Renewable Energy Foundation

The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) regrets the misreporting of the High Court ruling on the RWE Judicial Review of Milton Keynes Borough Council’s attempt to set a minimum separation distance between wind turbines and residential dwellings.

Milton Keynes Borough Council is to be congratulated on the judgment reached in the High Court case on their Wind Turbine Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) on Monday 15 April 2013. The judgment confirms that local authorities can set exclusion zones to protect local people from inappropriate development. Press reports and press statements from the wind industry suggesting that the judgment prevents local authorities from doing so are incorrect.
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REF on MK Judgment

In yesterday's Sunday Telegraph it was revealed that wind power investors are expecting a 40% increase in subsidies to existing wind farms (and those built before 2017) due to the effects of the Carbon Price Support (sometimes called the Carbon Price Floor) that will be introduced in April.¹

The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF)² has seen the leaked Barclays investor briefing reported by the Sunday Telegraph. This document predicts the effect of the Carbon Price Support will be to boost renewables subsidies by an extra £20/MWh within a matter of years. This is an increase of more than 40% on the index-linked subsidy under the Renewables Obligation which is currently about £45/MWh.

REF calculates that the extra subsidy paid to operational wind farms and those likely to be built before 2017, when the Renewables Obligation closes, will reach £1 billion a year around 2016/2017, with about half this going to onshore wind farms.
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Carbon Price Support Windfall

The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.  

The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh[3], and has been anonymously peer-reviewed.  This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.
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ref pr 19 12 12.pdf

The Renewable Energy Foundation, a UK charity publishing data on the sector, today published a new freely accessible and user friendly web application allowing users to view and analyse the fuel mix generating Great Britain's electricity for every half hour since the 1st of January 2009.
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Press Release 26/09/12

The Renewable Energy Foundation today welcomed DECC’s announcement of cuts to overall renewables subsidies that will contain costs to the domestic consumers and the wider economy.

In a shock announcement Ed Davey has today made public sweeping changes to the Renewables Obligation subsidy system, including cuts to wind power subsidies and a major change of emphasis to encourage the use of biomass in converted coal power stations, which is one of the cheapest ways of generating green electricity. The UK already has one such conversion, at Tilbury, thought to be the world’s largest biomass generator.
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DECCs Rebanding Announcement

The Renewable Energy Foundation today welcomed the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) study showing that the UK's climate change policies are expensive relative to other major economies and damaging for UK industry. [1]

REF has consistently argued since its creation in 2004 that our renewable energy and low carbon policies are counterproductive, since the costs are unreasonably high and consequently unpersuasive to the rest of the world.
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REF Press release on BIS Report on RE Costs for UK Industry

Commenting on the government’s Energy Bill, published today, and its proposed Electricity Market Reform (EMR), the Renewable Energy Foundation[1] expressed concerns that domestic and commercial consumer interest had been given a low priority in government reforms, and that ministerial claims that the Energy Bill offered the lowest cost route to a low carbon future were simply not credible.
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Energy Bill Betrays Consumers

In an address to a Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI East Anglia) conference in Ipswich on Friday the 10th of February,[1] Dr John Constable, Director of Renewable Energy Foundation (REF, a UK charity publishing data on the energy sector [2]) told attendees that analysis of the government's own data[3] showed that contrary to widespread belief, the wind industry was not being significantly obstructed by planning objections. 
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70% Onshore Wind Farms Approved

In response to an increasing number of press inquiries about the sums of money paid to wind farms to reduce output (the so-called ‘constraint payments’) Renewable Energy Foundation (REF[1]) is today publishing a new online database giving analysed details of all wind farms constrained off the system through the Balancing Mechanism, which is operated by National Grid[2].
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REF on Constraints Database

Renewable Energy Foundation (REF)¹ today issued the following interim statement on the Climate Change Committee’s study, Household Energy Bills: Impacts of Meeting Carbon Budgets.²

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) believes that green policies will put about £100 a year on the average domestic electricity bill in 2020 (p. 5), which is equivalent to about £2.6 billion (assuming that there are about 26m households in 2020, as there are today).
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CCC confirms Green Costs