And nuclear. Because Brits know that you can't rely 100% on renewables (30% is about the maximum for most countries; "wood pellet" isn't actually renewable, it's forest mining).
And I noticed that the 2030 assumption at the web site for the capital cost of electrolyzers for hydrogen production has already been beaten by a factor of 2. Hydrogen is very important for minimizing cost in their UK solutions, so this is very good news for renewables there.
Electricity storage doesn't exist. There is no existing industrial solution at scale (except hydro, but there's no room left for expansion in Europe). We're talking of scales of many GWh of storage. Then there's price of a multi-GWh storage.
Our society is entirely relying on on-demand power generation. Wind and solar are utterly inadequate tools. In actuality while Spain installed 20GW of wind and solar, it also installed 15 GW of gas-powered plants. Climate change anyone?
As well as storage there are interconnects. Most of the time we buy French power, they have a lot of Nukes, but Wind is cheaper even than the French Nukes, so when we have lots of wind we do not buy French nuclear power. The interconnects have the effect of somewhat smearing European weather effects across the continent as far as power is concerned.
Scotland is already near 70% and aiming for 100% renewables. With sufficient storage capacity (hydro and batteries), there's no reason any country couldn't be 100% renewables.
Biofuels are a very small part of the mix, and I agree pretty pointless except on a small scale in remote locations to provide heat as well as power.
https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/09/23/scotland-will-soon...
>> "Scotland will soon be meeting the equivalent of 100% of its electricity needs from clean energy sources."
This is kind of a weaselly. Two parts of this sentence need explanation: 1) "equivalent of" 2) "electricity needs"
The equivalency is a murky way of saying that they still use fossil fuels but are also engaged in carbon offsets to reach the equivalency. Those carbon offset methods are sometimes dubious - paid someone to plant trees in the amazon, etc. Further, do we really consider burning biomass clean or renewable (I would not)?
The "electricity need" stands apart from the country's heating and transportation needs, at least. So this is a fraction of a fraction of Scotland's energy needs being met by "clean" energy, if you consider the net return of solar and tidal to be worth more energy than was consumed in manufacturing, transporting, installing, and maintaining those facilities before their respective end-of-life.
There are ~269 renewables projects, roughly 40GW, in the planning stages that will add to that existing renewables capacity. [2] Hydro imports from Scandinavia over an underwater HVDC transmission cable would also be a possibility.
[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/GB?wind=false&solar=fals...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/16/planning-ap...
Note: Edits were made to this comment to the multiplier and the total nuclear generator capacity based on blibble's comment below.
more like 10GW
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
Something to note:
> The UK has 15 reactors generating about 21% of its electricity but almost half of this capacity is to be retired by 2025.
The UK's combined annual wind (40TWh) and solar (14TWh) generation capacity is still less than 3/4 of nuclear (72TWh).
Capacity factor aside, unreliability aside, seasonal variation aside, real word aside... you can argue literally anything.
See the data tables here: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-...
In 2019 the UK generated 51.04 TWh from nuclear and 76.55 TWh from wind and solar.
Your 269 renewable projects, occupying thousands of times more land space and requiring hundred of times more resources to build, will only produce 3 to 4 times as much at best, while still requiring an equivalent spare capacity (in storage, using unavailable technology, or in gas, coal, ... or nuclear) for times of no wind or no sun.
Renewables are a sham. A waste of money, land and resources. Seriously, I'm quite sure of it now.
From Wikipedia on HPC:
> EDF has negotiated a guaranteed fixed price – a "strike price"– for electricity from Hinkley Point C of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 prices),[26][81] which will be adjusted (linked to inflation) during the construction period and over the subsequent 35 years tariff period. The strike price could fall to £89.50/MWh if a new plant at Sizewell is also approved.[26][81] High consumer prices for energy will hit the poorest consumers hardest according to the Public Accounts Committee.
> One analyst at Liberium Capital described the strike price as 'economically insane' in October 2013: "as far as we can see this makes Hinkley Point the most expensive power station in the world... on a leveraged basis we expect EDF to earn a Return on Equity (ROE) well in excess of 20% and possibly as high as 35%".[98] "Having considered the known terms of the deal, we are flabbergasted that the UK Government has committed future generations of consumers to the costs that will flow from this deal"
> 25 September 2019, EDF announced that the total cost of the power station was likely to rise by up to £2.9bn and the total bill could be more than £22bn
This very much sounds like a waste of money and resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-07/u-k-grid-...