Is tide turning for renewable energy?
WHEN I visited Orkney in the 1970s, it was deeply involved in the North Sea oil boom.
The Flotta oil terminal is still operating but renewable energy – mainly wind and some tidal – generates up to 120 per cent of the electricity for Orkney’s 22,000 inhabitants, and has been exported since 2013.
The Orkneys are now at the forefront of finding cleaner, green energy from the sea.
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Stromness is trialling 48 tidal and wave projects. These include the world’s most powerful tidal turbine, Orbital Marine Power’s O2.
It could generate enough electricity for 2,000 UK homes – just one of many international schemes testing renewables other than wind and solar.
One is the £3billion TPGen24, brainchild of engineer Stuart Murphy. He says his proposed network of lagoons could generate clean electricity for 1.86 million homes a year by tapping into the tides of the Dee estuary near Liverpool – a more predictable energy source than wind or solar.
The UK should be the Saudi Arabia of marine power with its 11,000-mile coastline, but it remains expensive. In 2018 the Government refused to back the proposed £1.3billion Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon.
However at EMEC, commercial director Matthew Finn said: “By the 2030s we should see these schemes scaling up and the technology becoming more efficient and competitive.”
Other renewables include geothermal power, which taps into the heat of the Earth. In Iceland it heats 87 per cent of buildings and provides a quarter of the electricity.
Another option is hydrogen – but this is controversial depending on how it is produced, and costlier than natural gas.