Degree of flexibility needed for energy supply strategy

In fact, so excited at the prospect was the Nottingham University expert, Peter Smith, that he said if he was younger he would emigrate here.

At the time, he was backing a tidal fence technology which he believed could see Guernsey produce a third of the UK’s power needs.

It was very bold stuff and, as it turns out, entirely wrong.

Tidal power remains completely unproven on a commercial scale as the corrosive and destructive environment refuses to be milked.

Alderney’s dalliance with tidal is proving an expensive undertaking and one that has left its States facing a legal battle with the company it was working with to license the seabed.

But while tidal has stalled, other technologies have marched on and the way people live their lives continues to change.

Offshore wind is now a major part of the renewables programme just a few miles from Channel Island shores.

When Professor Smith was considering where the tidal gold rush would hit, people were still fixed to driving around in petrol and diesel-powered cars.

Now they are being phased out under a twin-pronged effort of governments and manufacturers, while public electric car charge points have been installed for the first time.

Energy consumption patterns have altered too.

Guernsey produced an Energy Resource Plan back in 2011, a document that tends to read as an interesting academic paper – pages and pages of it are devoted to the idea of peak oil, which became something of a thing for that States after an eloquent speech in the chamber – rather than one that offers a clear direction of travel for the future.

But, seven years on, the landscape is obviously very different and changing quickly.

A reviewed and updated version is due to be produced by Environment & Infrastructure in the first quarter of this year, according to the Policy & Resource Plan.

The island is in the throes of making some fundamental and costly decisions on continuing to ensure a robust energy supply and it needs to do so in a coherent and integrated way that takes account of the shifting sands.

Since 2012 oil imports have trended downwards, something seen in gas consumption too.

Energy consumption per capita is also lower today than when the Energy Resource Plan was produced.

Between 2006/07 and 2010/11 electricity consumption trended consistently upwards, but is now less than that peak.

When you take proposals for importing fuels to the island or building another cable link directly to France, the upfront capital costs and ongoing bill is in the hundreds of millions.

They are not only costly decisions, but ones which also tie the hands of future generations.

Micro-renewables barely warranted a mention in the 2011 Energy Plan – dismissed in seven lines.

That rather underplayed things.

Guernsey Electricity has just announced the installation of the largest solar project this island had seen, signalling its belief that the way power is generated and used is changing fast.

That pace of change has to be a consideration for not only the viability, need, scale and timing for those major power infrastructure projects in the metaphorical pipeline, but also for things such as the on-island electricity network and how its maintenance is paid for.

It also impacts on how we think about security of supply and what we mean by it.

The future will be about a mix of supply sources, but as storage technology advances, overcoming the intermittent supply issue with renewables, and becomes affordable, businesses and even households become power generators themselves.

Those redundant glasshouse sites and office and warehouse roof spaces all of a sudden become a commodity in whole new ways.

The question becomes much less about how a central supplier generates big amounts of power and sends it down the line to be consumed by everyone else, to how it helps re-distribute any excess, covers those not able to afford the investment in new technology and provides a back-up when self-generation fails.

That is a conversation only just starting but one we will hear much more of.

As S&P Global put it in advice to US investors earlier this month: ‘Once battery storage achieves a critical mass, there will be no turning back.’

While nascent, it is an area primed for growth in the next five years.

The States’ attention and the public conversation has been elsewhere in the last few months as education dominated.

But, like any government, it needs to be able to move on many different fronts and not become myopic.

Things such as the energy question present an enormous challenge and one that requires a degree of flexibility and nimbleness as technology advances accelerate.

Guernsey needs to be asking itself where it will be positioned.