Blair's Green speech - Assembly should push for renewable energy jobs in Wales

Today's green speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair with its announcement of new investment funds for renewable energy developments should be seized on by the Assembly say green campaigners (1). Friends of the Earth Cymru (FOE Cymru) point out that Wales has great geographical potential both on and offshore to take many leading steps in developing and constructing major renewable energy technologies and schemes. Together with Objective One funding and against the backdrop of promised government help in the face of a declining traditional manufacturing base (2), the Assembly should be aiming to secure thousands of Welsh jobs in the globally expanding renewable energy industry.

The campaigners say that a solar PV manufacturing base could be established say at the LG site near Newport, Ebbw Vale or Baglan Bay energy park and major offshore wind-farm deployments off the north and south Wales coast would bring work to various heavy engineering companies Wales wide. Furthermore, large marine current turbine arrays in the fast sea currents around Angelsey and tidal generators, possibly incorporating wave machines and wind-turbines, could put Wales in the global spotlight.

A few more onshore wind-farms should also be progressed, as Wales is well advanced to reach its regional UK capacity target (3), as should many small-scale hydro and biomass schemes. By 2050 Wales needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by about 80-90% to achieve a safe and equitable global emissions quota.

Neil Crumpton, energy spokesperson said:
"Government ministers including the Prime Minister are now realising both the seriousness of global warming caused by burning coal, oil and gas and the positive economic opportunities in investing in clean, safe renewable energy. The Assembly now rapidly needs to respond with a highly progressive renewable energy policy to reap the rewards of environmental protection and the creation of thousands of jobs in a leading renewable energy sector."

Notes

1) Tony Blair's green speech today at London conference organised by the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

2) Government pledged support to Wales in response to large scale redundancies announced by Corus.

3) A BWEA report published summer 2000 proposes an equitable share of wind turbine capacity for each of 13 UK 'regions' to achieve the DTI's 2010 renewables targets (of 13-26% from onshore wind). For Wales an additional 290MW of turbine capacity is proposed which could comprise anything from 870 x 330KW turbines to 193 x 1.5MW turbines. 'Mega' turbines would reduce the number of 'kilowatt' turbines by a factor of typically 2 to 4.5 for a given capacity. An additional 290MW of turbine capacity would generate an extra 5% of current electricity consumption, bringing total wind-farm output to about 7.5%.

There are 357 turbines in Wales (Spring 2000) most in the 330kW to 600kW size, with a total capacity of 148MW producing 389 million Units (kWHrs) per annum. This is about 2.45% of total Welsh electrical consumption of nearly 16,000 million Units per year. The proposed 58.5MW 38 turbine scheme at Cefn Croes would add 1% to the renewable contribution and the called-in 38MW 26 turbine Pentrefoelas scheme about 0.5%. If the Pentrefoelas and Cefn Croes proposals were built the total wind-farm output would generate about 4% of Welsh electricity consumption and only a further 129 turbines (at 1.5MW) would be needed to achieve the BWEA target.