The wind energy sector in the UK is continuing to grow at a respectable pace, based on the most recent figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Wind power rose to provide about 7.7% of the UK’s electricity in 2013 — up from 5.5% in 2012, a 38% year-on-year increase.
Other interesting stats from the new report include the fact that low-carbon electricity provided nearly one-third of all the electricity generated in the UK last year — largely down to a surge in wind power output. To be exact, low-carbon power represented 32.7% of the electricity supplied last year, up from 29.4% the previous year.
The majority of this surge was the continued growth of the offshore wind energy sector. Quite a number of large wind projects came online — capacity grew from 1.86 GW to 3.3 GW, a 79% increase.
Business Green provides more info:
The larger onshore wind industry also saw capacity grow by 25 per cent to 6.4 GW over the same period, with 1.29 GW of new capacity installed.
The DECC figures also revealed that bioenergy increased its share of the power mix by 52 per cent to account for 2.8 per cent of total demand in 2013. However, the growth in wind and bioenergy was offset by a 1.2 per cent fall in hydropower, caused by the decrease in rainfall around certain plants.
Given that these figures are provisional, only representing data from the major producers, it’s likely that the percentage representing renewables will climb somewhat in the final report when the output from small-scale solar and wind energy producers is factored in.
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Image Credit: Dean Thorpe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license)
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