UK Renewable Energy Output Falls

October 6th, 2010 by Chris Milton

UK renewable energy production fell steeply in the first half of this year, according to figures released by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). In the period January to March they fell by 7.5% and then fell by a subsequent 12.1% April to June.

The figures now show that only 5.9% of energy generated in the UK came renewable sources, down from 6.7% in 2009 and woefully behind its 2010 target of 10%.

Despite this the industry body, RenewableUK, believes the country will still hit its target of 15% of energy coming from renewables by 2020; earlier this year it called for the 2020 target for wind power to be raised from 12GW to over 20GW.

DECC’s figures point to a number of other trends within the UK energy market, including a 10% drop in energy consumption between 2007 and 2010. Coal imports have halved in the same period and the production of natural gas has dropped by 25%. The demand for gas and aviation fuel has stayed relatively flat.

The drop in renewable energy generation has been blamed largely on lower than expected wind and rainfall but it has been greeted calmly by industry, government and campaigners alike.

Louise Hutchins, climate campaigner for Greenpeace, said: “At the moment it [renewable energy] is a very small share in electricity and small fluctuations in weather can have an impact on the percentage of supply. When we have a lot more renewable energy there will be a lot more stability.”

^{Picture Credit: Windenergy by Wagner Christian under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.}

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Tags: decc, hydro, renewableuk, UK

About the Author

Chris Milton is a seasoned sustainability journalist focusing on business, finance and clean technology. His writing's been carried by a number of highly respected publishers, including The Guardian, The Washington Post and Scientific American. You can follow him on twitter as @britesprite, where he's one of Mashable's top green tweeters and Fast Company's CSR thought leaders. Alternatively you can follow him to the shops... but that would be boring.

Frank Hanlan

Is it only the changes in climate that have reduced the percentage of electricity generated from renewable sources? Or does it also result from the pricing and marketing of electricity from nonrenewable sources?

It also occurs to me that if they use net metering they would not be able to measure the amount of electricity generated by solar arrays on buildings and houses.
- http://www.britesprite.co.uk Chris Milton
  
  The change is in power generated, not consumed, so it is just down to the prevailing weather conditions, nothing more.
  
  Regarding micro generation on buildings etc, only those installations which feed into the national grid through the FIT (feed in tariff) can be measured. The figures show this was 15.2MW, the over 95% of which was PV generated. This cannot be compared as there are no figures from the previous year, but to put it into context, the total renewable generation was 4.7TWh !
  
  Hope this helps.