RENEWABLE ENERGY NOW NINE TIMES CHEAPER THAN GAS

by Peter Davison, Deputy Editor

Britain has been hit hard by the energy crisis. In fact, according to the International Monetary Fund, we're the hardest-hit country in Europe.

The reason is our heavy reliance on gas to heat homes and produce electricity. The majority of homes in the UK – around 80 per cent, compared with 50 per cent each in France and Germany – use gas to provide heat: a legacy of the exploitation of our once-abundant North Sea gas fields.

We also rely on gas to create electricity more than any of our European neighbours, with the exception of Italy.

The windiest country in Europe has failed to fully embrace the possibilities of wind power. For years, renewable energy was treated as a niche product aimed at the eco-conscious.

But renewable energy is now nine times cheaper than once-cheap gas, and the phrase 'energy security' echoes in the meeting rooms of Westminster – if not the corridors of 10 and 11 Downing Street.

Dale Vince has spent decades beating the drum for renewables. In 1995 he founded the Renewable Energy Company Limited, with a single wind turbine he had used to power an old army truck in which he lived on a hill near Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Today, that company is known as Ecotricity. Still based in Stroud, it has around 200,000 domestic and business customers across the UK.

Dale, who earlier this year announced his intention to sell the company and go into politics, as a Labour Party candidate, was recently invited to address Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee about the energy crisis, and what he thinks the solutions to the problem are.

"Onshore wind is our cheapest, fastest form of renewable energy and it is currently shut out of the planning system by the Conservative government," he told the increasingly-influential committee.

"Onshore solar – the field version, not the rooftop version – is as equally fast and cheap, or almost as cheap, as onshore wind and has enormous capacity as well. "Both of those together could power our whole country 20 times over."

He told the committee that although 50 per cent of the UK's gas requirement comes from the North Sea, it does not cut costs for UK businesses and households because gas is traded on the international commodities market.

"There is no shortage of fossil fuels in the world. There is no reason why this winter we paid up to 10 times more for gas from the North Sea than we did last winter on certain days," he said, "except global speculation and the functioning of commodity markets.

"If we were powered entirely by renewable energy we could set our own price and that price can be fixed to the cost of production, not to global speculation.

"There is no commodity market in wind and solar globally because it gets used where it is made."

He told the committee that changes to the planning laws would need to be made to make it easier to build wind and solar farms. He likened it to mobile communications masts – once subject to strict planning conditions, now permitted as default.

And he argued that renewables were more sustainable not just ecologically, but economically too.

"Before the crisis, as a country we spent £50 billion a year bringing fossil fuels into our country to burn them," he said.

"If we spent that £50 billion for two or three years, over a period of 10 years we could build all the infrastructure we need to make all of the energy we need from renewable sources.

"Then, after that, the £50 billion a year would stay in our economy instead of leaving our country. It would give us the most massive economic boost."

The core purpose of renewable energy supplier Good Energy has "never been more relevant," the firm's CEO said recently.

Nigel Pocklington was speaking as the Chippenham-based firm published its interim financial results for the first half of 2022.

"The global energy crisis is escalating further. Russia's stranglehold on gas supplies to Europe has been magnified by further shortages and uncertainty, driving energy prices in the UK to fresh highs," he said.

"We have been vocal in stating that the only solution in the short-term is government support and demand reduction, with an accelerated roll-out of renewables in the medium to longer term.

Touching on the government's Energy Price Guarantee for domestic customers, he said: "We are now pleased to see the government take meaningful steps to help customers through winter and beyond."

The CEO said everyday consumers were having to "pick up the bill" for the failure of multiple suppliers last year.

"(This) only serves to highlight a greater need for renewables to play a vital role in our long-term energy strategy," he said.

"Not only will a shift to cleaner, local electricity sources cut the UK's carbon, it will cut the UK's ties to fossil fuel-driven global markets.

"As a trusted leader in local, decentralised clean power, Good Energy's core purpose has never been more relevant."

Good Energy began life in 1997 as Ofex, an offshoot of the German power company Unit Energy Europe. The business was later bought by its management and changed its name to Good Energy in 2003, led by its first CEO, Juliet Davenport.

She led the company until last year, when she stepped down and Nigel Pocklington took over.

In the same year the firm, which had built its own network of renewable electricity generators as well as buying and reselling units from small, independent generators sold its solar and wind farms for £21.2 million.

The company has 87,000 domestic customers and 10,000 business customers.