Connecting the Future - Greenpeace UK

Connecting the future: the UK’s renewable energy strategy
Energy systems
10
At the moment, policy makers tend to approach energy systems in a relatively
short-term, simplistic way: for example, the main ways of ensuring security
of supply are to build more generating capacity, and to secure greater supplies
of fossil fuels. This is essentially the same predict-and-provide approach
as has created the systems we have in place today: ensuring that demand
is always met with sufficient supply, preferably at least cost. This approach
would be understandable if policy makers’ only concern was the immediate
security of supply, but it is inadequate both for dealing with the environmental
problems caused by the energy industry – particularly climate change – and for
encouraging new, initially more costly technologies to emerge and reach their
potential. Moreover, the predict-and-provide model is based on the assumption
of ever-growing demand, whereas new energy policies at both the UK and
European levels are intended to limit or even reduce overall energy consumption.
Encouraging the emergence of low-carbon energy systems will require a more
sophisticated, dual approach, reducing energy use through increased efficiency
and demand reduction, while at the same time putting in place the building
blocks for a transition to a new style of energy system based around
low-carbon technologies. In our current, fossil fuel based energy system,
emissions can obviously be mitigated in the first instance by reducing how much
energy we consume, and this encourages one-off policy initiatives which are
often very cost-effective. So, for example, the decision to phase out old style
light bulbs between 2008 and 2011 in favour of more efficient ones should
deliver 1.2 MtC saving a year by 2020 (DTI 2006). However, this sort of
one-off approach will not be enough in the longer-term, as we attempt to
make the necessary permanent shifts in energy production and consumption
to ensure long-term adoption of sustainable low-carbon energy systems.
Achieving a deliberate change of system over a relatively short timescale
will require determined action from policy makers, addressing the economic,
regulatory, institutional and social barriers to technical change in a much more
holistic way than has so far been the case.
Many of the new low-carbon technologies do not conform to the characteristics
of current energy systems. Often they are small-scale, use renewable forms
of energy and may operate intermittently. In contrast, the energy systems
currently prevalent are largely based on fossil fuels and are overwhelmingly
devised to deliver bulk quantities of energy or fuel in response to ever growing
demand and to exploit economies of scale. Regulatory standards, the workings
of the market, the operation of the transmission and distribution infrastructure,
technical standards and other factors are designed or have evolved to
support these characteristics. Even large-scale forms of renewable electricity
generation, such as offshore wind, do not conform to the overall characteristics
of the system because their output is not necessarily constant. Renewable or
small-scale low-carbon technologies thus have to operate in a system which
either does not support them, or is actively hostile to their deployment and use.
On the other hand, it is important to recognise that these technologies offer
long-term advantages over traditional energy technologies. These advantages
are not just environmental: they also include enhanced security of supply