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).
Go to https://model.energy/ and see what the best (that is, cheapest) way to produce a steady power output would be with various assumptions about the cost of renewables, nuclear, and storage. You will find that for most locations, including the UK, under the reasonable assumptions used, nuclear optimizes to 0%. Renewables + storage can take us to 100%, and are the cheapest way to do that.
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.
Solar and wind are getting so cheap that you could feasibly overbuild to deal with low production times. And no, 30% is nowhere near the max, especially with storage
They're getting so cheap because they produce energy at times we don't need it, so market price fall through the ground to zero or even negative flash prices. Low prices are an compound artefact of heavy subsidizing and production in complete inadequacy with demand.
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?
The subsidies used in the UK are primarily Contracts for Difference. A Contract for Difference works by assuring the power plant they will always get paid a fixed price regardless. When the actual price paid for power is higher, the government gets the difference, when it's lower the government pays a subsidy. This is effective because it provides investors with certainty - if the power plant they're paying to build makes 100MWh of electricity at CfD strike price of £60/MWh they definitely get paid £6000.
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.
The article (probably unintentionally) paints a rosier picture than reality:
>> "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.
The UK's combined wind (23GW) and solar (13GW) generation capacity is at least 3x that of nuclear (9.3GW). Capacity factor aside, nuclear is not a necessary component of a future UK grid (with the caveat that it can import nuclear generated power from France over a 2GW interconnector). [1]
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.
Check Hinkley Point C. When done it will reliably produce more than 3GWh every hour of every day. More than 28 TWh every year.
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.
> 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.
I can't speak to France and EDF's poor energy policies. I suppose when you're a government propping up a state owned utility, it's all numbers on a spreadsheet being moved around (except you're soaking your citizens/rate payers in the process). Wind and solar are exceptionally cheap in sane energy markets.
It's not the same reason (the 30% point is usually about how much demand-shedding is possible if you get a period of high demand and low production from renewables) but due to the current period of exceptionally low demand and the high share of renewables, the UK has had to start taking some emergency measures already:
