Only weeks after the government announced its renewable energy strategy, a survey published today shows that the south west’s installed renewable energy capacity has grown by 15 per cent (24 MW) in the past year, and almost 90 MW of new capacity has been approved and is waiting to be built.
The annual Survey of Renewable Electricity and Heat Projects in South West England, carried out by south west sustainable energy agency Regen SW, shows an encouraging trend, but also indicates that significant improvements need to be made, as the total installed capacity of 189 MW is still only contributing one per cent of the region’s heat and power use.
“The survey shows a mixed picture,” said Matthew Spencer, chief executive of Regen SW. “The region is falling short of its self-imposed target of 597 MW of renewable electricity capacity by 2010 – but this doesn’t tell the full story. The fact that a record 90 MW has been approved in the past year shows that things are improving. We still need more large renewables’ proposals to come forward, and the priority is to have them dealt with more quickly by the planning system.”
“Although we will miss our 2010 targets, we must now look forward to and respond to the UK’s new 2020 goals,” added Matthew. “There are only 600 weeks to 2020, and we don’t have long to speed up deployment and ensure that our renewable energy businesses benefit from renewables becoming a mainstay of UK power and heat generation.”
The south west has also seen a huge increase in the number of micro renewable installations, and very healthy growth in the number of renewable heat schemes. The majority of the increase in renewable heat has come from the installation of biomass boilers as a replacement for oil fired heating, and the rapid increase in micro-renewable installations has been both in electricity and heat technologies, more than doubling to 1,100. The increase in micro renewable installations is particularly noticeable in Devon and Cornwall, where local agencies Renewable Energy for Devon (RE4D) and the Cornwall Sustainable Energy Partnership (CSEP) have run support programmes that appear to be making a real impact.
The counties that experienced the greatest growth in installed renewable capacity in the last year were Cornwall, the former Avon and Devon. The counties that experienced the weakest growth were Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.
County Breakdown of renewable energy capacity
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