At last, good news, there was more renewable energy capacity than fossil built in the EU in 2008/9.
Here's the summary for UK and the outlook
Electricity
We have along way to go in UK, but we are making a start - see 'Wind farms' below. 6% of our electricity comes from renewables today. This needs to rise to 35% with 40GW of installed capacity by 2020.
Heat
On top of that heating (biomass, solar, ground heat pumps etc) from renewables is only 1% today, and this needs to rise to 12% by 2020. The new Renewable Heat Incentive coming from April 2011 will boost this.
Transport
The target is 10% of road transport energy from renewables by 2020. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation calls for 3.5% of biofuels (many think this is stupid use of food...). But anyway it comes nowhere near the target as the 10% target equates to 14% by volume...
This is a BIG problem. We need to turn fast to both transport-miles reduction and electric vehicles.
Money maker?
£100B will be invested in the next 10 years.
Wind farms
Just how many wind farms do we have, and how much electricity do they make? There are four steps along the way:
Planning -> Agreed -> Under Construction -> Operational
When all these are finished for the current projects we will have 19GW of wind power, about half the 2020 target for total renewables. And probably not enough to stop the lights going out in 2015-16 as old power stations are de-commissioned. We need to accelerate even more this investment.
Operational
Onshore 250 = 3491MW
Offshore 12 = 1041MW
Total of 4532MW. There are 2896 trubines, enough energy for 2.5M homes. CO2 reduction 5.1Mt/year, SO2 reduction is 0.12Mt/year, NOx redution is 0.036Mt/year
Under construction are
Onshore 24 = 522MW
Offshore 5 = 1452MW
Total of 1975MW
Projects agreed but not started construction
Onshore 186 = 4327MW
Offshore 7 = 2794MW
Total 7121MW
Project in planning
Onshore 255 = 7558MW
Offshore = 5 = 2260MW
Total = 9818MW
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