In a policy paper announced earlier today His Majesty’s Government has published the final report of its Onshore Wind Taskforce. According to Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero:
It sets out more than 40 steps government and industry will take to help deliver up to 29GW of onshore wind by 2030. That includes driving ambitious reforms to planning, grid connections, and routes to market, while building the supply chains and skilled workforce we need.
As part of this, we will consult on how permitted development rights can support the rollout of small-scale onshore wind and repowering. Great British Energy, our publicly owned energy company, will invest in and develop renewables projects. And we will work with the Ministry of Defence to take a mission-driven approach to addressing issues relating to wind turbines and defence infrastructure, which have slowed down deployment in the past.
According to the Executive Summary of the report:
Under this Government we removed the defacto ban on onshore wind in England, and are delivering radical action to unlock 27-29GW of onshore wind by 2030 across GB. That’s around 10-12GW more than would have been deployed under historic growth rates, with England contributing around 2GW by 2030.
Onshore wind is among the cheapest sources of new electricity generation to build and operate at scale. Scaling up home-grown renewables, like we’re doing for onshore wind, reduces the UK’s exposure to volatile global fossil fuel prices, which protects consumer energy bills against future price shocks.
In the depths of the report Action Item 14 mentions energy storage:
The Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) will support a more actively planned approach to energy infrastructure across England, Scotland and Wales, land and sea between 2030 to 2050. It will do this by assessing and identifying the optimal locations, quantities and types of energy infrastructure required for generation and storage, including onshore wind, to meet our future energy demand with the clean, affordable and secure supply that we need.
Lisa the LEAF cannot contain her excitement at the news!
She cannot wait to drive up to Westminster to explain to Ed et al. the potential benefits of rolling out mobile distributed energy storage in conjunction with the promised renewable energy generation. In other words, lots and lots of bidirectional electric vehicles connected to an even greater number of bidirectional EV charging stations!
Many of which could be installed in car parks, under a canopy of solar PV panels. Here’s one the Netherlands invented earlier:
