Meeting of the Parliament 11 November 2015
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.