The Olympic and Paralympic games, by and large, show humans in the best possible light. Self-sacrifice, goodwill, fair play and recognition through achievement. However, above all, it is an example of the importance of planning for the future. Nobody turned up, phoned it in and left without giving a toss (save perhaps for Australia’s breakdancing hopeful).
And yet, when it comes to energy security that is exactly what the UK is doing. We are metaphorically crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. Here in Wiltshire, for instance, we now have a vociferous anti-solar lobby that sees every panel, array or inverter as a threat to the green belt, food production and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Regardless of where it is, or how useful in terms of reducing the carbon footprint of the county. Solar = bad. Wind farms are as commonplace in Wiltshire as a Rotherham rioter with an IQ greater than a fruit fly.
So why are we so reluctant to prepare for climate change and take affirmative action to tackle it? The last government changed direction on green issues more times than a strictly dancer on steroids. One minute it’s all ‘hug a husky’ with “Dave” Cameron, the next minute it is support for COP with Boris and his eco-invested wife, and then up pops Rishi with his doomster team who only saw green as something related to cash, or a venture capital opportunity – happy to “drill baby drill” in the North Sea.
Ironically, of all the barriers to the energy transition, the greatest has not been political will, it is ultimately cost. High costs help explain why, despite a broad international consensus on the need to arrest carbon emissions, oil, coal and gas still account for about 80% of global energy consumption. Fossil fuels historically dominated because they were cheap by comparison.
Renewables, originally in the form of hydropower, have been around for many decades but until about 15 years ago, their share of global energy use remained relatively flat. Building a new coal or gas-fired power plant provided cheaper power than new wind or solar capacity. Now, thanks to advances in technology and manufacturing, renewables are far cheaper. The price of electricity generated by new solar has declined by over 90% in the last decade and the price of electricity generated by wind has fallen by over 70%.
The decline in the cost of solar power is even more remarkable over a longer period. The first practical use of solar power was to power US satellites in the late 1950s. The costs per watt were staggering, roughly five million times today’s levels. Through the 1960s solar panels were restricted to specialist, high-value settings, principally satellites. But as know-how and scale developed, prices started to fall, leading to the wider deployment of solar panels in areas without access to grid electricity. In the case of solar and wind, government subsidies, especially in China, played a big role in kickstarting the process. The result has been a virtuous cycle of lower prices driving demand and production which, in turn, drives down prices. The Our World in Data website estimates that every doubling of installed solar capacity leads to a roughly 20% decline in the price of solar modules.
It is ironic that one of the world’s most prolific polluters, China, is also making one of the greatest contributions to bringing the cost of renewables down. How much of that is due to its use of slave labour and persecution of the Uyghur population has yet to be determined, but it is almost impossible to invest in renewables without the involvement of Chinese technology or products.
So, what next? The Green Alliance, an independent think tank and charity focused on ambitious leadership for the environment has a possible answer to that question. It points out that the UK is almost entirely reliant on certain imported materials needed for the construction of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. This includes things like lithium, which is needed to produce EV batteries. Since the UK has few raw materials of its own, we must look abroad for the resources we need to achieve our clean-power goals.
Green Alliance recommends that the UK take a more circular approach, rather than being so dependent on expensive imports. This would mean building in capacity to reuse, re-manufacture and recycle the materials used to build solar panels and wind farms in the first place. At the end of a product’s lifespan – as old solar panels, batteries and other goods become waste products – the UK ends up being a major exporter of the same raw materials that we import. Instead of continuing as we are and importing materials for construction before exporting them as waste at the end of products’ lives, we should look to integrate plans for reuse. If you’re thinking about long-term resource security and energy security, end-of-life infrastructure could prove to be valuable assets when reusing the materials over and over again, they argue.
If we were to treat the climate crisis, reduction of carbon and our energy security with the same commitment and conjoined sense of purpose as Team GB displayed in Paris, we would have a much stronger economy, greater productivity and a legacy that offers our children and grandchildren a much more optimistic future. A mixed energy approach, re-purposing existing infrastructure and reusing raw materials have all got to be options…
Julian Barlow is chair of Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy
Originally shared to LinkedIn on 15th August 2024.