A development worker in the renewable energy industry spoke to Solidarity about renewable technology and energy policy.
Note: this is a longer version of the interview than the one which appeared in the printed paper.
The old ways of thinking can’t last forever. Reliance on fossil fuels, particularly imported coal and gas, leave us exposed to the whims of markets.
There is a need to arrive at a better way to address our energy needs, both on an environmental level and a societal level in terms of dethroning the “Big Six” energy companies. But there’s also a need to refine, develop, and test the credentials of renewable technology. It’s still a fragile sector. When you have new technologies, they need to be honed and tested. "Renewable energy", as a term, covers a very diverse range of sources. There's a huge amount of potential in tidal and wave-based energy generation.
The industry and the technology needs time to develop, and become a decisive alternative to carbon-based energy generation, but with investment I think behaviours can change very quickly. I think we can talk about transitioning to a much lower-carbon energy mix within the next decade. We have to urgently re-evaluate the way we design and construct things.
I work in anaerobic digestion (AD). AD is a very well understood process, and has been understood since the 1600s. It’s very much like fermentation of alcohol, and is in effect a replication of the natural processes that occur in a cow’s stomach. In terms of usage, it has been dabbled with on a small scale in agriculture, but more as an expensive plaything of scientifically and technically-minded farmers who like the idea of self-sufficiency. It has been used on a larger scale by water companies in sewage treatment for a number of decades, but only recently has it began to gather pace with the rise in awareness of issues of climate change and the need to push for change. It’s developed recently as treatment for food waste.
There’s no comparison between the amount of energy generated by an average anaerobic digestion facility and the average gas or coal power station is a gross mismatch, but AD has a much more organic fit to societal needs.
Regardless of its energy potential, AD is a sustainable solution for dealing with food waste. The products that are derived lend themselves perfectly to agriculture, which, as an instrumental pillar of food production, lends itself back to the idea of fuelling a population.
An average-sized AD plant (at around 2.5 Megawatts) is capable of powering the needs of about 5,000 homes. It’s important to remember that it’s fuelled by waste, rather than a finite and expensive resource that we do not have enough of. The potential for AD-based energy generation is commensurate with the amount of waste availability, so a big issue for us is how local authorities collect and separate waste, and whether they're incentivised to collect it in a way that makes it easier for it to be used in processes like AD. Currently only around 8-10% of local authorities are collecting waste in a way we can use.
The gas derived from AD is typically burned on site to create electricity for sale to the National Grid. There are wider uses for the heat this process creates, through sale of hot water to neighbouring businesses. Direct export of derived gas to the National Gas Grid is also becoming a reality, so there is a real growing potential for engagement with social energy needs.
One of the obstacles is the lack of integrated waste collection systems that would allow local authorities to collect domestic and commercial food waste as part of the same rounds, which would be cheaper and more efficient, as well as giving us access to larger amounts of waste. Investment in that kind of collection system would be an immediate reform that would make a big difference.
The outsourcing of waste collection and recycling services by local authorities is an issue here. Private companies have gotten involved, offering "savings", but as a core service I'd say it's not something that should be looked at in terms of deriving profit. That's effected workers' rights, too, as private companies will find ways round TUPE regulations if they want to trim a wage bill. It'll be a struggle to take the services back into the public sector. It would take an extremely bold government to step in and seize those services back from the private sector, and I don't feel we live in a climate where that's immediately likely to happen.
There are moves towards greater integration on a local level, with some councils coming together to form "Joint Waste Partnerships", but that integration and streamlining can also involve the closure of depots. The cuts to local government funding are also obviously a massive issue. Cash-strapped local authorities are not investing in the vehicles and workforces necessary to carry out these processes. That's where the fundamental problem lies.
The current Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, talks in very emotive language about "the right to a weekly waste collection", which is obviously along the right lines, and he made some funds available for authorities that went back to weekly collections, but that's come with the corollary of pushing the amount of waste-to-landfill back up in some places, which is taking us back in environmental terms.
The “dash for gas” is a short-termist plug. It isn’t a solution, it’s a sticking plaster. There is frustration in the renewables industry about the expansion of processes like fracking, although generally the consensus is for a diverse energy mix.
I believe a degree of pragmatism is required when assessing things like fracking. All opportunities need to be examined on their merits, and the consequences, based around genuine sustainability, considered. But the danger with fracking is that considerations outside the intrinsic merits, or otherwise, of the technology are forcing it through as a reactionary means of solving short-term energy deficits.
Momentum has been lost on the back of the recession within the renewables sector. Major infrastructure projects are expensive, and frankly renewables are not a quick win with regards investment. One upside of that, though, is that the previous wave of “greenwash” has receded somewhat and allowed development and progress under the radar.
The industry is having to think about where it places its investment. It seems there is more of a focus on best practice and what will be sustainable in the long run. This has served AD well, as it has potential to be a key long-term contributor. It has its roots firmly in the waste sector and is very pragmatic, which has to an extent protected it from venture capitalists looking for a quick buck.
Policy is required to drive the sector as it develops, creating rewards for best practice and balancing the book on large scale projects. There really aren’t ways around this at the moment.
For AD and other waste-based technologies, the disincentive of huge hikes in landfill tax have brought the public sector towards environmental best practice — which, although it creates a tight spot for cash-strapped authorities in the short term, is driving best practice in the long term.
Changes in policy could undermine entire projects. For instance, the recent “degression” applied to the Feed-In-Tariff [a government scheme to incentivise households and businesses to generate their own electricity], which is a crucial revenue stream that many projects are built around. Because of the use of AD in the existing water industry, the incentives are susceptible to overuse by the big water firms, which are such a saturating drain on the funds that subsidies are beginning to be reined back in, taking them away from those projects they were designed to encourage.
This is also true of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which has only just been released, and will also be true of any upcoming support for Biogas-to-Grid. The former, due to nervousness about saturation, has been limited to very small-scale projects, but even so small amendments to the way in which large plants run by the big companies operate can qualify them under this subsidy, thereby jeopardising it. There’s a developing game of cat and mouse wit between government and the big firms with regards to subsidy.
Policy needs to guarantee a certain level of subsidy to where it’s actually needed. Mainstream politics is by its nature fickle, so there need to be guarantees to allow a project to develop, especially given the timeframes involved in developing a site.
Pickles seems completely disconnected from the nuances of the industry. It would greatly benefit the waste sector for a ministerial role that commands such power to be filled by somebody with an experience and technical understanding of it, rather than simply as a career reward.
As the technical processes themselves are quite autonomous, even a large plant will only require five or six people to operate, but this means a diversity of workload. At sites that focus more on the composting side of things (so, plant waste rather than food), the work can be quite hands-on and waste itself is engaged by the workers. In general the industry is well-regulated with respect to health and safety, vaccinations are offered for free in these types of post, and protective equipment is obviously provided. But the risks are still there, and there is still a staggeringly high number of deaths per year in the sector, especially if you look at global figures. There are cowboy operations out there that cut corners in terms of health and safety. Some of the stories are shocking, managers allowing operatives to climb frames with no harnesses, and things like that.
There are a lot of minimum wage posts, but the company I work for does have one facility in London where the London Living Wage has been introduced. There is union organisation at some facilities.
