WAG sees ‘major’ role for marine renewable energy

Thursday, Oct 14, 2010

The Welsh Assembly Government has identified marine energy as having a major role to play in helping Wales to reduce its carbon emissions.

In its Climate Change Strategy for Wales and accompanying delivery plan for emission reduction, published last week (October 8), the WAG advocated increasing marine renewable energy generation and wind energy production to maximise renewable generation, drive reduced energy consumption and improve energy efficiency.

The strategy stated: "Our approach will be to reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency first and maximise renewable and low carbon energy generation at small and large scale across Wales.

"This will include a major role for marine renewable technology."

The strategy also outlined the WAG's intention to encourage behaviour change to help reduce emissions from agriculture and land management. As part of this, it aims to increase the capacity and number of sites involved in on-farm renewable generation by 2020.

In her foreword to the strategy, environment minister Jane Davidson said: "The Strategy and delivery plans confirm the areas where the Assembly Government will act to reduce emissions and enable effective adaptation in Wales.

"They highlight the importance of UK and EU interventions to achieving our targets in Wales and make clear the critical contribution that people, communities, organisations and businesses across Wales will need to make to enable us to deliver on this agenda."

The Climate Change Strategy Delivery Plan for Emission Reduction sets out the policies and programmes that the WAG expects to help Wales meet its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3% per year in policy areas devolved to the WAG.

The plan explains that the Assembly Government is supporting a programme of activities aimed at the production and use of alternative fuels and development of technologies for vehicle and stationary applications, such as fuel cells for buildings.

It says that the WAG is investigating "a range of alternative fuels" produced from renewable sources. According to the document, hydrogen, biomethane and electric infrastructure can lead to the use of alternative fuelled vehicles that are less carbon intensive, particularly when generated from renewable sources.

The WAG's delivery plan also outlines estimations that Wales has the potential to produce "more than twice as much" renewable electricity than the country consumes as a nation by 2025.

Of this, around 40% will be from marine energy, 40% from wind (both offshore and onshore), and the remainder mainly from sustainable biomass power or smaller local (including micro) heat and electricity generation projects, it says.

The plan adds that the WAG estimates that Feed-in Tariffs could deliver savings of 0.25 MtCO2e in Wales in 2020.

Source: New Energy Focus