>Scotland [...] has a goal to source the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewable energy sources by the end of this year.
What does 'equivalent' mean in this sentence?
What does 'equivalent' mean in this sentence?
You can check this site for the present state (it doesn't show scotland though): https://www.electricitymap.org/
This bit is important, because it's possible to be "100% renewable", yet at the same time spew massive amounts of carbon.
https://energy.stanford.edu/news/100-renewables-doesn-t-equa...
Hard to imagine anyone wants to deal with that regardless of how they feel about Brexit.
Plenty of independent nation's share grids.
Texas has its own grid (ERCOT) because Texas. Humans are quirky.
For example, let's say my energy demand for 1 year is 1 GW. I generate that 1 GW using solar. But I sell 50% of it to a neighbor. Inside my house, I use gas for that missing 50%. Overall, I've "generated 100%" of my needs from renewables. I (Scotland) sell clean energy to my neighbor (Europe).
I skimmed this article for inspiration: http://euanmearns.com/scotlands-wind-exports-to-england-and-...
So they can monitor total renewable generation, and total consumption, but can't have influence on what the shortfall is made up by. I've no doubt the grid will move toward more locality as it redesigns for a smart grid suitable for 100% renewables, and Scottish independence might provoke formal interconnecting.
For now they are both in the same 'house'.
Edit: I find myself newly suspicious of that site's agenda as he links to Watts Up With That, a notorious and extreme denialist site in his blog role. His phrasing may have been carefully chosen to downplay and minimise the achievement. He seems to have a fair time in the oil industry from his about page.
For context, because Scotland is so big and empty, a disproportionate chunk of UK wind power is based there compared to their population - so much so that if I remember correctly their wind power has to curtail sometimes due to interconnect limits with the rest of the UK. It's kind of hard to get day-by-day or hour-by-hour figures for Scotland alone, but Scottish nuclear + renewables in the entire UK dropped well below Scotland's peak demand a good few times just in the last two months. That shortfall has to be made up using fossil fuels, there's no alternative - and a good chunk of that is going to be Scottish fossil fuel plants due to interconnect limits.
The Scottish government is simply using the fact that a disprortionate amount of UK wind power ended up there to spin themselves as less dependent on fossil electricity than they are. You can't measure progress towards an 100% grid using net figures like this because the last bit of demand is so much harder to satisfy renewably than the first, and countries with the ability to play silly tricks like this with net power can skip the hard part and pretend they've solved the problem. If/when renewable generation in England and Wales increases it might well even roll this figure back as less electricity is imported during peak wind generation, despite the fact that both Scotland and the rest of the UK would be getting more of their actual electricity from renewable sources.
Sure it's a lot of PR, but it's not just empty PR with a grid that's controlled mainland wide, and chooses sources minute to minute depending on availability, demand and price it's the best they can do. Scotland can, and does, encourage a much healthier approach to the adoption of renewables than Westminster. With more powers to the regions outside London, including Holyrood, so much more could, and would be done.
You can make the same criticism for every use of home solar panels, of green suppliers, of the whole transition to sustainable, and even of the entire markets for gas and electric considering we can't segregate individual electrons and atoms.
It's kind of hard to get Scotland figures alone because there is no separate Scottish grid, nor interconnects as such, just the mainland National Grid encompassing the three mainland countries. It's accounting, but it's not silly, it's the market we're all forced to participate in. We could have more precise regional figures with regional grids with interconnects between. We're not really large enough to need or justify that. Scottish independence, if it ever comes, might well see a Scottish grid as separate entity.
We just about eliminated the electricity component of the typical UK supply of electricity and gas for heating. That's not net zero, or creative accounting, that's actually eliminate use of grid electric for nine or ten months, with a little use in winter. That only because of switching water heating to the panels, that was previously on gas. We're in N Cumbria.
If you look at energy consumption as a whole it's not that great though, in 2017 Scotland consumed 149 GWH, of which 24 GWH was electricity.
I don't think any other European countries are really doing any better though, Germany which is often touted as the leader in renewables, generates most of its electricity from fossil fuels (and most of that from coal and peat). This is why we need countries (and people) to take these climate goals seriously - even if you don't accept climate change, it's easy to see that generating 100% of your own energy from renewables will be more economically stable and sustainable in the long term.
Germany doesn't use peat for energy production. We did run two plants in the past, but they closed in 1965 and 1974
Is it though? Europe doesn't seem like a particularly good spot spot for renewable energy. We've already put hydro pretty much everywhere we can, but the rest needs to be covered by pretty subpar options. Europe is further north than the US, which makes solar much less appropriate of a choice. Europe is also a lot smaller with more population density and that makes wind more difficult to do.
It's a completely different story for the US. As I understand, domestic reserves are expected to last until the mid 2030s, but that assumes no new reserves will be discovered. Unfortunately as a lot of our technology comes from the US, it means the world as a whole is pretty dependent on the US energy economy and their political decisions regarding sustainability.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
I misunderstood you then, because I wholeheartedly agree with this. This is also workable politically because of the energy independence plans of the EU. The discussions around Nord Stream 2 are an example of this.
Europe has some of the best spots on the planet for wind generation. Winds are in many places, a near constant companion, and usually within the range that turbines prefer. Any one of Britain, Ireland and the Nordics could supply a huge proportion of Europe's power needs with fully developed offshore wind. With a slim chance of ever being becalmed. Together I wouldn't be at all surprised to find generation capacity above European needs. There's plenty of suitable onshore sites too, and plenty of other European countries not yet mentioned.
Solar is never going to generate as much per panel in Scotland and UK as in California or Saudi, but it's good enough to pay well economically and in terms of emissions and overall impact too. Why wouldn't we use it in the mix? There's plenty of roof space doing nothing else.
New hydro has less scope, but there are suitable sites, and a large selection of locations suitable for pumped storage -- some of them part prepared by already having a lake in a disused quarry!
Regarding this I live at 54N, and here installing roof top solar will pay for itself in less than 10 years. That's excluding government grants, and any electricity you are paid for exporting, so in reality it could be as little as 5. After that you have free energy for the life of the system - the inverter will last 15-25 years, solar panels will last the life of the building, but will produce less power over time.
And how much area does that require? Sure, the countries with a long coast might be able to do it, but others might not be able to as easily. Even if they can do it, electricity and land prices would be more expensive there than elsewhere. I'm not sure how this would work politically, because business would probably just move to the other parts of the EU.
>the Nordics could supply a huge proportion of Europe's power needs with fully developed offshore wind.
The further you have to transport electricity the less efficient it becomes. And when you say "Nordics" here are you talking about just Denmark or do you include Sweden too? Because remember, Norway is not in the EU.
This kind of an energy solution is likely unthinkable politically as well. It would render some nation states vulnerable to others.
I include Norway as we're talking about Europe, and there are two interconnects coming with the UK -- one in progress, one planned, and other EU-Norway links coming. UK has about 5 others in progress to Netherlands, Ireland and elsewhere. There's loads of new interconnects in the pipeline within the EU and to surrounding. I've even seen Iceland in one interconnect proposal, which was somewhat surprising. Proposed interconnects to N Africa less so. There's lots of suitable onshore sites too, mainly in spots where other uses of the land are limited.
Politically not at all unthinkable though -- think of most nation's reliance on imported coal, oil, and gas, much of it for generation. That's more risky. Two way interconnect agreements are much less risk by comparison to import only, often from volatile oil and gas states. Reduced reliance on imported fossil energy is one of the big reasons it's heading that way and started in the first place.
So? The grids of the Nordic countries are already interconnected. There's also a 700 MW cable connecting Norway to the Netherlands, and plans for connections to Germany and the UK.