Industry News-Funding for wind energy welcomed but more needed for renewable sector

The government’s announcement that it is to drive funding into Clipper, Siemens, and Artemis Intelligent Power has been widely welcomed. However it must be viewed within the context of the wider challenges facing the renewable energy market in the UK. These include access to funding for projects, planning issues for large onshore and offshore wind farm projects and the general pace at which everything is moving at.If the UK is to profit from the new ‘green economy’ then more effort must be taken on several fronts.

In order to comply with legislation from the European Union, the UK's renewable energy target (to produce 15% of final energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020) may require between 35% and 40% of electricity to come from renewable energy sources by 2020.

Research from the business advisory group the Carbon Trust shows that by 2020, the UK could capture 45% of the global offshore wind energy market, and that by 2050 our wind energy industry alone could be worth £65bn to the UK economy.

Building up the 40 GW capacity that the EU will need to reach its climate targets requires €57 billion of investment by 2020 but banks are still reluctant to lend money. Although offshore wind projects by nature attract large utility companies with strong balance sheets, the challenge is not insignificant. The facts are single turbine installation vessel costs up to €250 million.

The challenge to onshore wind projects is still influenced by local planning issues and protests from local communities. As one commentator has noted local objections are normally based on aesthetic value of wind turbines and the ‘blight on the landscape’. While claiming that they support renewable energy and onshore wind farms it is always more favourable if they are ‘built in the next valley’. Of course it is not feasible to have wind turbines on every green belt of land in the UK but more proactive and progressive view must be taken.

It is widely agreed that the government is creating the right regulatory framework for renewable energy in the UK but if the banks are still hesitant to invest in more and more projects in wind and other new energy projects then it is hard to see how the government can reach its targets in fighting climate change. The issue of ROCs for marine and tidal energy is still on the table and must be seriously considered if this sector is to flourish. While Solar still needs a significant boost.

Electrified vehicles, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and concentrated solar power, among other emerging “green tech” sectors, will need massive investment, infrastructure, and research to get off the ground. While the Chinese, German, UK and US governments, along with private investors, are pursuing all of these technologies, they cannot achieve separately what they could jointly. Time is of the essence and bringing all the variables in science, technology, regulatory regimes and investment is the only solution to the present challenges.

Fighting climate change on a global context is the key. Worldwide in 2008, at $155bn (£95bn), more was invested in sustainable than conventional energy production. Britain is well placed to succeed and profit from this new 'green economy'. These projects create jobs, secure energy supply, fight climate change they bring investment to local communities and put money back into the wider economy.

The government now need to make this clear to the banks or they will need to take more steps in direct investment of green and clean tech technologies.

Taylor Keogh Communications Public Affairs and Pr for the Energy and Clean Tech Industry

Industry News-London brokers turn attention to green finance

Bonds providing a hedge against the risk of governments missing their climate commitments could give investors the necessary confidence to invest in low-carbon projects, Professor Michael Mainelli from Z/Yen, a City of London-based risk management firm, told EurActiv in an interview.

The biggest obstacle to investment in green projects is a general lack of confidence in government policy being enacted, Mainelli argued. He pointed out that when the EU's emissions trading scheme was inaugurated, politicians agreed that carbon prices need to stand at about €25-€30/tonne, but in reality, the market crashed in 2007 when too many permits were issued and the price is still nowhere near that.

High carbon prices are crucial to the profitability of renewable energy projects, the financial expert argued. "And they depend on government policy," he said, adding that policies such as feed-in tariff rates are equally important.

Mainelli presented the idea of index-linked bonds as a way for governments to guarantee investors that they will get a return on their low-carbon investments, regardless of whether the government keeps its climate pledges.

"The basic idea here is that governments would pay interest on their own debt, and they would pay more interest if they failed to meet their carbon targets," he said.

The targets of the bonds could vary, Mainelli said. He cited as examples carbon prices, where the government pays interest if carbon is below a set price, and feed-in tariffs, where the government pays if it does not maintain a set rate or fails to reach the country's emissions reduction target.

To illuminate the issue, Mainelli offered a scenario whereby a large pension fund puts €500 million euros into a wind farm that produces at €90/MWh, when the current price of electricity stands at €85/MWh. At the same time, it buys government bonds priced at a feed-in tariff of €110/MWh.

In case in reality the tariff turns out to be only €100, the investor's profit from the wind farm is only €10/MWh, instead of the expected €20, but it is making €10 on the French government.

The idea differs from many other bonds proposals in that it is simple and does not involve forfeiting returns out of concern for the climate, Mainelli stressed.

"What makes us really subversive - one of the things I find interesting as we've been chatting to governments - is that they begin to realise that they've got to put their money where their mouth is," Mainelli said. He argued that index-linked carbon bonds are analogous to inflation-linked bonds that governments had to start issuing in the beginning of the 1980s, when people lost confidence in their government's ability to control inflation.

"But of course the uncomfortable truth is that they just don't like it because if they fail to make their targets, then they'll have to pay a lot of interest," he added.

Nevertheless, as OECD governments prepare to issue $9 trillion in debt in the next three years due to the financial crisis, compared to only €18 trillion in the past 40 years, they are now seriously considering the idea, Mainelli said.

"So it's like any supply and demand situation: supply is going through the roof but demand is dropping. And the suppliers, the governments, are going to have to come up with interesting ways of selling their debt. And this is one of them," Mainelli concluded.

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