The government should double the capacity of onshore renewables in the next Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction to ensure energy security and decarbonise the grid, according to Regen.
The call by the not-for-profit organisation was issued ahead of Boris Johnson’s keynote address at the Conservative Party Conference today (6 October) at which he was expected – but failed to – pledge all UK electricity generation would come from clean energy sources by 2035.
Regen said to achieve this goal, the government needed to capitalise on the low cost of new solar and onshore wind projects and allow 10GW to be developed in the fourth CfD round this December.
The government announced last month that £10 million of the overall £265 million budget for the next auction would go to “established technologies”, such as onshore wind, solar and hydropower, with a cap of 5GW on total capacity. It also stipulated a maximum capacity limit of 3.5GW on the former two technologies.
In a letter to energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Regen’s chief executive Merlin Hyman said this was “an opportunity sitting right in front of us to hedge against rising power prices quickly and effectively”.
He also called for annual auctions over the coming decade, to allow developers to build their portfolios, investors to raise capital, utilities to and supply chains to develop further.
The letter was sent in expectation that net zero would be a central theme in the prime minister’s speech.
It was widely reported in the weekend papers, that Johnson would set an ambition of a zero-carbon electricity grid by the middle of the next decade.
In an interview earlier this week he had said: “We can get to complete clean energy production by 2035.
“We can do for our entire energy production by 2035 what we’re doing with internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030.”
However, in today’s speech Johnson merely indicated the need to “sort out our energy supply – more wind, more nuclear, becoming less dependent on hydrocarbons from abroad”.
He also ruminated on a visit to the Moray East offshore wind farm in Scotland earlier this year, saying it represented the symmetry between “massive and innovative private sector investment and a government taking the tough decisions to make it possible”.
The only reference to COP26 was a description of it as “the summit of our generation”.
The speech was given short shrift by Stuart Murphy, founder of tidal energy project TPGen24.
He said: “Once again the prime minister has decided to give his supporters popular platitudes opposed to concrete policy on renewable energy, just a few lines on offshore wind. The omission of tidal as a potential solution was glaring, made more acute by the fuel and energy crisis of the last few weeks. It’s hugely disappointing for me and peers in the industry, only proving our perceptions of this government’s tunnel-visioned approach to energy policy.”
WWF’s executive director of advocacy and campaigns Katie White was also unimpressed, saying “a few words on climate and net zero in conferences are not enough without a clear roadmap and funding to match”.