Wind and waves are the future of clean energy in Wales,

Weekend Australian
Saturday 22/3/2008 Page: 24

ENERGY security is essentially a matter of luck. The Arab tribes who made their home in the Middle East centuries ago had no idea of the wealth lying under the ground. And when James Cook sailed back to England in 1770 after landing at Botany Bay, and naming his discovery New South Wales, he was oblivious to the hidden irony of his chosen moniker. Both old south Wales and NSW sat atop billions of tonnes of black coal that would turn both places into global energy powerhouses.

The threat of climate change may require a radical and painful interruption to the exploitation of Australia's vast and still relatively untapped coal reserves. In Wales, coal seams are all but exhausted, put out of their misery by former prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1960s. And, as the North Sea gas fields also decline, in Britain the spectre of energy security has returned, forcing the Government to think hard and fast about life after coal.

The availability of new sources of more expensive but cleaner energy are proving to be just as serendipitous as fossil fuels. Australia looks as if it will again be a winner, blessed as it is with abundant sunshine, persistent winds and hot underground rocks. And so does Wales. The windswept principality plans to be energy self-sufficient by 2030, powered by an array of energy sources: nuclear, biomass, wind, waves and tides.

"There were a lot of ideas that were considered crazy in the 1970s that are becoming centre stage now," Welsh Environment Minister Jane Davidson says. Her government released a renewable energy route map in January and has combined known wind mapping with local planning conditions to prescribe seven regions in Wales suitable for large-scale wind farms. No onshore wind farms will be allowed near the coastline, as national parks and local planning issues are considered too contentious. Last year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set a target of developing 30,000MW of offshore wind energy by 2020, the same output as from 15 coal-fired power stations.

Davidson tells Inquirer: "If we are going to be safe and secure in energy, we need to have big, industrial-sized wind farms. But we are only going to have those in places that are not in national parks, that are not in areas of outstanding natural beauty and where the wind blows." Offshore wind is attractive because it has minimal effect on human settlements and can maximise the wind. But it also requires relatively shallow water to keep down installation costs. Even then, those costs are at least 30 per cent higher than conventional onshore wind electricity. This approach has not been without community opposition. There are more than 160 local groups across Britain trying to stop offshore wind farms from going ahead, even though most of them will operate kilometres off the coast.

Along the north coast of Wales is the Welsh Riviera": a line of picturesque seaside resort towns that have struggled to compete against the considerably sunnier holiday options offered in Spain and farther afield. It's also pretty windy and suitably shallow for offshore wind farms. In 2003, German energy company Npower built a small $200 million 30-turbine pilot wind farm, North Hoyle, about 10km off the north Wales coast.

Now the company plans to build a 200-turbine farm. The GWynt y Mor (Welsh for windy sea) farm will generate as much electricity as a coal-fired power station. It will be 13km from shore but still visible from the holiday resort of Llandudno, where residents are fighting to stop the proposal. Npower offshore development manager Mark Legerton admits the proposed farm will occupy more of the horizon than North Hoyle, whose distant turbines look like masts from the shore.

"There is an element within Llandudno who don't welcome the prospect of a wind farm on their part of the coastline," Legerton says. "It's human nature to resist change and it's an instinct that has served us well for thousands of years, but if we're not careful it will let us down at the vital moment when we are dealing with climate change." Local opposition group Save Our Scenery has been lobbying the local Conwy council, as well as parliament, to try to stop the wind farm. SOS secretary Janet Howorth says the turbines will be an eyesore even 13km away and claims wind energy is heavily subsidised.

"GWynt y Mor will make a massive impact on a very buoyant holiday resort," she says. "These turbines are going up everywhere and we are a small island and an overcrowded island and so our sensitive tourist areas shouldn't be exploited in this way." Boats are free to sail and fish around the North Hoyle site, and so far there have been no incidents, but the bigger site farther offshore will require full-time monitoring, according to Npower engineer Gareth Williams.

"You won't be able to get out there and back in a day, so it will need to have a service rig like an oil platform," he says. "You can see them (turbines), for sure. Whether they are prominent is in the eye of the beholder." Last month British Energy Secretary John Hutton announced the construction of the world's biggest power station, to be fuelled by wood chips. The $1 billion, 350MW power station in south Wales will source wood chips from forestry plantations in the US, Russia and Ukraine.

Britain also is progressing with a feasibility study into construction of the Severn barrage in southwest England. The $40 billion project has been the stuff of engineering dreams for more than 100 years. It would protect the Severn estuary from flooding, aid shipping and, importantly for energy, deliver up to 15,000MW of electricity by trapping tidal water and releasing it through turbines.

The barrage would meet 5 per cent of the British electricity demand. Opponents say it will harm marine ecosystems. On a more modest scale, Lunar Energy is developing technology to harness energy from tidal movement by building underwater tidal farms. The first 8MW plant will comprise four sturdy yellow turbines, 25m long and 15m high, rotating at about the same speed as a revolving door. The tidal farm will be constructed on the seabed off west Wales's Pembrokeshire coast by 2010.

Lunar Energy's Niels Nielsen says the technology is made economically viable by geography: the shape of the seabed forces tides to flow swift and constant. "If you have a very strong current, you tend to get rips and eddies, so that is more of a reason not to go there. You are looking for linear flows," he says. "The whole ocean energy thing has been a figment of scientists' and inventors' imaginations for many decades." The company expects the electricity generated will cost about the same as wind energy, providing it can resolve issues such as the safety of large sea mammals, that could be at risk of harm if they swim into the slowly rotating blades. "The first (turbines) going in will be very heavily monitored so somehow we will have to keep (animals) out of there," Nielsen says.