Applications for new wind farms will be overseen by the new planning commission. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

England is facing a raft of applications for major projects – from nuclear power stations to wind farms and, maybe, expanded airports and sea ports – in the run-up to next year’s general election. In the biggest shake-up of the planning system for more than 60 years, energy companies and developers are fine-tuning proposals that will test the government’s resolve to fast-track schemes considered vital for the national interest.

This week, Gordon Brown maintained that the new regime would “speed up decisions … for the national infrastructure” in advance of a statement today from energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, pushing the case for more wind farms.

But sensing a populist cause, the Conservative opposition, alongside countryside campaigners and environmental groups, is preparing for a long, drawn-out battle opposing the new planning system.

At the centre of this battle stands an emerging quango known as the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), which begins work this autumn. It has been created ostensibly to take decisions on specific large-scale projects out of politicians’ hands and, crucially, slash the time it takes to get planning approval by consigning the lengthy public inquiry process to history in key areas.

Society Guardian has learnt that developers are preparing to submit more than 50 schemes to the IPC in its first year, with large energy projects topping the list – including scores of wind farms.

Underlining the challenge of power supplies, with some experts pointing to an “energy crunch”, the man charged with chairing the IPC, Sir Michael Pitt, told Society Guardian: “There is undoubtedly a sense of urgency about energy. There’s a feeling we’ve become over-reliant on imports, and there’s a real imperative around climate change and carbon emissions. All of that is changing the shape of energy generation. Added to that, there’s a need for a significant degree of modernisation of the national grid.”

Aside from other applications, the IPC has already calculated that plans for around 60 large wind farms, many of them offshore, will be submitted in its first two years of operation alone. So the IPC will have its work cut out. Based in Bristol, it will have a 10-strong board and employ 35 commissioners, who will examine plans in detail and undertake public hearings.

But it could be relatively short-lived, as the Conservatives have pledged to abolish what could emerge as the most powerful quango so far created. Abolition, however, could take some time and require legislation. Privately, some Tories think the new commission might relieve them of responsibility for determining the sites for power stations and wind farms – not to mention contentious plans for airport and seaport expansion – and would enable them to dodge the political flak that might erode David Cameron’s “green” credentials.

The IPC is enshrined in the 2008 Planning Act, which passed relatively unnoticed through parliament, in spite of its wide ranging implications and significance; it is, after all, the most far-reaching legislation of its kind since the groundbreaking 1947 Town and Country Planning Act created a sense of order and discipline in what had become a “you want it, you build it” free-for-all in England. The term “planning permission” soon became common currency as the 1947 act became a model for many other countries.

Pitt – urbane, measured and well acquainted with the planning system as an engineer and transport planner in a previous life – barely raises an eyebrow when asked if he is concerned about the Conservatives’ plans to scrap the IPC if they win the next general election. He has long experience of working with senior Tories during his eight years as chief executive of Kent county council, a flagship Tory-run local authority. “I am well aware of what members of the Conservative party are saying,” he replies calmly. “My priority is implementing the 2008 act and ensuring that the IPC is up and running in accordance with a demanding timetable, and that we can get as much good work under our belts as possible to demonstrate the value of having a commission.”

So, by the time of the next election, will plans for some key projects be set in stone, regardless of which party the voters choose? Pitt replies: “My best estimate is that we will be dealing with a significant number of applications by late spring [2010], and that a substantial amount of groundwork will have been done by both the applicants and other organisations.”

The need for a new planning regime was first mooted by the Treasury when Gordon Brown was chancellor and, effectively, in charge of domestic policy. He took on board complaints from business that delays in the planning system – a seven-year public inquiry into Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was cited as a prime example – placed England at a disadvantage compared with overseas competitors. “Fast-track planning” became the order of the day, embedded in the IPC.

While much of the present planning system will remain in place, the new regime will remove decisions on big, strategic infrastructure projects – airport runways, major road schemes and new rail lines, as well as power stations, wind farms, waste disposal schemes and new water projects – from local councils and hand them to the non-elected IPC.

This alarms Conservatives, as well as environmental groups, who see the IPC as anti-democratic and an arm of the state, created to minimise dissent and ride roughshod over public opinion. But Pitt, stressing the IPC’s independence from politicians, insists that democracy would be enhanced by the new system. “One of the big advantages of the IPC is that all interests, objectors, local authorities will get a better deal,” he says. “It will be much easier for them to make their case for and against an application, and for that to be heard by commissioners at open hearings, bearing in mind that the very formal, expensive and time-consuming arrangements for public inquiries in the past were very limited.”

Legal challenge

The new system, which begins this autumn, has several stages. First, an applicant seeking planning permission – an energy company or an airport operator, for instance – will have a statutory duty to consult widely as the issue is passed to the IPC, which will appoint a commissioner to undertake an initial assessment. This will be followed by a six-month examination period, which will include public hearings. The IPC then has three months to make a decision. If the application remains contentious, as many probably will, the new act allows a six-week window for a legal challenge from objectors. This will invariably mean an appeal to the high court for a judicial review.

Pitt, who was appointed by the government to head an inquiry into the 2007 floods that devastated swaths of England, insists: “We are moving from an adversarial to an inquisitorial system, and that means that the commissioner or commissioners holding a public hearing will ask the questions predominantly. All of the paperwork will have been done in advance. The commissioners will familiarise themselves with the arguments, they will come to a view about which of them are crucial and which are immaterial, and then they will question the witnesses in order to get to the essence of the case.”

He smiles broadly at the suggestion that his new appointment seems a bed of nails. “Well, I think it’s a great job,” he admits. “By October, we’ll be giving advice to all sectors, interested members of the public, local authorities … and, of course, applicants. And then, subject to ministerial timing, we’ll be ready to receive applications in the spring of next year.”

And ministerial timing is all important. Much of the IPC’s work is dependent on receiving national policy statements from three Whitehall departments. According to the communities and local government department, which is in charge of the planning system, these statements – 12 in all will be produced, with the first on energy and sea ports likely this autumn – will “integrate environmental, social and economic objectives”.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change alone is charged with producing six policy statements – one overarching strategy, the others covering renewables, fossil fuels, oil and gas, nuclear and national networks. The Department for Transport has to produce three on sea ports, airports and “national networks” (road and rail) – although, curiously, no overarching strategy. Finally, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has to address water supply, waste water and the disposal of hazardous waste.

Electoral cycles

“The 12 national policy statements are in various states of drafting,” Pitt says. “They are, in some ways, the most important part because what they require government to do is set out clearly their national plans for the various sectors, and that’s what the job of government is – looking to the future, beyond electoral cycles.”

But the IPC’s overriding mission is to balance the national interest with the local impact of specific applications. While the government sets out a national strategy, it rules on the suitability of sites, usually chosen by companies and developers. “So it is possible for the commissioners to overrule a national policy statement if, in their judgment, the damage to the local environment exceeds the benefit to the nation as a whole,” Pitt insists.

In short, the IPC may require the judgment of Solomon, and yet sometimes, please no one. Not even the government.

• Opinion: John Vidal on the IPC

‘Soon there will be no summer Arctic ice,’ says Norway’s foreign minister. Photograph: PR

A new “north-east passage” for shipping around Russia‘s Arctic coast and across the North Pole will be opened within a decade as global warming causes the ice cap to melt, Norway‘s foreign minister has predicted.

Jonas Gahr Store, speaking at a recent public lecture in Edinburgh, said the route through previously inaccessible Russian waters, could cut tanker journey times between Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Yokohama in Japan by 40%, and provide a safer and “pirate-free” route for trans-global shipping.

“The rise in temperatures across the Arctic is twice the world average. Soon there will be no summer ice – that will open up new routes and new strategic issues for the world,” he said. The forecast follows previous predictions that the more famous north-west passage will be opened by climate change.

The melting ice also has implications for the global energy market. The Arctic is thought to hold 20% of world resources of fossil fuels – principally sub-sea gas in the massive Shtokman field. The Russian government plans to start extracting gas from the Barents Sea by 2011 with French partners Total and the Norwegian state-owned Statoil.

The Arctic operating environment however is extremely hostile. Some 250 miles offshore, Shtokman cannot be reached by helicopter from continental bases. Explorers would also need to contend with temperatures of -50C (-58F) and ice flows the size of Jamaica.

With 50 Norwegian exploration and supply companies already registered in Murmansk, Mr Gahr Store believes Russia accepts it cannot develop the area alone.

He refutes the idea that a dash for gas and the creation of new Arctic shipping lanes threatens Norway’s green credentials.

“A man-made problem needs a man-made solution. The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] predicts that by 2030/2040 the proportion of energy supplied by fossil fuels will be unchanged at 80% but consumption will have increased. The answer is to produce electricity from fossil fuels without emissions by using carbon capture. Norway is already doing this [in the North Sea] – we store 1m tonnes of CO2 every year. It’s monitored and there have been no leaks.”

Carbon capture may be acceptable to some environmentalists but co-operation with Russia’s nuclear industry is not.

The Norwegian environmental group Bellona has published plans by Russian scientists to use nuclear-powered underwater drill vessels.

Dr Alexander Frolov, deputy head of Russian state weather forecaster Roshydromet, suggests conventional platform-based drilling may be impossible: “As the Arctic climate gets milder, the risk of huge iceberg formation and ice storms in the Barents Sea will grow significantly by 2015. The threat from ice formations of 100km long should not be underestimated.”

The Shtokman Development Company plans to address this challenge by using floating removable platforms, which may be nuclear powered and which can be moved around in case of “emergency situations”. The eye-watering entry on its website reads: “The forerunning Shtokman concept is a floating, disconnectable spar able to dodge roving icebergs of the 2m-tonne variety.”

Mr Frolov has also suggested icebergs could be destroyed with bombs, though admitting that “might raise ecological concerns”.

Russian experts now believe the safest way to avoid icebergs is to copy the Norwegians and operate sub-sea, laying pipelines in deep trenches.

The Norwegians have acquired considerable experience from developing their own Ormen Lange gas field, in depths of 3,000 metres which supplies 20% of the UK’s needs through the world’s longest sub-sea pipeline. Their new Snohvit development in Hammerfest is the world’s most northerly liquefied gas production centre – most of Snohvit is also sub-sea.

Waves crash over the harbour wall on the seafront at Porthcawl in Wales. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The UK could benefit from 250,000 jobs and up to £70bn in revenue from offshore wind and wave technologies by 2050, according to a study by the Carbon Trust. This potential will only be realised, however, if the government gives clear signals to industry, so that investors know where to put their money, rather than leaving new technologies to face the market alone.

The Carbon Trust, a government-backed agency that studies ways to promote low-carbon technologies, carried out economic analyses in six areas of low-carbon industry including offshore wind, wave, solid-state lighting and micro combined heat and power.

The studies, published today, looked at the current status and costs of the technology, how these would develop and what research and development costs there might be in the coming decades.

The studies for offshore wind and wave power showed these technologies could provide at least 15% of the total carbon savings required to meet the UK’s 2050 CO₂ reduction targets. “The UK’s greenhouse gas targets mean that by 2050 We must reduce our emissions to just one-10th of today’s levels, per unit of output,” said John Beddington, the government’s chief scientific adviser.

“This is a formidable challenge, requiring step changes in the rate at which we improve our energy efficiency and in low-carbon innovation.The Carbon Trust’s proposals recognise the need for us to be smarter in focusing our investments, including to help businesses seize the economic opportunities of the transition.”

According to the new analysis, published just a few weeks ahead of the forthcoming government white paper on energy, the UK could attract 45% of the global offshore wind market by 2020, delivering £65bn of net economic value and 225,000 total jobs by 2050.

This would only happen with an investment of up to £600m into research, the removal of regulatory barriers and incentives to increase the deployment of the turbines. In the UK this means installing around 29GW of wind by 2020 and upwards of 40GW by 2050. A large part of the economic benefit would come from exporting technology developed here.

For wave, the outlook is more modest. Around a quarter of the world’s wave technologies are being developed in the UK and the Carbon Trust said Britain should be the “natural owner” of the global market in this area. It could generate revenues worth £2bn per year by 2050 and up to 16,000 direct jobs.

“These technologies are not green ‘nice to haves’ but are critical to the economic recovery of the UK,” said Tom Delay, the chief executive of the Carbon Trust. “To reap the significant rewards from their successful development we must prioritise and comprehensively back the technologies that offer the best chance of securing long-term carbon savings, jobs and revenue for Britain. Rather than following in the footsteps of others, this new analysis shows it is an economic no-brainer to be leading from the front.”

In addition to the direct jobs in these in industries, there would be further benefits to the economy. “The UK’s also very good at the secondary service industries – things like the financing of wind farms, the legal documents, environmental assessments,” said Paul Arwas, a consultant who wrote the new Carbon Trust report. “Those jobs would be in addition – for offshore wind, it would be another 70,000 by 2050.”

None of this will happen, though, without government support. Arwas said that when encouraging new industries, authorities tended to swing between two poles – either direct state funding or allowing markets to decide. “Either the governments didn’t intervene at all or, if they did they did it by market mechanisms which are totally undifferentiated by technology. There you end up with a situation where, to take a footballing analogy, you’ve got the under 21s playing the under 12s.”

Instead the Carbon Trust has proposed a new, semi-interventionist, model where the government chooses a family of technologies to invest in, for example wave power, and tells developers there will be subsidies or long-term help available to develop the sector as a whole but without backing individual technologies.

John Sauven, Greenpeace’s executive director, welcomed the Carbon Trust’s proposed approach. “Every country now needs a decarbonisation plan to help solve three of our greatest challenges – climate stability, energy security and economic prosperity. The UK has an enormous untapped supply of clean, green renewable energy and a world class engineering industry well placed to develop it.”

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said the UK had little choice but to develop these new technologies, given the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels: “In the past we have let opportunities to capitalise on our scientific leadership slip through our fingers. The US and others are investing heavily in low carbon technologies; we must not fall behind and waste the scientific expertise that we have in the UK.”

“Why are we ignoring things we know? We know that the sun doesn’t always shine and that the wind doesn’t always blow.” So wrote former U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger and Robert L. Hirsch last spring in the Washington Post, suggesting that because these key renewables produce power only intermittently, “solar and wind will probably only provide a modest percentage of future U.S. power.”

Never mind that Schlesinger failed to disclose that he sits on the board of directors of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company — a business with much to lose if a solar- and wind-powered future arrives. But at least he and his co-author got it partly right. The benefits from wind and solar are mostly intermittent — so far. But the pair somehow missed the fact that a furious search for practical, affordable electricity storage to beat that intermittence problem is well underway.

For decades, “grid parity” has been the Holy Grail for alternative energy. The rap from critics was that technologies like wind and solar could not compete, dollar-for-dollar, with conventional electricity sources, such as coal and nuclear, without large government tax breaks or direct subsidies. But suddenly, with rapid technological advances and growing economies of manufacturing scale, wind power is now nearly at grid parity — meaning it costs roughly the same to generate electricity from wind as it does from coal. And the days when solar power attains grid parity may be only a half-decade away.

So with grid parity now looming, finding ways to store millions of watts of excess electricity for times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine is the new Holy Grail. And there are signs that this goal — the day when large-scale energy storage becomes practical and cost-effective — might be within reach, as well. Some technologies that can store sizeable amounts of intermittent power are already deployed. Others, including at least a few with great promise, lie somewhere over the technological horizon.

New storage approaches include improvements to existing lithium ionbatteries and schemes to store energy as huge volumes of compressed air in vast geologic vaults. Another idea is to create a network of small, energy-dense batteries in tens of millions of homes. Under such a “distributed storage” scheme, utility computers could coordinate electricity flows over a “smart grid” that continually communicates with — and adjusts the flow of power to and from — local batteries. This would even include batteries in future plug-in hybrid or all-electric vehicles.

And one 2008 breakthrough could even fulfill chemists’ long-held dreams of producing a squeaky-clean and storable fuel by using excess electricity generated from renewable sources to cheaply produce hydrogen, which could then be used in fuel cells to power homes and cars.

In a world run mainly on fossil fuels, finding ways to store electricity was not a pressing concern: Power plants across a regional electrical grid could simply burn more fuel when demand was high. But large-scale electricity storage promises be an energy game-changer, unshackling alternative energy from the constraints of intermittence. It would mean that if a wind or solar farm were the cheapest and cleanest way to generate power, it wouldn’t matter when the sun shone or the wind blew.
One storage approach seems obvious: to improve battery technologies. Picture efficient, enormous batteries that can store tens of millions of
watt-hours of juice. Today, the vast majority of new rooftop solar photovoltaic panels are connected to the grid, using it as a giant battery, pushing excess power onto the grid when solar panels provide excess power. The building then draws power from the grid when the sun doesn’t shine, with its meter spinning backward and forward with the ebb and flow of power. With relatively few solar roofs yet in play, utilities manage any ebb and flow by drawing down and ramping up generation at conventional power plants designed to balance fluctuating supply and demand.
A more robust world of solar and wind power might be better served by some sort of giant battery — or, more likely, many of them, widely distributed. The basic concept has been proven. Since 2003, the world’s largest battery backup has been storing energy for an entire city: Fairbanks, Alaska. Isolated as it is, and not part of any regional electricity grid, the metropolitan area of about 100,000 residents needs an electricity backstop more than most: In its sub-zero winters, pipes can freeze solid in as little as two hours. Six years ago, the city installed a huge nickel-cadmium battery, the same technology used for years in laptop computers and other portable devices.

Housed in a giant warehouse, the 1,300-metric ton battery is larger than a football field, and can crank out 40 million watts of power. Still, the Fairbanks battery provides only enough electricity for about 12,000 residents for seven minutes. That was enough to prevent 81 blackouts in the city in the battery’s first two years of operation.

Yet effective storage of electricity from solar or wind arrays that generate power equivalent to one large coal plant implies batteries on a breathtaking scale — hundreds of units the size of the Fairbanks array.

One possible answer? In Japan, so-called “flow” batteries have been used for years to store backup power at industrial plants. Conventional batteries store energy in chemical form.With flow batteries, charged chemicals are pumped into storage tanks, allowing still more chemical to be charged and pumped away, then pumped back into the active portion of the battery and drawn down as needed. One big advantage: Battery “size” can be expanded by simply adding more chemicals and more storage tanks. In 2003, the local utility on small King Island, off the coast of Australia, installed a large flow battery to sop up and later release excess power from a wind farm.
As with the alternative generation technologies, cost will be key for determining which battery or other storage technologies might prevail. Aside from such typical economic concerns as raw material and maintenance costs and durability, storage technologies all face some losses in “round-trip efficiency.” Inevitably, some energy is lost as it goes into storage, and more is lost as it comes out.

Right now, hopes are riding high on lithium ion batteries, because they have impressive round-trip efficiencies, can pack in high densities of energy, and can charge and discharge thousands of times before becoming degraded. Because of those attributes, lithium-ion battery technology has become increasingly dominant in laptop computers and cell phones. On a far larger scale, a powerful lithium ion battery pack powers the pricey all-electric Tesla Roadster, and is slated to power the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt next year.

On the grid, lithium ion experiments are already underway. One company, General Electric-backed A123 Systems, announced late in 2008 that it had been contracted to install a two-megawatt lithium ion storage unit at a California power plant owned by global utility giant AES.

Still, lithium ion remains a relatively expensive technology — 10 times more expensive than lead acid batteries with equivalent capacity. Technological improvements and manufacturing scale should bring lithium costs down over time, but by the time that happens, the world could be beating a path to the door of someone who’s found a way to build an even better battery.

Early this year, IBM revealed that it was launching a major research program into what looks like an even more promising technology — the lithium metal-air battery. Last month, a company called PolyPlus announced that it had already succeeded in developing one.

The PolyPlus battery and the IBM technology deliver an astonishing 10 times more energy density than even today’s best lithium ion technology. That means that, pound for pound, they offer about the energy density of gasoline. The key reason they can store so much energy is that they use oxygen, drawn from the air, in place of some of the chemical reactants used along with lithium in their lithium ion cousins.
There’s one big rub: Air isn’t just oxygen. Notably, it also contains humidity, and the lithium has a bad habit of acting like ignited gasoline when exposed to moisture, creating a real risk of fire and explosion. Chandrasekhar Narayan, manager of science and technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center near San Jose, Calif., has suggested that it will take five to 10 years to develop an effective membrane that will let oxygen into the battery while keeping moisture out.

Still in pie-in-sky mode, there’s “vehicle to grid” storage, or “carbitrage.” This enticing notion relies on idled storage in the batteries of the millions of plug-in hybrid or all-electric automobiles that will be in use in the future. There’s reason to believe this scheme could work. More than 90 percent of the time cars sit idled, and aside from days they’re used for long trips, most of their full energy storage capacity goes unused.

A single idle, electric-powered car could generate as much as 10 kilowatts of power, enough to meet the average demand of 10 houses, according to Willett Kempton, director of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration at the University of Delaware. With vehicle-to-grid technology, controlled by an array of smart meters, car owners plugged in at home or work could allow the grid to draw off unused chunks of power at times when short-term demand is high. Conversely, cars could be recharged when demand is low.

The stored power in those electric cars, or anywhere on the grid, might not come from batteries after all. In March, Texas-based EEStor announced that it had received third-party verification of its “ultracapacitor” technology. The company claims the lightweight device, which was awarded a U.S. patent last December, can bottle up huge amounts of electricity far more quickly than any battery and can do so at lower cost.

Like batteries, capacitors store and mete out electricity. Small conventional capacitors have been ubiquitous in electronic devices as far back as the early days of radio. But capacitors, so far, haven’t been able to store electricity for long enough to come close to competing with batteries. They have found use as devices that level out fluctuations in voltage or that briefly store power for near-instant release.

EEStor claims that its device, which is one-quarter the weight of a similar
lithium ion battery, can hold a large charge for days. Its patent describes a 281-pound device that would hold almost the same charge as a half-ton lithium ion battery pack installed on the Tesla Roadster. The company’s ultracapacitors have yet to prove themselves in commercial products. But industrial giant Lockheed Martin has already signed up with EEStor to use future ultra capacitors in defense applications, and Toronto-based Zenn Motors, which has also taken an ownership stake in EEStor, says it will have electric cars on the road using the technology in 2010.
If advanced batteries or ultracapacitors aren’t the ultimate answer, maybe using excess electricity to make hydrogen that can be stored will do the trick. Hydrogen can be produced through simple electrolysis, but technical and cost hurdles have made electrolysis impractical. Today, industrial-scale hydrogen is produced using natural gas as a not-so-clean feedstock.

But that may have begun to change last summer when MIT announced that a team lead by chemist Daniel Nocera had made a “major discovery” that employs a new kind of catalyst using cobalt and phosphate — abundant and non-toxic materials — to kick-start electrolysis.

Outside observers say the process could be revolutionary: opening up the possibility that electricity made at any time by the sun or wind could be stored by simply splitting (and later recombining) abundant water molecules, perhaps even undrinkable sea water. The breakthrough has been hailed by scientist British scientist James Barber of Imperial College London as having “enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind.” The website Xconomy reported in April that Nocera had quietly formed a startup company called Sun Catalytics. Efforts to reach Nocera for comment were unsuccessful.

And there is progress being made on an entirely different front — using excess electricity to pump compressed air into caverns, salt domes, and old natural gas wells, and then releasing the air to help state-of-the-art natural gas power plants spin turbines, lowering the amount of fuel consumed by as much as 70 percent. A consortium of utilities in Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas is already working with the U.S.’s Sandia National Laboratories to develop a giant, 268-megawatt compressed air system. Called the Iowa Stored Energy Park, it would store excess energy from the region’s burgeoning wind industry.

• This article was shared by our content partner Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network