Aberdeen, famous for oil and gas, is going renewable!

Aberdeen, Scotland is famous for its offshore oil and gas, and the skills of its marine petroleum workers. But now the skills are being repurposed to offshore wind, wave, and tidal power! Iain Todd, “Renewables Champion” of Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group fills us in on the details.

Iain Todd podcast

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Scott Bilby: This morning on Beyond Zero we're speaking with Iain Todd. He's the Renewables Champion at the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group in Scotland, and Iain, are you there? You're joining us all the way from Scotland and it's a late, rainy night, I think, over there.  

Iain Todd: Hi Scott and hi Matthew. I'm very pleased to join you this morning, it's kind of almost midnight but it's good to join you.  

Scott: Well, thank you and thank you for being so stoic and staying up late to talk to us. I heard you talking in Australia recently at a talk you gave at Swinburne University and I really liked it and I thought we must talk to you soon, so I'm glad you are able to join us. I'll just start off by asking how you got interested in renewable energy, how you began?  

Iain: Yes, I guess we've all got a bit in all of us that wants to be green and sustainable, and I've been very lucky that in my career as an engineer I've worked on hydro power, I've worked on clean transport, and recently in Aberdeen I've had the chance to work on quite a number of renewable technologies. So, here in Scotland it's a big issue now and there's a lot happening, so it's a great area to be working in.  

Scott: Now,do you call yourselves AREG, the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group, or not?  

Iain: Yes, AREG, that's exactly us.  

Scott: Okay, tell us about AREG.  

Iain: Aberdeen, as I'm sure you know, is a big oil and gas city, it's maybe number two in the world after Houston, but about five years ago the city council realised oil and gas is going to be with us for a while but it isn't going to be with us forever. They wanted Aberdeen not just to be an oil and gas city, they wanted it to be green and renewable as well. So, they set up Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group, it's a really small group, there's just sort of three and a half of us, but our job is to promote renewable energy projects in the city and the area round about. In a sentence it's to make Aberdeen as famous for renewable energy as it is for oil and gas. So, we're not short on ambition.  

Scott: And there's a wind farm proposal just off the coast of Aberdeen that you guys have been talking about.  

Iain: Yes, that's our biggest project and we've been developing it with a big engineering company. But it will be, first of all, a wind farm to produce electricity and we hope it will meet about two-thirds of the city's domestic demand, so it's a pretty big wind farm.  

But also we want it to be a test centre for offshore wind technology. People are getting very excited about that, there's a real niche needed for such a centre, and indeed the European Union has got really interested and they want to invest about 40 million euros in our project. So, really, really exciting times.  

Offshore wind is really huge here in the UK at the moment, and UK already produces more offshore wind power than any other country in the world. There are plans there to replace about one-third of UK generation by 2020 just by offshore wind. So it's, there's a lot of investment going into this area here.  

Matthew Wright: I can see a parallel here with a community we've got in Victoria. We've got brown coal generators, and their days are probably numbered with climate change. So that council, the Latrobe Valley city council, I mean they could really have a change of attitude and…I mean, their logo is 'Latrobe City - A New Energy', so maybe they should really look at new energy instead of being resistant.

How can a community that's really based around oil and gas switch over and think, 'Yes, let's diversify', without getting that existing institutionalised community being against it? Because it seems that you're quite successful there in promoting the parallel operation and the replacement in the long run of the gas and oil industry.  

Iain: Yes, we found that the skills that exist there in the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen are really the skills that are needed by the new challenges of renewable energy. So, when you come to the engineering and the project management and working in the marine environment, these are all skills that are needed by renewables. And I'm sure there are a lot of skills sitting there in your brown coal industry that would find a really good home in meeting the new renewable energy targets that your parliament has just put through last week.  

So, it is a question of getting into the companies and talking to them and this is what we do in Aberdeen. We've got more than 100 companies now in Aberdeen really interested in renewables. We want more and we'll get more, but over the five-year period we've gradually built up a lot of interest in companies of, exactly as you say, diversifying into this new challenge. And there are environmental reasons for doing that but there are commercial reasons as well, it's going to be a big business.  

Scott: Yes, it's going to be extraordinary. So, can you tell me about that plan for…it was something about 100 billion pounds towards replacing one-third of the UK's electricity supply with offshore wind farms by 2020. Is that correct?  

Iain: It's absolutely correct. Out in the North Sea where we've been drilling for oil and gas for decades now there are schemes, there are zones for putting massive offshore wind farms in the sea, quite deep water, maybe about 50 metres of water, but, as I say, it will replace about one-third of the UK electricity supply doing this. And it will use a lot of the techniques that have been proven in the oil and gas industry to install these, there'll be people living out there in the North Sea on platforms maintaining all of these wind turbines, massive cables will be needed bringing the power ashore, maybe connecting it in elsewhere in Europe as well.

So, the investment is going to be of a similar nature to what the UK has invested in the oil and gas industry setting that up. So, huge business, a lot of jobs, a lot of employment involved. And of course, probably exactly as has happened with oil and gas, what the UK learns developing these wind farms will apply all around the world, and we could see companies doing very well out of a global expansion.  

Scott: Now, I seem to recall you said something about Donald Trump for some time was against the Aberdeen wind farm back in 2006 or something. Similar, I guess, in the way that…was it Ted Kennedy who was against the Cape Wind wind farm just up off Nantucket I think..?  

Matthew: I think Donald Trump had a golf course or something. What's the story there?  

Iain: That's right, yes. This arose on the 1st April 2006, and I got this phone call, I thought it was an April Fool, and they said…this was the office, and they said, 'You won't believe what's happened, Donald Trump has made a remark in New York that he doesn't like our wind farm.' He did comment on our wind farm. It was an old layout and it is now some three and a half miles from where he plans to build his golf course, and he has not repeated his remarks and his officials are really quite happy that although you can see us from his golf course, we're very small, and I think he's going to realise we're going to wind up to be good neighbours. So, it sort of flared up and it went down again, but it was an interesting day, I'll say that.  

Scott: Maybe he can throw a few dollars towards getting the wind farm up and running. Now, you were saying that you're hoping perhaps later this year or so you'd have some news on whether or not that farm was going to get up and going?  

Iain: Yes, I think it will be early next year, but we need the consent from the Scottish government to build it and we've been working towards that for a number of years now, but we have to prepare our submissions and put it in to government and then await their deliberations. But we have to study all manner of things of course, we have to study the birds and the dolphins and the shipping and the helicopters and the Ministry of Defence installations there are along the coast, et cetera. So, there's a lot of work, a huge amount of work to be done to justify a wind farm. But we've been working on it for quite some time now and we are hopeful that we'll get the consent to go ahead and it will be a big part of Aberdeen's future.  

Matthew: And who's going to own the wind farm and how big is it going to be?  

Iain: We reckon it will be over 100 megawatts and, as I say, that's enough for about two-thirds of the city's domestic demand. Our industrial partner is actually a big Swedish company called Vattenfall, and they would be putting up most of the finance to build it, so they would be the owner. AREG will be a minority partner in that, so we would hope to have a small slice of the ownership for our small team, but you know that's all kind of down the road a bit.  

What I'd also like to do, and we haven't put the detail on this, but it sometimes happens here in Scotland that you offer a share of the wind farm to the local population, and I would like to do this for Aberdeen, that someone can buy a certificate, a share, in the wind farm. And that promotes community ownership and people can look offshore and say, 'Hey, that's part of my wind farm, that's where my electricity is coming from,' and I think that's a good ownership idea. To raise some of our money that way would be quite useful.  

Scott: Yes, that would be great because I know they have community wind farms with only one or two or three turbines or something and they're usually on shore, and they get the community to invest in them, but it would be great to see people investing in these bigger ones.

I'd also like to talk a little bit about wave technology because we've been getting pretty excited here at Beyond Zero Emissions about that, so can you tell us a little bit about how Scotland's faring in that area?  

Iain: Yes, we've got tremendous wind resource here in Scotland and we've got tremendous wave resource, especially on the west coast, the waves come all the way across the Atlantic and it's a really strong wave resource up and down our west coast.

Our universities have been studying this for quite some time and there's quite a number of machines under development but there's one in particular, it's called Pelamis and it's a sort of articulated, snake-like thing that generates electricity at the hinges. I would say that is the one that is nearest to being commercial at the moment.  

We have a big marine energy test centre up on the island of Orkney and they test things in the full Atlantic conditions, and one of these Pelamis machines has been up there and fully tested at full scale. Three have been purchased by Portugal, which is also of course west-facing into the Atlantic, and they've been deployed in the sea off Portugal. I believe the company plan also a further four up in the north of Scotland, but I heard most recently some plans for a 25-device array going off on the west of Scotland as well. So, it will be some years before these machines start to make an impact on our national targets but certainly as a technology they're starting to come through and very, very exciting indeed.  

Scott: And can you just quickly kind of describe them? Because I think everyone has a mental picture of wind farms but this wave power technology, people can't really visualise it.  

Iain: Well, there's quite a number of different kinds of wave technology but this particular one I'm talking about, if you imagine some long metal tubes, bright red in colour, but they're hinged. So, there might be four of them in a line and they're sitting on the surface, floating on the surface of the sea, but of course with the wave action they're flexing up and down at the hinges. And you've got generators inside those tubes using that flexing motion of the sea to generate electricity. And then you have a cable coming from the device back to shore, bringing the electricity on shore. So, a field of these would just look like an array of red tubes floating on the sea surface.  

Matthew: And what's the capacity of each one of those snakes or… they look like a Loch Ness monster to me…  

Iain: Well, I think the word 'Pelamis' actually does mean sea snake, so your analogy is correct. Each one would be about 0.7 of a megawatt. So, not as much as a wind turbine, maybe about a quarter of a wind turbine, but you can cover a fair area of sea with them. So, you can build up similar sorts of capacities using these machines.  

Matthew: And wind turbines in Australia, they produce about a third of their annual output, so it's like a capacity factor, whereas some of our coal plants produce 85% and some gas plants only produce 10%. What's the percentage of output you get from one of these wave devices?  

Iain: They're more predictable and therefore they're going to be operating near their design for a  higher period of time. But of course it depends on the wave regime you're in. So, it's going to depend so much on the precise bit of sea you're in. I think the load factor would vary according to whether you were in a very regular set of waves or whether it's fluctuating quite a lot.  

Scott: Sure. We're speaking to Iain Todd, he's the Renewables Champion at the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group in Scotland, and we've been talking a bit about wind power. We're now talking a little bit about wave power, which is a great technology that the Scots are really leading on too.  

I read a quote from Friend of the Earth Scotland's Duncan McLaren and he made a good point I think, he said that it would be critical to see these devices, these wave technology devices at full scale as soon as possible in Scotland because otherwise Scotland will just lose the kind of expertise they've built up in this area to other countries, in the same way that Australia has lost a lot of its solar expertise to other countries; you know, David Mills from Ausra and Zhengrong Shi from Suntech Technologies and others. Do you think that's a legitimate claim by Mr McLaren?  

Iain: Well, I think you're right. I think the opportunity is there for Scotland in terms of offshore wind, in terms of wave and in terms of tidal power because we're in quite a leading position in those three technologies, but the rest of the world aren’t going to just sit around watching, and if we don't capitalise on it then others will move quickly and will overtake us.

So, the opportunity is there, and our government is very, very keen to support renewables, the Scottish government. They have legislated for carbon reductions. I think Scotland was the first country in the world to introduce legislation to reduce carbon, and it's set in law that there has to be an 80% reduction by 2050, which is kind of a remarkable target to set and we have to work at how that's going to be achieved. But certainly these technologies will play a big part in that.  

We've spoken a little bit about wave technology. We've also got some very interesting devices for tidal steam because, again, we have a lot of resource there, and this is where you put a big propeller on the sea bed and the tidal stream rushing by drives that propeller and, again, can be used to produce electricity. We've got a number of devices under test here in Scotland at the moment, and countries like Korea actually, I didn't know they had a strong tidal resource but apparently they do, are extremely interested in some of these machines.  

Again, we hopefully will see some of this technology applying in different parts of the world, particularly it seems where you've got islands which tend to concentrate a tidal flow into very concentrated energy between the islands. I think that's the position in Korea. It's certainly also the position we have in the north of Scotland in the Orkney Islands, we've got some extremely strong tidal flows there and if you can get these machines deployed on the sea bed you can get a real lot of electricity out. Unlike wind it's not intermittent, it's just there all the time, very predictable.  

Scott: And with that technology, the wave technology, there would probably be greater scope for generating more energy from that than from the wave…I mean, using the tidal technology you'd probably get more than the wave technology. Is that correct?  

Iain: I would say so because you've got the momentum of very solid water flowing by, and of course these machines are going to have to be pretty robust, they're going to have to be…but it's heavy engineering, it's not rocket science, you've already got designs for putting large propellers…maybe the diameter would be 25, 30 metres, it would be very big, located on the sea bed. And probably not rotating very quickly, they could probably rotate quite slowly, but producing serious power.  

Matthew: I think that what you mentioned there about the robustness is why I think wave and tidal technology perhaps are lagging solar and wind technologies, because really there's that difficulty win the ocean with the salt and the extreme environment, but just using technology that's been developed for the oil and gas industry gets us over the line there.  

Iain: Yes. No, you're absolutely right, the first design criteria for anything you put in the sea has got to be survivability, and it's got to be designed to resist a really extreme sea, and we know how extreme the sea can be, so it has to be very strong. I think that's one of the advantages of that Pelamis snaky device we were talking about earlier, that in an extreme sea it will sort of dive under the surface and it will be protected from the worst energy of the waves because it has a 'diving under the surface' motion which protects it. So, hopefully it will survive, we shall see how it gets on in its lifetime, but that's the concept anyway.  

Scott: Now, Iain, Australia has just tried to pass its emissions trading scheme, which we call the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in Australia, but at least they tried to split off from the ETS a 2020 Renewable Energy Target which was for 20% renewables, and so try and get that through at least, but our government has made a deal with the opposition to essentially allow the burning of forests for electricity to prop up the native logging sector now that the global woodchip market has crashed, and they've also allowed the coal miners to claim methane from the coal seams as electricity.  

Matthew: Yes, we call it the browning of the renewable energy target.  

Scott: So basically, yes, we're handing over the renewable energy target to non-renewable companies. Now, Scotland is also going through the process at the moment for carbon reductions and renewables. Can you tell us how that's going?  

Iain: Yes, well, it's interesting because the Scottish government has set exactly the same target as the Australian government has recently set, that is that 20% of all of our energy has to be renewable by 2020. So, therefore when we say 'all energy' we mean electricity and heating and transport, which means that for electricity the figure has to be quite a bit higher than that. So, we reckon electricity by 2020 in Scotland might even be 50%, so every second light bulb in Scotland will be renewable by 2020. So that's fantastic.  

We think the main technologies we'll be using over here will be wind and we will see some wave and tidal coming through. I know it's very different out with you because you've got a lot of solar and of course it depends on your country's resources as to which technologies you go for. We wouldn't be counting coal seam methane; I thought that was interesting to read about the fact that that is to be part of it. I don't believe that counts towards the 20% target…  

Scott: No, it's actually added on top here.  

Iain: ...but I wouldn't say it's renewable either really…well, it's not. But it is interesting and I know the coal industry is a very big industry with you out there.  

Matthew: And I think what's an important distinction is your target is 20% of all energy, so that means space heating and water heating and transport and electricity production, whereas our target is just 20% of electricity production, so I guess we are significantly lagging Scotland in that respect.  

Iain: Well, I think the heating thing is important because half of the energy used in Scotland is on space heating. We don't have quite your climate and we use a lot of our energy just to heat houses and to heat offices and to heat buildings. But we are lagging in terms of use wood fuel. If you look at Scandinavia, if you look at Austria, they generate a lot of their space heating from their wood resources and we are playing catch-up on that and we're doing a lot in Aberdeen to try and get…we've just got our hospital to go over to wood fuel and trying to get the airport to go over to wood fuel and the new council headquarters which they're just building, we're going to get part of that done on wood fuel as well. So, there's a lot more every country can do really to make their energy generation less carbon intensive, and we all have to do that.  

Scott: Now, you were talking about the 80% target you had for renewable energy in Scotland. Does the fact that even though you're not going to be building any more nuclear power plants there, does the fact that you've already got two there help with that aim? And do you also have hydro in Scotland?  

Iain: We've got a lot of hydro and it's been around for quite a while, for about 50 years. A lot of dams were put up in the 1950s and Scotland has benefited greatly from that ever since. On that 80% carbon reduction by 2050, certainly by that time the existing two nuclear power stations would have closed, so I think where Scotland will be looking at for the future will be renewables, will be some fossil generation but we would like to see carbon capture coming in with the fossil generation so we can have clean coal or clean gas.  

It will be another big industry, it will be a huge industry, this carbon capture industry, but again it's in its infancy and there's a lot of…we're just at the demonstration plant stage. But it's very, very exiting. Any young person thinking about a career in engineering I would have no hesitation to suggest they might think about renewable energy or these associated technologies because they're going to be huge industries in the future and very environmentally sound as well.  

Scott: And at Beyond Zero Emissions we push renewable energies and we try to go for the ones that are tried and true and…  

Matthew: That's our problem with clean coal, I guess, is that everyone says it's not here until 2025, so we think it's a bit imaginary at the moment.  

Scott: Iain, just quickly, we're going to have to go soon, but can you tell us about the All-Energy Conference?  

Iain: Oh great, I was hoping I'd get a chance to mention that because this is another export from Aberdeen. For nine years, and next year will be the tenth, every year we've got the biggest renewable energy conference in the UK, it's called All-Energy, it's run in Aberdeen.

Every year it gets bigger and more international, and we're just delighted this year it's gone global and there's going to be an All-Energy conference in Singapore and there's going to be one in Melbourne. It's on the 7th and 8th of October, and anyone who is interested in renewables I'd really hope they might find a bit of time to go along and have a look at that. It's going to be a fantastic conference, it's going to be a fantastic exhibition, and if anyone has got the time to go along to that please do so, I'm sure it will be a great success.  

Scott: That sounds fantastic and we're very interested in…we might actually try and get some more information on what's happening there. Iain, thank you very much for joining us and telling us all the great stuff that's going on in Scotland. It's actually really…it makes you feel good to know that some countries are actually pushing forward with some of this stuff, and Scotland has a really good future.  

Iain: Okay. Scott, Matthew, thank you very much for your discussion, I really enjoyed it, and I hope to speak to you again some time.  

Matthew: Thanks Iain.  

Scott: Thank you Iain.  

Iain: Okay, cheers, bye now.  

Scott: We've just been speaking to Iain Todd, Renewables Champion at the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group in Scotland.  

Matthew: And check out all our podcasts at beyondzeroemissions.org.  

Scott: Just quickly, we've got to give the URL for the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group, and their URL is aberdeenrenewables.com.  

Transcript by Julie Burleigh