Good News
What is the Future of Renewables in the UK
Posted on: 04/04/18
At Oxolt Energy, we would like to see a nice, easy to follow green path ahead for renewables, leading us to a low-carbon future: a non-stop route to decarbonising our electricity, transport and heat sectors.
Although we think the future can be clean and green, with the current electricity grid still centred on large, inflexible fossil generators, it may take some time to get there and the transition may not be easy but progress is in the air!
Renewable energy in the UK in 2017
It’s no secret that although over three-quarters of people in the UK back renewables, the government are not quite so supportive. The current planning system has meant that no wind farms in England have received planning permission so far in 2017, and only one site was granted permission in 2016. Although there is currently about 1 GWs worth of wind power going through the English planning system (that’s enough to power over 600,000 homes!) it is unlikely that much, if any of it, will be built.
No energy projects are built at the moment without some sort of government support, and onshore wind is no different. Onshore wind is already on the way to becoming the cheapest form of generation bar-none, and if the Government are serious about reducing bills, then allowing wind the opportunity to provide cheap power is a must. We think that costs will come down even further and as engineering improvements are made, there is a strong future forecast of wind power across the UK, much of which will probably be based in Scotland and Wales.
And what about solar power? The difficulty with building solar farms in the UK is that our electricity network was developed around large power stations, and is having problems coping with the increase in the enormous upscale of local, renewable generation we’ve seen in the last few years. This means that in the sunniest parts of the country we need to either upgrade the network (which can be costly) or work out how to better manage the power output from solar farms using batteries. The use of storage technology is important for all renewables as we move to a world of smart technology, and the government has just published its thoughts on how it plans to do this.