More About Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is fundamental to two of ScottishPower’s key impacts – Provision of Energy and Climate Change and Emissions to Air. Our significant investment in renewable energy is part of our commitment to providing a secure, diverse and sustainable energy supply.

Renewable energy is one of the key weapons in the battle against climate change. The UK Government aims to have 10% of the UK’s energy needs generated from renewables by 2010 and has set an aspirational target to achieve 20% of power from renewable sources by 2020. In Scotland the targets are even more ambitious with 18% renewables targeted by 2010 an aspirational target to meet 40% of the Scotland’s needs from renewables by 2020.

This will require not only the rapid development of new windfarms, but also reinforcement of the electricity network to enable renewable energy to be transmitted from remote areas, mainly in Scotland, to cities and towns throughout the UK.

In the UK
In the UK, support for renewables is provided through the Renewables Obligation (RO) that requires suppliers to source 10% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010, rising to 15.4% by 2015. The effectiveness of the Renewables Obligation is being considered as part of the Government’s Energy Review 2006. As the UK’s leading developer of windfarms – and the second largest wind developer in the US – we are committed to making significant investment in renewable energy over the next few years.

The UK Government announced new support for biomass in March 2006 under the revised Climate Change Programme and in May of the same year the Scottish Executive pledged funding of £20 million for biomass, marine, hydrogen and fuel cell projects and microrenewables.

In the US
President George W Bush pledged $44 million for wind energy research in the 2007 budget, announced in May 2006. About 6% of the continental land mass has been identified as suitable for wind turbine construction, providing the potential to supply up to 20% of the nation’s energy needs. To date, at least 21 US states have adopted Renewable Portfolio Standard requirements, which require utilities to source a proportion of their energy from renewables. The renewables sector also benefits from a Production Tax Credit for new wind farms placed in service by December 31, 2007.

Currently our focus is on onshore wind as wind resource is abundant, the technology is reliable and it is supported by the Renewables Obligation in the UK and the Production Tax Credit in the US.

Renewable Targets
In the UK, we have set our sights on generating at least 10% of our electricity from renewables by 2010, equivalent to approximately 1,000 MW and in the US, where we have around 1,405 MW of wind power, we have raised our 2010 target from 2,300 MW to 3,500 MW.

Achieving full delivery of renewables in the UK will also require major investment in the networks infrastructure to deliver renewable power to population centres and we plan to invest at least £400 million in upgrading the transmission network to support this.

We take care to deliver responsible and sustainable windfarm projects, choosing to develop primarily on low impact locations such as commercial forests and brownfield sites, where we can minimise the impact on the landscape and create new habitats for wildlife. We also work hard to make sure local communities benefit from our windfarm projects.

In April 2006 ScottishPower Renewables received a Queen’s Award in the Sustainable Development category for our responsible approach to windfarm development. We also received consent to build Whitelee Windfarm, a 140 turbine site with a capacity of 322 MW at Eaglesham Moor south of Glasgow, which will be Europe’s largest windfarm.

As well as wind we are supporting the development of the Pelamis wave generator, which is currently undergoing commercial trials. We expect marine energy from wave and tidal generators to be the next commercially available technologies, subject to the right package of funding support.

We are developing two offshore wind projects in England at Blackpool and Barrow-in-Furness. We co-fire biomass fuels at our coal fired power stations and recently started development work on a purpose-built biomass plant at Longannet. We continue to invest in the Galloway and Lanark Hydroelectric Schemes and Cruachan, our 440 MW pumped storage hydro station.