A report into the future deployment of renewable energy in the UK from the government’s Energy and Climate Change Committee has recommended swift action on establishing a European "super" power grid, which would help ensure the country meets its commitment to generate 15% of energy from renewables by 2020.
The plan would involve linking the UK’s electricity system with neighbouring European countries, allowing the national power grid to better manage supply and demand from renewable energy sources, which are intermittent by nature.
According to the report, the UK is a virtual electricity island, and warns the infrastructure and construction costs of developing an offshore grid would be high.
Committee Chair Tim Yeo MP says while the scheme may be a gamble, when weighed against the cost of individually connecting large-scale renewable energy projects, particularly offshore wind farms – a resource the UK government is banking on as a truly viable energy alternative to foreign oil and gas into the future – the plan could be an opportunity for Britain to become a net exporter of clean energy.
“The UK’s electricity system is the least interconnected of all European Countries – but we also have vast offshore resources of renewable energy. In fact, we potentially have enough wind, wave and tidal energy to more than match our North Sea oil and Gas production and transform the country from a net energy importer to a net energy exporter.”
With plans to build between 80 and 280 new wind farms through the 2020s, the committee points out government needs to take control of what is currently a "haphazard" method of planning and connecting offshore wind farms to the mainland.
"A European supergrid would enable the National Grid to balance supply and demand using foreign electricity sources as well as UK ones. This will become increasingly necessary as polluting yet flexible fossil fuel generation is phased out, in favour of clean but intermittent sources of renewable energy," the report states.
The full report, "A European Supergrid", can be viewed here (PDF).
