UK Low-Carbon Renewable Power Set To Overtake Fossil Fuels For First Time 61
Rising renewables, low demand and cheaper power imports all helped reduce fossil fuel use in the UK power system to record lows. From a report: For the first full year wind, solar, and hydropower will generate more electricity than all fossil fuels combined. Homegrown UK renewable power will cross a significant threshold in 2024, overtaking fossil fuel generation for the first full year. Wind, solar and hydropower are set to generate a combined 37% of UK electricity in 2024 (103 TWh), compared to 35% from fossil fuels (97 TWh). Just 3 years ago, in 2021, fossil fuels generated 46% of UK electricity, while low-carbon renewables generated 27%.
Including biomass, renewables overtook fossil fuels in the UK in 2020, fell below fossil power the following year as biomass production fell, and again overtook in 2023. However, Ember's analysis raises concerns about biomass being categorised as clean power in the UK, given the significant emissions risks and lack of domestic pellet production. Bioenergy, which includes biomass and biogas power, is set to provide 14% of UK electricity in 2024.
Fossil generation in 2024 has fallen by two-thirds since 2000, with the long awaited phase-out of coal power, and gas increasingly displaced by cheaper, cleaner power sources. Coal started to decline rapidly from 2012 and since 2020, coal power has made up only 2% of generation in the UK, dropping to zero by October 2024. Gas has seen a gradual decline since 2016. Across 2024 there has been a large decrease in fossil gas power, which provided 30% of electricity in 2024 (85 TWh), down from 34% in 2023 (98 TWh).
Including biomass, renewables overtook fossil fuels in the UK in 2020, fell below fossil power the following year as biomass production fell, and again overtook in 2023. However, Ember's analysis raises concerns about biomass being categorised as clean power in the UK, given the significant emissions risks and lack of domestic pellet production. Bioenergy, which includes biomass and biogas power, is set to provide 14% of UK electricity in 2024.
Fossil generation in 2024 has fallen by two-thirds since 2000, with the long awaited phase-out of coal power, and gas increasingly displaced by cheaper, cleaner power sources. Coal started to decline rapidly from 2012 and since 2020, coal power has made up only 2% of generation in the UK, dropping to zero by October 2024. Gas has seen a gradual decline since 2016. Across 2024 there has been a large decrease in fossil gas power, which provided 30% of electricity in 2024 (85 TWh), down from 34% in 2023 (98 TWh).
"Including biomass" (Score:5, Informative)
This shouldn't detract from the overall story though - the UK's grid greening is an excellent success story and I'm happy to see it continue.
Re: "Including biomass" (Score:5, Informative)
Strange. Even though the text mentions it, the chart on the Ember report clearly breaks out Nuclear and Biomass as separate categories and shows renewables moving ahead on their own.
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It certainly seems problematic in terms of robbing Canada for soil nutrients that are exported to the UK, and probably other reasons that I don't know about.
But counting it the same as coal seems even more incorrect than equating it with solar or wind.
Anyways, as mention
Re:"Including biomass" (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, it actually doesn't. Look up how much fuel is used to move X tons of stuff across the Atlantic. Best I could get from Googling it and some hand-wavy math, we get about 110 kg of fuel to move a container 10' x 10' x 40' across the Atlantic (which is what? 25 gallons more or less?). How much wood can you cram in a container? and how much does it weigh? How long does it last burning it?
Now imagine an entire large container freighter full of wood.
I don't think that qualifies as "involving a lot of foss
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Drying the wood is often done with natural gas and can use up as much as a third of the energy you get from the wood pellets.
It is great that the forest will have sucked the CO2 back up in a hundred years, but right now the CO2 emitted will still heat the atmosphere.
Luckily green energy is overtaking fossil fuels even without including biomass.
Re: "Including biomass" (Score:2)
The main reason to use natural gas for the industrial drying or wood or for making wood pellets is that natural gas is very cheap. Once the economics are less favorable, you'll see the price of wood go up as they switch to electric dryers. Much of Northern Europe imports wood and wood pellets from Canada and the US. Getting them completely off itis unlikely. Managed timberlands are simply more practical in North America than in Western Europe. And we'll plant slighty more trees than we harvest as long as pe
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If you kept timber it in a moderately heated warehouse with some fans going, you could probably have it ready in 4-6 months. Doing less to protect it from the elements and you'll be seasoning it through the summer months. Since we're talking about hardwoods for firewood, it takes a rather long time to dry. If we were just sending (green) knotty pine for nonstructural lumber over, that wouldn't need nearly so long to dry.
While it's aboard ship, it's not going to dry at all. It has to be packed in moisture ti
Re: "Including biomass" (Score:2)
If it rots on the ground that is mostly aerobic decomposition and then most of the carbon winds up in the soil.
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The trees are going to be converted back to carbon.
Whereas when coal, oil, or gas is burned the carbon is magically annihilated?
But, but, but NetZero (Score:4, Interesting)
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It must be interesting right now with Russian assets being seized to find Ukraine. The Russian oligarch money in London must be unhappy but it appears there are limits to its influence.
Maybe it's an opportunity for the UK to rid itself of the infection. It's not like there aren't enough home grown criminals to fill the economic niche.
UK renewables are bad for Russian economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, UK shifting to renewables and cutting fossil gas usage, is directly bad for Russia too: Beside the positive climate impact from lower consumption, It means the UK can export more fossil gas from the Northern Sea fields to mainland countries still dependent on fossil gas (like Germany and Austria). Which makes it easier for them cutting Russian gas exports (which will occur now when the gas transit agreement through Ukraine ends) - and cutting Russian income to the invasion finances.
I still hope the whole of Europe rapidly phase out fossil gas, also for climate reasons.
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Germany has completely stopped importing russian pipeline gas in 2022. There are only some LNG imports. The ending of the gas transit agreement is a non-issue for Germany for this reason, but it is indeed a big deal for Austria, Slovakia and especially Hungary.
They should stop using the term renewable (Score:2, Insightful)
It is meaningless.
Energy sources should just be rated on how much CO2 they produce. Nuclear counts as well.
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It certainly is not meaningless.
It is however not the most important thing, especially when discussing AGW.
Both things are important, as both things speak to sustainability.
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It's not meaningless because, with current technology, sunlight and wind will last indefinitely. On the other hand, with current technology, nuclear will only last a few hundred years. Because it uses finite fuel that we will run out of viable sources for. Certainly you can argue that new nuclear technology for generation or fuel extraction will extend that, but with the extant technology we are actually using now, solar and wind are truly renewable (as long as the sun shines), but nuclear is not. Very clea
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It is actually thousands to millions of years with nuclear fission.
At this point we can economically extract uranium from sea water, at least in the sense that it wouldn't raise the cost of nuclear energy much at all. We don't because it would cost 2-3 times as much.
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It is actually thousands to millions of years with nuclear fission.
With breeder reactors. I don't seen a lot of breeder reactors around producing commercial power. Maybe I should have elaborated a bit with the term "current technology". I was trying to encompass the idea that it's already extant in regular commercial use, not just research, and it also includes the cavaets that it be affordable and safe. Apparently there are some breeder reactors going in Russia producing commercial power, but that's Russia. Frankly I don't trust ex-Soviets when it comes to Russia when it
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No, it's not actually just with breeder reactors. Breeders and reprocessing are only if we want millions of years.
There's ~4.5B tons of uranium [acs.org] in the oceans. 1,000 times that on the land.
So, 100 years for ground mining = 100,000 for ocean.
And the technology for extraction from seawater is current, just unused because the demand for Uranium is low and it's still cheaper to mine it. Plus, consider oil - we did a big prospecting push after WWII, but after that we haven't looked hard for more Uranium.
Okay,
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No, it's not actually just with breeder reactors. Breeders and reprocessing are only if we want millions of years.
There's ~4.5B tons of uranium [acs.org] in the oceans. 1,000 times that on the land.
So, 100 years for ground mining = 100,000 for ocean.
So ~100 years with "current technology" as in my original post.
And the technology for extraction from seawater is current, just unused because the demand for Uranium is low and it's still cheaper to mine it.
"current" meaning that researchers have tried it but never commercialized it. So not "current" by the definition I'm using where "current" is technology actually in commercial usage.
More common use of it would help with people knowing realistic safety standards for it. Besides, an RTG isn't exactly a nuclear power plant either. It's special purpose.
That was just an example of people from ex-Soviet countries clearly having an unhealthy level of unconcern about radioactive material. Now, I don't actually know for sure if they knew it was radioactive and just dismissed the danger, or if they were just bumpkins and
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Again, while more research would occur during commercialization, it isn't being used because our demand for uranium is very limited, at ~100 years supply, we can look for more when it actually starts being an issue.
It's like oll really. Our "reserves" are how much we could mine at a given price, normally the current one. With your limitations, it's a 230 year supply.
Given how long we've been hanging around with only 20 years of oil left...
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Sorry, got distracted: While more research would occur during commercialization, extraction of plutonium from seawater is fully developed, just still more expensive than hard rock mining for now, and the amount of uranium we need is very low, so very low pressure to deploy more extraction.
All that's left is engineering a specific collection platform. It's current technology.
But even without that, by common measurements, we have over 230 years left. Given how long we've been at 20 years for oil... The way
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“They” specifically refer to “low carbon renewables” to distinguish between these and nuclear, which as you say is also low carbon, and biomass, which is controversial.
So your prayers for clarity have actually been answered, but it does require you to read the text.
Impressive, but only part of the story (Score:3)
Electricity is only part of the energy use, typical around one-quarter. One advantage of nuclear is that it can also provide heating.
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Electricity is only part of the energy use, typical around one-quarter. One advantage of nuclear is that it can also provide heating.
It doesn't, but I suppose it could.
For that matter, electricity generation from gas-fired turbine generators could provide heating. In contemporary thermal power plants, 56% to 67% of the energy of combustion goes out as waste heat. If waste heat actually were valuable, you could pipe it out.
But it's not.
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Nordic countries use CHP plants a lot.
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Re:Impressive, but only part of the story (Score:4, Informative)
Approximately zero nuclear power plants are connected to district heating. They are built too far from cities and towns, and the temperature they run at is too low to allow meaningful extraction of heating.
If Molten Salt Reactors ever become a thing, the increased temperatures will make district heating a bit more viable. Particularly if the plants are safe enough to be placed near cities. We are nowhere near commercial MSRs though, but maybe one day.
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We don't have any of that in the UK, and a good thing too because right now a big chunk of our nuclear is offline and people would be cold.
They are refuelling reactors.
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Solar is also widely used for heating. In some parts of Europe solar water heating far exceeds solar PV.
Solar (Score:5, Interesting)
Just in time for me to stop caring because I can now turn my all-electric house into a self-sufficient all-electric house on a small budget and no longer require that utility at all (even in the UK, solar and batteries for 24+ hours is more than viable).
Honestly, I can see the electricity sector start to tank now because why would I pay you for something I can do for myself just as cheaply? That was never historically true, but with ridiculous unit prices (still set based on gas prices, ironically) and cheap solar... it's perfectly viable.
And starting from 2030, more and more houses will be required to have bought a very large battery in the form of... an electric car.
I started building out my own solar because I see no utility in my future retirement. 20 years from now, I'm not going to need the grid for anything. To quote Tom Goode in The Good Life (Good Neighbors in the US): If I could invent a water pill, the water board can go stuff itself too.
Honestly, I bought an all-electric house a couple of years ago, after living in an all-electric house for about 5 years, with the express aim to be independent of the utilities. It's not even particularly difficult to do. Currently 4KWh storage for 7KWh average daily usage, and I've barely even started putting panels on the main roof of my tiny place.
I will move to an all-electric car when my current one dies, and won't use a fuel station ever again. Hell, I'm looking at atmospheric water generators and greywater systems and even electric incinerator toilets (a bit drastic, because I'd always have sewage, but a great option). Amazing how all that lot needs is electricity, too.
And will I feed so much as a watt back to the grid? No. Why would I? Why should I help them out for an absolute pittance? I'm not a believer in such nonsense but it would be technically better deployed running a Bitcoin miner from the excess than all the hassle involved in feeding back to the very utility I'm trying to get rid of.
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And will I feed so much as a watt back to the grid? No. Why would I?
Because sometimes solar systems produces more power than you can use or store, so why not sell it?
But fact is, once a lot of people put in solar, when your system is producing more power than you can use, the grid has more than all the power it can use anyway, so you're not really helping by selling them power.
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Because selling it is less cost-efficient than using it.
As I provide as an example - bitcoin mining. Or run an atmospheric water generator (turn your electricity into clean water). Or put it into your car.
An excess of electricity is something that's extremely simple to manage and doesn't require you to do ANYTHING with it at all. You can just throw it away. It's cost nothing to produce.
But tying into the grid requires a whole different set of integration requirements, generates only a comparative pittan
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Because selling it is less cost-efficient than using it.
Using something that you have no use for is not cost efficient.
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Why should I help them out for an absolute pittance?
You shouldn't, but in the coming decades, lawmakers could declare all solar panels as part of the public utility, and legally mandate you to hook up to the grid, and give you nothing for your excess power
Maybe if the British law actually allows that then in some theoretical sense they could, but they won't, because utilities don't want to buy electricity at times when there's an oversupply of solar.
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The UK does not have large enough rooftops to allow going off-grid, unless you have batteries large enough for seasonal shifting (and good luck with that).
You can often have a week of barely any sunlight hitting your roof, so without seasonal shifting you need enough solar to cover something like twenty times your average daily consumption.
Off-grid is not viable in places with winter, unless you have an emergency generator.
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And you're under the delusion that you must have clear sunlight for solar panels to work at all.
Yup.
So, when we were in Scotland and the UK in August, you're telling me that all the houses and solar farms we saw were illusions?
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Re:Solar (Score:4, Interesting)
My tiny house in Oxfordshire begs to differ.
As do several surrounding neighbours with "normal" sized houses.
Of course, in the summer, those same panels are pulling in many, many kilowatts and you'll struggle to use or store it all but... that doesn't matter.
I technically have capacity for about 8 times more panels than I have, and I'm already charging 1KWh+ every day even at the moment (wind, rain, etc. even snow the other week). My average daily usage is 7KWh. My battery capacity is 4KWh with a max of about 16KWh in the space/system it's currently in.
With an electric car, that would be even greater. And if you want you can just remain on the grid purely to load-shift from off peak to peak hours (sign up to Octopus Flex, charge batteries at 2p / KWh, use them when they are 30p / KWh, etc.).
Solar is not only viable in the UK, it's literally being used like that already.
The rooftop is not the problem. I just passed a very ordinary house this morning with a very poorly laid out arrangement of 13 panels, which I believe are ~400W each. That's 5.2KW. Even at 5% effectiveness on their stated rating, that's 2KWh per day. I'd have got 4KWh / day out of that roof, easily. I literally look at those things now because I've done it on my own.
Hell, I could have fitted twice his system on my roof, which is about 2/3rds the size.
With the shitest panels in the world (cheap 12V flexis, laid on a shed, facing whatever direction of the shed happened to be nearest south, with the shed lower than the roof slope), I was generating 1KWh per day even in the winter with an area approximately 1/12th the size of my actual south-facing roof.
Also: If you need to start up a generator for a couple of days a year and your solar is free the rest of the year? Welcome. That's still off-grid.
And with an electric car that 20 times your daily consumption (140KWh for me) is perfectly viable. Hell, 100KWh cars are hardly unusual on their own, let alone if you also have a household solar system of any decent capacity.
The tables turned. Household self-sufficient solar is possible and even practical even in Nordic latitudes nowadays, using nothing more than available roofspace.
Worlds highest electricity prices (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct link (Score:2)
Re: Worlds highest electricity prices (Score:5, Interesting)
When people claim renewable energy is cheap, they are ignoring the costs of energy storage, and backup generation systems.
It is cheap, but the UK energy market is structured such that the unit cost of electricity is pegged to the cost of natural gas, even when it's generated using wind, hydro etc. We can't have those poor fossil fuel companies losing out because something better comes along now can we? /s
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When people claim renewable energy is cheap, they are ignoring the costs of energy storage, and backup generation systems.
It is cheap, but the UK energy market is structured such that the unit cost of electricity is pegged to the cost of natural gas, even when it's generated using wind, hydro etc. We can't have those poor fossil fuel companies losing out because something better comes along now can we? /s
Is that an EU thing? Because it looks like a common problem over there.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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When people claim renewable energy is cheap, they are ignoring the costs of energy storage, and backup generation systems.
It is cheap, but the UK energy market is structured such that the unit cost of electricity is pegged to the cost of natural gas, even when it's generated using wind, hydro etc. We can't have those poor fossil fuel companies losing out because something better comes along now can we? /s
That and we've privatised pretty much all of it. They've stopped all investment in the grid, jacked up prices and are still asking the govt for more money.
But they rely on imports, which are problematic (Score:2)
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The UK grid is collected to other ocuntries’ grids with interconnectors. While the UK is a net importer over the course of a year, it’s to the tune of like 6 or 7%, so it’s a bit weird to describe the UK as reliant, especially as electricity also flows the other way from time to time, when the UK is in surplus.
Also, the UK’s interconnectors are with Norway (hydropower), France (nuclear), Denmark (wind), the Netherlands (wind), as well as Belgium, RoI and NI. So these are really a bun
Paid not to use electricity (Score:2)
On the flip side, you end up with days like today - anticyclonic gloom, not much wind, no sun, 59% of the UK's electricty being generated by burning gas (and a whopping 5% from burning Canadian forests shipped a quarter of the way around the world to us). If only we'd built some new nukes... but this is a country which can't build a runway, train line or tunnel despite decades of wrangling.
It's so bad at the moment that as I'm writing this I'm being paid *not* to use electricity by my supplier: they'll pay
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1. This is why the article talks about annual consumption / generation — to account for the Dunkelflautes and also the high wind and high solar days.
2. Demand flex is part of the systems solution. It’s not an emergency solution, it’s going to be more and more standard in the future
Drax B and the Problem with Counting Biomass (Score:2)
The decline of fossil fuels in the UK is undoubtedly a milestone worth celebrating, but reports like this one raise some concerns that warrant a closer look—especially when biomass is included in the mix as part of the "renewable" category.
Take the example of Drax B, which relies on wood pellets imported from Canada. On paper, biomass might seem like a sustainable solution—it’s technically renewable, and the carbon released during combustion can, in theory, be reabsorbed by future growth.
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The analysis *explicitly excluded biomass*. Quote: “2024 is set to be the first full year where UK low-carbon renewables – wind, solar and hydropower – generate more electricity than fossil fuels”. Do you see biomass on that list? No, you don’t, for exactly the reasons you stated.
Cheaper BS (Score:2)
https://www.switchpal.co.uk/static/4909a474497389e7d546764b295733b7/e2cbf/business-electricity-by-size-of-consumer.png
I live in a state full of renewables (Score:2)