A crowd of 120 people packed into All Saints Church in Leighton Buzzard on Saturday 7 October to hear what’s happening on renewable energy locally and nationally, in a meeting organised by South Bedfordshire Friends of the Earth.
The event welcomed three expert speakers. John Fairlie of Arnold White Renewables (AW Renewables), spoke about the lack of capacity in the electricity grid in the area. They’re building new renewable energy around Leighton Buzzard, which will directly power electric charging stations for cars and buses.
Neil Witney from the Government Department of Energy Security and Net Zero explained the significant increase in renewable energy since 2016 and what the government is doing to decarbonise the grid.
Paul de Zylva from national Friends of the Earth explained that the UK has the solutions and the money. It’s just a case of whether the UK chooses to spend on subsidising fossil fuels, to have the leakiest homes in Europe and bear the billions of pounds of costs from climate change in terms of flooding and heatwaves. Or, to just get on with insulating homes, reducing people’s energy bills and building local renewable energy.
More on-shore wind comes to Leighton Buzzard
John Fairlie of the Leighton Buzzard firm AW Renewables explained how they built the 1.6MW wind turbine at Double Arches near Heath and Reach, which produces electricity for over 1,000 homes and goes directly into the local grid at Clarence Road.
He explained about the current lack of capacity in the national grid. This makes it very hard to connect new renewable energy to the grid and to have enough power for electric cars and electric heating. In response to this challenge, the company is currently “building the country’s first EV charging station that is directly wired to renewable energy” on the A5 near Heath and Reach.
This will consist of a 4.1 MW wind turbine (equivalent to electricity for 2,500 homes) a solar farm and a battery. These will directly provide charging for six electric buses and rapid charging for electric cars and a café so you can have a drink while watching the wind turbine charging your car. He showed a video of moving the recent delivery of the blades down the M1 from Immingham.
John talked about the improvements in wind technology. This new turbine will produce the same amount of energy that it took 10 wind turbines to produce in 1991 when the first UK wind farm was built at Delabole in Cornwall.
AW Renewables has just put in a planning application to Central Bedfordshire Council for another charging station for electric cars powered by a wind turbine, solar farm and battery, at Astral Green on the A505 near Astral Lake. AW Renewables carried out a survey of residents nearby in Billington Park and the surrounding area, and 88.7% or residents questioned were in favour.
John Fairlie urged people “to support local projects”, adding : “[The] Astral Green planning application went in yesterday [6 October 2023] and we’ve demonstrated in the local area overwhelming support, but the council won’t see that unless people write in, unless people actually are vocal about the projects and show independently of us that they would like to see these projects happen. Responding to consultations, spreading the word about renewables, responding to local projects, it’s very, very important.”
Renewables generation, connectivity and the national picture
Next to talk was Neil Witney from the Government Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. He said that “the UK has seen a 70% reduction in the cost of bringing on new renewables between when we started, about 2015 or so, and 2022. Every year we break new records in delivering more and more renewable electricity in this country. At this point, 49% of our electricity in September was from a zero-carbon source, peaking at 86% at one point. On 18 September at 2pm we had the lowest ever recorded carbon intensity… associated with electricity production ever at 27g/kWh. For contrast the average carbon intensity of the grid in 2016 was 520g/kWh.”
He said: “Renewable energy is now competitive in the market, and everyone wants to build renewable electricity generation and get it connected to the grid. As well as this there will be a big increase in demand due to electric cars and electric heating.”
He explained this was causing problems as often developers speculatively buy a grid connection for renewable energy but are far from delivering the actual project. This can stop green-lit renewable energy projects from being connected. He added that the government is working to resolve this so there’s a much more efficient and speedy way to join new renewable energy to the grid. He said: “We’re on schedule to decarbonise the grid of electricity.
“We have the solutions”
The final speaker was Paul de Zylva, senior policy advisor from national Friends of the Earth. Friends of the Earth has successfully taken the government to the High Court for not following the Climate Change Act and are taking them to court again this autumn to argue that its net zero strategy is “inadequate“.
He explained the context of the recent jump in global temperatures and the link between climate and nature. He quoted the recently published State of Nature report where David Attenborough first highlighted that 56% of our species are in decline.
He said that we do have the solutions. “Every home can be its own power station, and this is much cheaper than nuclear which is very costly. Instead, Britain’s housing stock is some of the leakiest in the world, it’s appalling. It’s a national scandal.” He said there is a “massive opportunity to retrofit homes, to create skills, supply chains, and local economies.
“But even in 2023, Friends of the Earth is still having to call for a national programme to retrofit… leaky homes, which happen to be affecting the poorest people in our society, which is holding them back from getting on a job or their kids having warm enough hands to do their homework in the evening. Simple stuff, it makes a big difference. You try turning off your energy in your well insulated home or going into a cold home and seeing how long you like it and how debilitating it can be, and it affects the mind as well. It’s a false economy and the scandal of fuel poverty has been going on for decades.”
He argued that we have all the solutions we need to deploy – we have them now. He said there’s no need to experiment with offsetting, carbon capture and storage to start properly installing clean renewables at scale in our homes, on our streets, in town centres, or to implement energy saving measure in all sub-standard homes.
He quoted figures relating to UK government energy subsidies since 2015, which have amounted to £80bn on fossil fuels, and £60bn for renewables. He emphasised that not taking action on climate change has significant costs. According to a study by a group of universities and Grantham Institute and LSE: “Many of the climate change impacts that the UK now faces have the potential to create serious socioeconomic consequences.” It explains that the cost of climate change to the UK at the moment with our current policies on cutting emissions is £24bn a year which is 1.1% of GDP, raising to £73 billion (7.4%) a year in 2100.
He concluded: “We have the solutions; we don’t need to keep looking round for more solutions to solve the energy conservation crisis or the renewables crisis… We just need to kind of get on with it and stop being so timid about it.”
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Further reading
Download John Fairlie’s (AW Renewables) presentation
Download Paul de Zylva’s (national Friends of the Earth) presentation