The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-14440, in the name of Mike MacKenzie, on the energy storage network. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the launch by Scottish Renewables of its new storage network and its publication of a briefing paper, Energy Storage: The Basics; understands that the technologies covered in the paper include hydrogen fuel cells, large-scale heat storage and supercapacitors and that the purpose of the network is to bring together people and organisations with an interest in the energy storage sector, which it believes is growing rapidly; notes reports that it is estimated that the global market for large-scale energy storage will be worth around £20 billion by 2022; understands that Scotland has already taken a lead in the development of technologies such as grid-scale batteries, and notes the view that it is of vital importance to the future of the renewable energy sector in the Highlands and Islands and across the country that Scotland continues to develop a strong energy storage sector.
17:04
I am pleased to have secured this debate in order to shine a light on energy storage, because energy storage is an often forgotten and sometimes undervalued aspect of our energy system, yet it is a fundamental and critical part of that system. I am grateful to Scottish Renewables for its report “Energy storage: The Basics”, because I have perhaps been as guilty as anyone in not previously properly considering and giving due prominence to the important matter of energy storage.
Before I continue, I would like to do something that I do not believe I have ever done before in the chamber. Indeed, it is something that I may never do again. I want to pay a tribute to a Labour politician; I want to pay a tribute to the late, great Labour Secretary of State for Scotland, Tom Johnston. It was Tom Johnston who brought hydro power to the Highlands and Islands, bringing into being both hydroelectricity generation and pumped storage on a scale that we have not since matched. In doing so, he left us a legacy that continues to benefit the Highlands and Islands to this day.
It would be useful for the member to know that the admiration for Tom Johnston spreads across the chamber. I seem to remember that a portrait of Tom Johnston was hanging in Bute house when the previous First Minister was there. He used to regard Tom Johnston as the precursor of at least part of the type of Scotland that we would like to see.
I am grateful to Mr Russell for that information. I had not realised that Tom Johnston’s portrait was in Bute house.
In Tom Johnston’s wisdom he recognised that what would benefit the Highlands and Islands would also benefit Scotland, and, in his wisdom, he recognised that what would benefit Scotland would also benefit the rest of the United Kingdom. It is that kind of wisdom that is quite evidently so lacking in today’s unionist politicians. It is sometimes forgotten that Tom Johnston also introduced storage heaters, storing energy at times of low demand, bringing affordable, convenient heating to the Highlands and Islands on a significant scale and utilising energy that would otherwise be wasted by storing it at the household level.
Presiding Officer, I mention that to demonstrate that, even without renewable energy generation, energy storage was and is both necessary and worth while. It is used to help balance the peaks and troughs of demand and supply.
Tom Johnston also tried to exterminate the Scots midge, but that was less successful. The point that I was going to make was that he took emergency legislation through all its procedures in 10 days—I think—in the House of Commons to enable the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, as it became, to do its work. There might be a lesson for us all there.
I am very grateful to Mr Salmond for that further information. Like midges, a lot of small Scotsmen are equally difficult to exterminate.
Energy storage is also used to provide a degree of energy security. The pumped storage facility at Cruachan provides the initial black-start power to jump-start the system in the event of a system-wide failure.
With the advent of renewable energy, with all its possibilities and opportunities, energy storage is even more critical. Critics of wind energy often make the self-evident observation that the wind does not blow all the time—they might not have talked to some of my constituents in Tiree. That is a backward-looking, Luddite view of centralised energy production, which fails to recognise that the current energy system is failing us.
The evidence of failure is in our high energy costs, with rates of fuel poverty of more than 30 per cent across Scotland and more than 50 per cent on some of our islands. The evidence of failure is in our spare capacity generation, which is at an all-time and dangerous low of 1.2 per cent, according to National Grid. The evidence of failure is in the UK Government’s enormous subsidy for the untried and untested European pressurised reactor at Hinkley Point, and in the UK Government’s desperation in bribing the Chinese to invest in such a risky venture.
The solution to the problem and the way forward is to embrace the possibility of clean, green renewable energy generation. Scotland has the possibility of generating many times our own energy requirements, and the variety of storage solutions is limited only by our ingenuity and our extraordinary capabilities for technological innovation—something that we Scots have been good at for generations. There is no single magic bullet. Pumped storage, hydrogen, flywheels, ever cleverer and bigger batteries, compressed air, electric vehicles and other new and emerging technologies all offer exciting energy storage solutions.
There are a number of reasons why we must increase both our renewable energy generation and, in tandem, our storage capability. We need to do so to meet our climate change targets; we need to do so because, as world energy demand continues to rise, we need to increase our energy security; and we need to do so because we have a huge competitive advantage in these technologies and, therefore, a huge economic opportunity both at home, in capturing this enormous resource, and abroad, in exporting our skills and the technologies that we develop—technologies and skills in which we are already well ahead of the rest of the world.
The only missing ingredient in bringing all this to fruition is the lack of political will from the UK Government, which needs to recognise, as Tom Johnston did, that what is good for Scotland can also be good for the rest of the UK. As we consider our constitutional future, we must remember that the aim of constitutional change is the delivery of good government, and an essential part of good government lies in enabling us to capture our economic opportunities, especially in sectors such as energy in which we have a huge competitive advantage.
We have already stood by and watched as much of our oil wealth has been squandered. It would be a tragedy if we were forced to watch the same thing happen to our renewable energy opportunity.
17:12
I thank Mike MacKenzie and congratulate him on securing the debate. It might not look like the most exciting issue that we will debate this week, but it is probably one of the most important. I therefore welcome the fact that he has put it on the agenda for us tonight.
Mike MacKenzie mentioned the challenges that we face: the fact that 39 per cent of our households are in fuel poverty; the fact that we are missing the emissions targets; the target of meeting our electricity demand from renewables; the stalling in the transformation that we need across our economy, which, as he said, is partly due to the UK Government’s chopping and changing in both its investment and the regulatory framework; and the challenge of intermittency. We are now beginning to power ahead with lots of different levels and scales of renewables, particularly wind renewables, but we do not have the grid or the storage back-up to maximise the economic and energy opportunities.
We face huge challenges, but I agree with Mike MacKenzie that we have now invented technologies that can overcome many of those challenges and help us to deliver security of supply and use the energy that we are currently wasting because we are unable to store it. For that reason, I particularly welcome the research that has been done and the briefings that we have been presented with by WWF and Scottish Renewables. Those new technologies are key to our economic and climate future in Scotland. They are key to a green energy transition that involves the creation of jobs, affordable heat and energy and a climate-friendly energy network.
There is no single, one-size-fits-all solution, and that plays to the contributions of the Highlands and Islands, of villages and of towns. It also plays to the contribution of cities. We will all have different opportunities depending on the local geography and circumstances, but we need to look at the range of energy and heat storage technologies that are available and work out what is best in all those areas.
The ambition of the post-war Labour Government was about having a mix of regulation and a mix of key partners and, crucially, it was about looking at the huge opportunity from large-scale hydro. We now have many more opportunities. Community hydro schemes are coming back into vogue. Hydro schemes present a particular opportunity because they can be community owned, and the benefits stay with the communities.
We need to look at other technologies, such as battery technologies. On Eigg, I have seen battery technology being used to develop fantastic opportunities. As the years go by—by the time we hit 2020 and 2025—we need to have cars, bikes, buses and other vehicles using battery storage. That will begin to transform how we use the electricity that is being produced but not being used.
Hydrogen fuel cells also have a huge and exciting potential. One of the opportunities that are being pursued is at community level. The work that is being done in the northern isles in particular is very exciting and we must begin to roll that out across the economy.
I will end on thermal storage. It is probably not the most exciting end of the energy spectrum, but it is potentially the most transformational. Let us go back to the opening statistic: 39 per cent of our households are in fuel poverty and there are people in the Western Isles in extreme fuel poverty. There are opportunities in district heating and district heating storage, such as the work of Glasgow’s Star Renewable Energy in Norway. The University of Edinburgh is leading the way on the key issue of how we make that work properly.
The issue is not just about renewables but about low and zero-carbon technologies. It is about using and bringing together a variety of renewables and heat technologies. The proposals at the University of Edinburgh have generated savings of £1.5 million a year and reduced CO2 emissions. The challenge is how to make such projects work across the country. Our Scandinavian neighbours have some of the solutions. We need to use new developments, supported by grants and planning approaches. We must also ensure that the public sector works with the private sector to bring about the change. The developments are really exciting.
Mike MacKenzie was right to kick off with the vision of Tom Johnston. We need that now in this Parliament—no pressure, minister. I hope that in the minister’s concluding remarks we will hear some of that vision and ambition, as well as the key steps to make the changes that we need. We in Scottish Labour are up for the challenge. Let us work together to deliver on that.
17:17
I, too, congratulate my friend Mike MacKenzie on securing this important and timely debate.
Last year, I was delighted to host an event in Parliament with Heriot-Watt University on its energy academy. We heard about the wide variety of technological storage solutions being researched by the university’s talented team. Mike MacKenzie and Sarah Boyack mentioned some of that work in their speeches.
This is no academic subject. Last week we saw the practical consequences of not investing in energy storage. We are repeatedly told that blackouts are the stuff of science fiction, but last week they nearly became a cold reality—with the emphasis on “cold”. National Grid had to issue an emergency request for electricity due to an unexpected spike in demand. Its winter outlook report revealed capacity margins as low as 1.2 per cent, as Mike MacKenzie mentioned. The safe level is 5 per cent. A capacity margin is the average amount of extra electricity available compared with peak winter demand, so 1.2 per cent is worryingly low.
I was very pleased to hear that Mr Ewing had written to the responsible minister at UK level, Amber Rudd, to warn her against her complacency in the matter. It is well known that UK energy policy, which she presides over, discriminates against Scottish renewables; it is also well known that it discriminates against generators such as Longannet, which is being forced to close early because of unfair transmission charges. It is less well known how it discriminates against storage technology, another area in which Scotland can lead.
As Mr MacKenzie mentioned, that discrimination not only damages Scotland but contributes to supply issues right across the UK. As the WWF briefing for the debate says,
“The current UK energy market framework does not provide an adequate revenue stream for large storage projects, and there are no targeted support mechanisms.”
That point has been repeated to the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee by other experts and by the generators themselves, notably Scottish Power and SSE.
We have two shovel-ready projects that are being held up by the UK Government’s policy failure on storage: the Cruachan extension, which is included in the national planning framework 3 as a nationally important piece of infrastructure; and Coire Glas by Loch Lochy. Between them, those two projects would bring pumped storage capacity in Scotland to well over 2GW by 2030. To put that into context, there is currently around 3.24GW of storage capacity in Britain, so those two projects alone would make a significant contribution, although they would still not bring us anywhere near Germany, which already has 7GW of storage, Spain, which has 8GW of storage, or Japan, which has 25GW of storage. Storage provides more flexibility, as those countries understand and as expert witnesses told the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers also said as much last year in its important report on the subject.
Managing supply and demand when it comes to electricity is a fine art and, when it has failed to balance supply and demand, National Grid has been forced to pay large sums of money just to maintain some kind of equilibrium. We are always hearing about the constraint payments to wind farms, the energy from which we all accept is intermittent, but it is not just renewable energy generators that receive those payments—they go to power stations as well. For example, in 2012-13 National Grid paid out £170 million in constraint payments overall, of which wind generators received just £7 million.
Now the public is becoming aware, with some degree of alarm, of something called demand-side balancing reserve, whereby National Grid pays large industrial customers not to use power. Those payments also run into millions of pounds and are set to increase, although there seems to be considerable secrecy around them.
Meanwhile, the UK plans to address the crisis by spending billions doubling the interconnectors with the continent and investing in nuclear energy. It would be so much easier and cheaper to allow Scotland to develop its strengths in renewable energy and storage potential, but only this week we learned that Amber Rudd, while implementing policies that cut off investment in Scotland’s renewables projects, is planning to pay to import renewable energy.
The UK Government and its regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, are presiding over a system in which consumers are paying through the nose for a system that could have been invented by Lewis Carroll—it is quite simply absurd. One week we are paying firms to switch off, and the next week we are paying astronomical amounts to keep the lights on.
You need to close, please.
I am just finishing.
During last week’s crisis, the price that National Grid paid to some generators reached £2,500 per megawatt hour when it is normally £50.
Investing in energy storage to overcome the issue of intermittence and ensure a smooth supply of green energy when we need it makes a lot more sense, and I very much hope that the UK Government soon sees sense on the matter.
I must now ask members to keep to four minutes. Even if they do so, given the number of members who still wish to speak in the debate I am minded to accept a motion from Mike MacKenzie, under rule 8.14.3, that the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Mike MacKenzie.]
Motion agreed to.
17:23
One of the first things that I was ever taught in a science class was that energy can never be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another. That is a lesson that we should all take to heart when we are thinking about the need to store energy because, too often, we go for the hi-tech solution when low tech is the right way to go.
Many people will remember how conditions in some areas of Africa were transformed when Trevor Baylis had the genius idea of putting a clockwork mechanism on a radio. Simple—and, in some cases, ancient—technology can serve a modern function. For that reason, we should always be careful not to go for the high-tech solution when the low-tech solution will deliver.
With regard to the energy storage solutions that are available, a number of members have already suggested that pumped storage or hydro is the way to go. We have certain difficulties in Scotland—for example, our mountains are not as high as those in Norway or the Urals, and the volume of water that is available is not as great as that in other countries—but using low-cost surplus electricity to pump water up a hill and then letting it back down through the turbines during times of demand and at a much higher price is a tremendous business model. We should always remember that, regardless of what Government can or cannot do, that business model already pays off handsomely for the company that operates such pumped storage schemes. We should seek to extend that technology wherever we can, because almost all of our current hydro schemes would be suitable for pumped storage.
Does the member agree that the kind of pumped storage scheme that I see on the Falls of Clyde and across Scotland is a much better model than the centralised nuclear energy model, which the member’s party is arguing for, and the very expensive waste issue that comes with it?
I might have time later to get on to the subject of diversity of energy sources, which is something that I believe in.
The other point that I wanted to make with regard to low-tech solutions is about compressed or liquefied air, which is also mentioned in the report that we are discussing. We can learn a great deal from work that is being done, particularly in India, on cars that are powered by liquid air. It is a wonderful way of storing energy; it is almost like a spring, and it can achieve great results.
In my last minute, I want to explain how our electricity system works. Our electricity is generated at 50 cycles per second, and we can test the load on the system at any moment from any socket in any wall simply by checking the rate at which the current is oscillating. If it deviates by more than a few fractions of 1 per cent above or below that 50 cycles per second figure, someone in a control room somewhere is panicking and trying either to produce extra capacity or to shut capacity down. It is vital that, as we move towards a more environmentally based system, we have the means to change that capacity. That is why we pay for generators, including wind turbines, to be switched off; their value is greater if they are held in reserve than if they are used simply to displace something else.
If we put all our eggs in one basket—in any one form of energy production—we will put continuity of supply at risk. That is why, as I said in response to the earlier intervention, I will always campaign for diversity in our energy sources. Only through diversity can we have the consistency required to ensure that when we flick a switch the power comes on.
Please close.
If we fail to be diverse in our energy sources, we run a much greater risk of that power not coming on.
17:28
First of all, Presiding Officer, I must apologise to you and Mike MacKenzie for not being able to stay until the end of the debate.
I thank Mike MacKenzie for bringing this motion to Parliament, because I think that it addresses an interesting and important factor in Scotland’s energy future. All of us in the chamber know that the Scottish Government has set progressive targets for and introduced initiatives to boost Scotland’s renewable energy sector. For example, Scotland now meets more than 50 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable sources and we hope that, by 2020, we will be meeting 100 per cent of our electricity demands from such sources. We will continue to work towards that goal.
In order to help our energy industry to grow, we need to invest in new and developing technologies, and I believe that we need to look in particular at energy storage, which is a solution to one of the renewable energy sector’s biggest problems. In many cases, excess energy that is generated by popular renewable sources such as wind turbines is lost because it cannot be stored effectively.
I am therefore proud to join my colleagues in support of Scottish Renewables and its publication of “Energy Storage: The Basics”, which showcases some of the most successful new storage technologies in Scotland. New storage technologies will allow us to harness the maximum amount of energy that is produced and to fuel our country through renewable sources at any time, not just when turbines are turning or the sun is shining.
As Mike MacKenzie has rightly pointed out, the energy storage industry alone will be worth roughly £20 billion globally by 2022. It is therefore essential that Scotland develops a strong energy storage sector and thereby assures a place for itself in that growing global market.
The continued development of efficient energy storage technology is particularly important to me, as the energy sector drives a great deal of industry in my Kirkcaldy constituency. I would therefore like to focus on one type of energy storage that is specific to my constituency: hydrogen fuel cells.
I was pleased that Scottish Renewables highlighted the work that is being carried out by the Hydrogen Office at Fife energy park, which is located in Methil, as a case study for the expansion of hydrogen fuel storage. The Hydrogen Office was founded in 2011 with funding from Scottish Renewables and other local energy-aware organisations, with the goal of promoting efficient renewable energy, specifically through hydrogen power. It now converts any excess energy that is produced by its wind turbine into hydrogen gas, which is stored in a high-pressure stainless steel tank.
That fuel can be transferred to a 10kW fuel cell and used to power the Hydrogen Office at the energy park at up to 80 per cent efficiency when the wind turbine does not provide enough real-time electricity to the facility. When full, the fuel cell can power the Hydrogen Office for up to two weeks. Perhaps the best benefit of using hydrogen to power the Hydrogen Office is that water is the only by-product of the process. By using hydrogen power, the Hydrogen Office has eliminated its carbon emissions entirely.
I reinforce for members that hydrogen fuel storage is not a technology that is feasible only for large-scale facilities. The Hydrogen Office’s parent organisation, Bright Green Hydrogen, has created a pilot programme based in Levenmouth for the use of hydrogen fuel cells in vehicles. A fleet of 20 electric cars and vans plus two bin lorries use hydrogen fuel to continually charge their batteries. That allows cars to run for up to 200 miles without stopping.
The Hydrogen Office is only one venture in the grand scheme of Scotland’s energy needs, but its success shows us that hydrogen fuel cells and new energy storage technologies in general have an increasingly important place in Scotland’s energy industry. The expansion of hydrogen fuel cell technology into smaller projects, such as powering cars, will help Scotland’s transition to an increased reliance on renewable sources.
The conversion of renewable energy to hydrogen gas could replace petrol, coal and natural gas in the future, and it could eliminate entirely Scotland’s need for non-renewable sources of energy. I am proud to say that an organisation in my constituency has been at the forefront of developing that new technology, and I know that it will soon be able to apply its new innovations across Scotland.
17:32
I, too, congratulate Mike MacKenzie on securing this important debate and I join him in acknowledging and welcoming the work that Scottish Renewables has done through the launch of its new storage network and the publication of “Energy Storage: The Basics”.
As has been said, we pretty regularly debate in the Parliament the issue of energy, but the focus is invariably on generation—usually electricity generation—rather than the wider contribution of heat and transport. In turn, that has led to claims that demand reduction and energy efficiency are the Cinderella of the energy debate. However, I am not sure that energy storage does not have a more compelling claim to that dubious honour. Invariably, it is a postscript to a speech here and there. It is an apparent afterthought that is worthy of acknowledgment but of no serious discussion in the overall energy debate. That is a failing on our part, and I am pleased that we have an opportunity—albeit a brief one—to begin to redress the balance and give storage its proper place.
As others have said, storage is central to achieving our renewable energy ambitions. As we strive to meet ever-more challenging targets en route to decarbonising our energy system, storage solutions will play an ever-more critical role. WWF strongly emphasised that point in its briefing for the debate. WWF also legitimately argued that the United Kingdom energy market does not provide an adequate funding system for storage projects, which should be a priority for development. To be fair, that has been a failing of successive Governments north and south of the border, but we can ill afford to see it continue.
That is not to say that we are operating from a standing start. Scottish Renewables has helpfully set out a range of activity that is under way in Scotland, from the long-standing pumped water storage operations at Cruachan—a direct legacy of Tom Johnston, who has rightly been eulogised by many members—to a more recent project in my Orkney constituency, where collaboration between Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has seen the UK’s first large-scale battery connected to help to ease grid constraints and allow for more renewable generation. I am also excited by the progress of the surf and turf initiative on Eday, which is deploying renewables to generate hydrogen that is then used to provide electricity for ferries when they are tied up in the harbour. Those examples underscore the potential and the fundamental importance of storage in allowing us to connect more renewables capacity, deliver security of supply and empower communities and consumers.
Perhaps one of the reasons why there has been a tendency to overlook the contribution that storage can and must make in our efforts to decarbonise our energy system is the sheer range of storage types, which vary in scale and stage of development. Heriot-Watt University’s energy academy, which was referred to earlier, illustrates the point well by explaining that
“heat and electricity storage will be required at timescales from seconds to years, and from small, battery scale, to grid-level solutions.”
I was interested to read about the partnership approach that that academy is taking, which involves bringing together different disciplines and facilitating collaboration across industries, research centres and other organisations. After the visit to Orkney last week by Heriot-Watt’s new principal, Professor Richard Williams, I hope that there is more that the team at the international centre for island technology can contribute to the academy’s work, in conjunction with the world-class cluster of renewable energy-related businesses that are to be found in Orkney. Of particular interest is the academy’s work on demand management systems, which could reduce the price of electricity, and the use of virtual power plants to integrate renewable energy resources and demand in remoter communities.
As we come to rely increasingly on renewable energy, we need to recognise that that reliance rests heavily on the flexibility and security that only storage solutions can provide. WWF calls on all political parties to embrace that vision, which the Scottish Liberal Democrats certainly do. It is time that Cinderella storage got her invitation to the green energy ball.
17:37
I, too, thank Mike MacKenzie for bringing this important debate to us. I also thank him for the history lesson about Tom Johnston. I have a family connection to that, because my grandfather was one of the civil engineers who did some of the heavy lifting, so to speak, in the work that was done on hydroelectric power stations across Scotland in times past.
We all know that renewable energy is intermittent. It is not just that the wind does not always blow; although tides come and go, there are long slack periods in between. We readily recognise that storage is part of a power system.
I suspect that most MSPs have been to briefings by National Grid, so we know fine well that it is used to the idea of having to buy spare capacity and pay over the odds for it at peak times. National Grid has also bought opportunities to reduce demand, as has been pointed out—Joan McAlpine commented on that.
However, I do not recall National Grid ever talking about storage in any of our briefings. If it did so, storage was very much the Cinderella issue. Storage has obviously been somewhat off National Grid’s radar, too, but it will have to come on to that radar. That is partly for reasons that members have mentioned and which I will not repeat, and partly because of a point that I do not think has been mentioned yet, which is that, although we have all spent our time talking about renewable electricity generation, the biggest part of our energy demand is for heat for domestic and business purposes.
If we are to use renewable energy to meet the heat demand, we will have to generate a great deal more electricity, but we will have to get it to where the heating is required and—this is the crucial bit—make sure that it is available when the heating is required, which might well be in the evenings and overnight rather than during the day, when the electricity might have been generated. Storage is therefore a crucial part of getting the heat balance across Scotland in connection with renewables.
We have always known that standard generating power stations waste heat. We have all seen the enormous cooling towers and wondered why they were there, but the laws of thermodynamics demand that they are there. If those power stations had been built in the middle of our big cities, we would not have needed the cooling towers, because we could have used the waste heat to warm our houses. District heating systems in various places have been known to do that.
That brings me to my next point, which is that we should store energy where it will be useful as heat. Many storage systems generate waste heat and, if we can use that for district heating, that must be far more efficient in overall energy terms.
If we can take energy out of the sky through wind turbines, the cost of that energy will not be terribly great but, given that we have to put enormous amounts of capital into the ground and then into the wires that move the energy around, we want to have efficient systems. That is why it is important that we get our storage in the right place. It needs to be distributed, but that means that compressed air, liquid air and flywheel storage, which are in themselves relatively inefficient, can become more efficient if they are put in the right place. The waste is always heat but, if we can collect that and put it into a district heating system, it ceases to be wasted and becomes useful heat.
That point adds to the complexity of what is already a complex enough problem. I am grateful to Mike MacKenzie for bringing it before us.
17:41
Other members have mentioned Tom Johnston, but one key aspiration that he had has not yet been referred to. He imagined that, with the building of hydroelectric schemes, we would get to a position where no charge was made for the electricity that was supplied, because there was no cost in the energy source from which it came. That sounds like fantasy, except that it is now happening in Texas.
In reading The New York Times on Sunday, I spotted that TXU Energy of Texas, which is the state in the United States with the highest proportion of installed wind energy, is now supplying to its customers at no charge whatsoever all the electricity that they can use between 9 o’clock at night and 6 o’clock in the morning. There is a future out there, if we get the infrastructure in the right place, that will enable us to do things that are both environmentally and practically favourable to energy consumers.
Of course, the electricity is free overnight because that is not when most people want it. That brings us neatly to the whole point of storage. I declare that I am a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. It has a monthly magazine that covers up-to-date projects, and the October edition described what is a very exciting project. It involves a lithium-oxygen battery that uses graphene—that is, single atom level graphite carbon—to protect the electrodes from corrosion in the pure oxygen environment that is required in such batteries. A demonstrator is working in the lab, which means that in 10 years’ time, the technology might be available to us as consumers.
Weight for weight and volume for volume, that battery can store the same amount of energy as a tankful of petrol, and it is theoretically already able—in demonstrator mode—to enable us to travel 650km between Edinburgh and London for one fifth of the cost of present technology and one fifth of the weight. In other words, it is a direct and genuine competitor with the petrol and diesel engines that we have in our cars today. We cannot guarantee that it will come out of the lab and end up as a commercial product, but the portents are really quite encouraging.
We have seen enormous changes taking place in the technology of batteries. The point is that, if someone has local generation—a turbine on their roof—and they can charge their car overnight and get a normal tankful of energy, that is pretty good, because the transmission cost is nil, they are in control of what is going on and there are huge environmental benefits.
I contrast that with what the Financial Times reported on Tuesday last week. It told us that the energy supply in the United Kingdom has been so ill managed that the UK Government is having to contract for diesel power stations. We now like diesel a lot less than we did a few months ago, before Volkswagen revealed to us how polluting it is, but the Government is going to spend £436 million to provide excess diesel capacity at precisely the point at which it is shutting down renewables. That disnae make sense.
This has been an excellent debate and I say well done to Mike MacKenzie. I look forward to hearing what the minister has to say.
17:45
It has been an excellent debate, and I thank Mike MacKenzie for securing it.
I very much welcome the Scottish Renewables paper “Energy Storage: The Basics”, which sets the context and repays a close reading. It begins by stating:
“Our demand for energy varies constantly throughout the days, weeks and months, and our energy system needs to be flexible and deliver electricity and heat at the right times.”
Traditionally, delivering those things was achieved primarily through a combination of fossil fuels, with some nuclear power. However, increasingly, delivering them will be achieved through a transition to low-carbon sources of energy—we all accept that. The transition needs to be practicable and managed, and it needs—as Mr Johnstone said—to incorporate a diversity and variety of supply, which is something for which I have always argued. Nevertheless, a transition there must be.
The transition to low-carbon renewable generation will not be straightforward, because renewable generation is variable—it depends on the weather—whereas nuclear generation is inflexible. That means that we need to be innovative, and long-standing storage technologies to provide greater flexibility must be brought forward. Ultimately, storage used in conjunction with renewables can help to tackle climate change, decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and maintain our energy security.
I was also interested in the report from the Institution of Civil Engineers that was published at the end of last month, which highlighted the significant potential of storage to help to
“Ease the tightening of capacity margins ... Manage increasing peak demand and the intermittency of renewables ... Meet renewables and emissions targets”
and
“Extend aging infrastructure and stem increasing costs.”
The report makes two interesting recommendations. The first is to exempt storage operators from balancing services use of system charges, because pumped storage pays twice, in effect, for both drawing in and then expelling the energy, which is surely not fair. That is a very sensible suggestion indeed. The second recommendation is to classify storage as a specific activity for distribution network operators.
We heard from various members during the debate. David Torrance spoke about the championing of hydrogen techniques in Fife—we have heard before about the Aberdeen hydrogen bus experiment. Mr Don set out the need for more electricity generation, for storage solutions and for more storage as heat. Sarah Boyack talked about district heating, which 10,000 homes already have. I hope and believe that we will have another 16,000 homes in district heating networks by 2020, and there is an ambition for a further 14,000 homes to join them. Stewart Stevenson’s remarks reminded me of the truism that, no matter how well-informed, diligent and hard-working any energy minister may be, technological advances will always be far ahead of them—although not far ahead of Mr Stevenson.
I cannot beat the descriptions in various sections of the Scottish Renewables report. Under the heading “Pumped Hydro Storage”, we are told:
“How it works: Pumped storage schemes work by using electricity to pump water from a lower to a higher reservoir where it can be stored and then, when required, released to generate electricity, as a conventional hydroelectric power station would ... Energy release time: 10 seconds to 2 minutes”.
That would get rid of the £2,500 per megawatt hour cost that we saw when there was a spike on a day when the weather was not cold.
The benefits of pumped hydro storage have been considered against the high costs previously. One of the arguments that I put to Amber Rudd at a meeting several weeks ago was that because our electricity system in the UK increasingly has a greater renewables component that is stochastic, the benefits of pumped storage become far greater than they used to be in the conventional fossil fuel model. We have therefore asked that the cost benefit analysis be reconsidered by experts in order to demonstrate that, although it is not cheap, it is not as expensive as National Grid believes. National Grid is supposed to be technology and energy-source neutral, so I hope that it will take that message on board. Indeed, I met Cordi O’Hara, its new chief executive, last week and delivered that message in person.
We have always argued that there should be more storage solutions. That is not a new point; I have been arguing it from the outset, and it is incorporated in our energy generation policy statement. Several years ago, I called for the establishment of an intergovernmental group between Scotland and the UK to look at pumped storage and find a means of making it work—in other words, to find something that is financeable. I suspect that Ed Davey was personally supportive of the idea but, sadly, he did not approve it. However, when I met Amber Rudd some weeks ago, I made an alternative proposal that there should be a UK Government and devolved Administration expert group.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I would really like to make these points. I am very sorry but I need to make progress.
That expert group should comprise senior officials and it should be specifically tasked with looking at flexibility, incorporating storage, interconnection and other methods of providing flexibility in the grid. In other words, it would look at the issue in the round.
As many members have indicated, the requirement for more storage will not be optional. It will prove to be essential—a sine qua non of a system that has more renewables and in which the capacity margin is parlously low, as we have seen of late. We will also need storage—not at the transmission level of pumped storage but, as members have said, at distribution and, indeed, household level. Members talked about battery storage and lithium batteries, liquid compressed air, hydro storage, domestic thermal storage and other forms of storage.
I refer again to the Scottish Renewables report because it refers to an East Lothian-based company, Sunamp. The report says that the company has
“developed the SunampPV system which is designed to store excess electricity from a solar PV array as heat. It can later deliver fast-flowing hot water on demand. Sunamp are set to install over 700 units of SunampPV and other Sunamp heat battery products in over 1,000 homes across Falkirk, Edinburgh and the Lothians.”
I have previously described the company, which I have visited, as the Scottish answer to Tesla.
We have encouraged various activities through our local energy challenge fund, some in Mr Torrance’s area, some in East Lothian and others throughout the country.
We need the UK Government to recognise the key role that storage has to play as we move forward. As Mr Stevenson said, it is absurd that we need 1.5GW of diesel power, at a cost of £436 million. That is a temporary and polluting solution that leaves no long-term legacy. We have the pumped storage resources in Scotland. Those should be used by the UK, which should find a method of incentivising that use. There are only 3GW of pumped storage in Britain; in comparison, Austria has 8GW and Germany and France have twice as much as the UK.
There have been useful contributions to the debate from across the chamber. It is a topic that we will come back to on many future occasions, and rightly so. I thank Mr MacKenzie again for bringing the debate to the chamber this evening.
Meeting closed at 17:54.Previous
Decision Time