Tide turning for UK renewables projects

The Scottish government last week approved three large-scale wind energy projects, which together are expected to provide enough energy for 100,000 homes while creating 240 construction jobs.

A 118MW-capacity wind farm on the Isle of Lewis, a 52.5MW wind farm near Thurso, and a 45MW extension to the Rother wind farm near Elgin were all granted planning approval, further underlining Scotland's burgeoning status as a leader in the UK's wind energy industry.

The announcements came as first minister Alex Salmond called on the Scottish financial services industry to provide loans and investment for renewable energy projects and support the low-carbon economy in the same way it helped underpin the development of the country's North Sea oil and gas industry.

"For the Scottish financial sector I see real opportunities in the development of new financial instruments that can harness resources from emerging economies to promote sustainable economic growth and reliable returns for the investor," he said.

The announcements come just days after the new body that approves large-scale energy projects in Britain has said it expects to receive planning applications for several low-carbon projects when it begins to consider applications in March.

The Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) was established under the 2008 Planning Act to speed up the approval process for large-scale infrastructure projects, including onshore wind farms with more than 50MW of capacity and offshore projects with more than 100MW of capacity.

In November, it announced the first set of applications, including five wind farms, a 100MW biomass plant at Blyth, two new nuclear power stations and two National Grid connection projects.

Last week it revealed a further three renewables projects had applied for consideration: an 85MW wind farm at Clocaenog Forest proposed by RWE npower renewables, and two waste-to-energy plants in Bedfordshire and Merthyr Tydfil proposed by US firm Covanta.

In other wind industry news, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) yesterday released new figures showing that the continent's fledgling offshore wind industry grew 54 per cent last year, installing eight new wind farms consisting of 199 offshore wind turbines and boasting a combined capacity of 577MW.

It predicted that 10 new offshore wind farms would be connected to the grid this year, adding 1,000MW of new capacity.

"This is an incredibly good result considering the continued difficulties of obtaining project finance for large projects," said Christian Kjaer, EWEA chief executive. However, he warned that independent project developers were still struggling to raise finance and as a result "it is vital that governments and the European Commission provide policy frameworks that stimulate investor interest and allow project developers to move their plans forward".