine manufacturers and a large manufacturing basis. What is your competitive advantage to outcompete these countries?
To a certain extent, our advantage is being the only country that has actually built an offshore wind farm in deep water. The project is the first to use 5 MW turbines in the deepest water anywhere in the world – 45 m – and our company in Scotland that was involved in that project - Sea Energy Renewables – is a spin-off from our project and they’re now offering that expertise to develop the water offshore wind industry to much larger companies who feel the need for this expertise to go forward.
The offshore wind industry has always been very promising in the UK in general at one time and now it is developing slowly. Is Scotland able to fasttrack this process?
In Scotland we have watched the development of Round 1 and Round 2 where, because of our water depths, we could not see any development, that is why the Scottish government backed the project as it brought back the barrier to offshore wind in Scotland by breaking the water depths. It also enabled Round 3 to look at much deeper water. So, there are no restraints in 40 m+, in some cases up to 60 m in Round 3.
The jacket technologies have been adopted in Germany by Alpha Ventus so that that technology has proven itself. What’s happening is that is that the weight of the wind jackets has been brought down tremendously. The lead of that technology has got a lot of potential for export and the Scottish companies at the moment are at the forefront of that. German manufacturers are also looking to make jackets but they haven’t cracked it yet the jackets are too heavy and too overengineered. Of course, it will change, but at the moment the Scottish companies have got the edge. We believe that this technology has proven itself as a solution for the Scottish wind industry.
We still have some issues to overcome, and at the moment you’re right to say that we still do not have a turbine manufacturer.
Why would a wind turbine manufacturer or supplier be based in Scotland instead of in Denmark with it world’s leadership in wind turbine manufacturing?
Scotland has a number of large sites that the offshore wind industry needs not only due to the scale of the machines and blades but also because they’re going to store 6 MW turbines. You need very large sites for such very large units. Scotland has a long history of oil and gas offshore units. Some of them still exist. So, what we wanted to do is to resurrect them as offshore wind sites.
At the moment, we’re targeting companies who have expressed interest in developing offshore wind turbines. We believe that there’s room on the European market for other manufacturers. The 2020 target is not going to be delivered by the capacity that is currently there in Europe. The only way to get to the target is to aim to increase the number of manufacturers that is available and also look at the rest of the supplier chain that is needed to deliver the 2020 target. With all the manufacturers, the other companies would move in the supplier chain, increase the capacity less than the demand.
The Chinese government clearly wants its wind industry to be successful globally. What is the message that Scotland would like to convey to the Chinese government to convince them that Scotland is a good partner for this ambition?
We’ve already had a lot of interest from the Chinese wind industry; nearly seven Chinese companies have visited Scotland to learn more about the market, look at the sites to understand what would be on the table in the way of assistance from the government if they were to come. We have already developed the idea of what we could do. We would not be naïve to think they would come to Scotland to set up manufacturing. What we expect them to do is to set up assembling. They would still bring their low-cost manufacturers from China. Most of them are already supplying and being supplied by the European manufacturers, so the supply chain, to a certain extent, is already in Europe. We expect to bring the Chinese parts and other components, send them to the site and assemble wind turbines there. The main point is to expand the market and speed up the delivery of the 2020 target.
In particular, there are three factors we need to speed up: more capacity in the turbines, lower cost and access to the market. If we can offer that to the Chinese manufacturers, they’ll come to Europe, they will certainly compete with the European manufacturers but that would certainly lower the cost.
We do not have an issue with that because we do not have turbine manufacturers as opposed to Denmark, Germany and Spain. It’s very similar to what’s happening in the electric vehicles: we don’t have any industry of vehicle manufacturers, so there’s no issue with electric vehicles and we’re actively looking for manufacturers, and it’s exactly the same with wind turbines.
When we speak about wind and electric cars, Scotland is now positioned as a very green-efficient country. What should be the reputation of Scotland in the world in 2020?
This year Scotland had some most ambitious climate change legislation in the world. The initial stage was 42% reduction by 2020 - mandatory - and also the 80% reduction by 2050. At the moment, the UK has settled 80% target for 2050, and Scotland is the only government so far to actually mandate those targets. Even Governor Schwarzenegger thought that Scotland had the best target in the world. Currently, our target is 50% but if we actually add up our offshore wind, it will take us to over 100%. At some point, when the wind is blowing right across Scotland, we’ll generate over 100% of renewables and we need to export our power.
20% goes to export to England and Northern Ireland. What we aim to do now is to link up to Norway and possibly Denmark to export the excess wind power at quite times and import energy from, particularly, Norway when we have low wind energy. With their hydro resources, they’re the battery of Europe, and we want to tap into that. The Scottish government is anti-nuclear, we do not want new nuclear stations, and the only way we can secure that ambition is to work for the rest of Europe. In the future, the Super Grid project will solve the issues about what to do with wind power, how to store it and spread it across Europe, so there’s very interesting future coming, and the ambition of Scotland is to be at its forefront.
| Company: | Scottish Development International |
| Position: | Senior Executive |
| Country: | United Kingdom |