Renew Extra Weekly

A new study from the University of California Berkeley and GridLab says that it will be economically feasible to power a reliable grid mostly with renewables by 2035, while only using natural gas for 10% of annual electricity production. Co-author Amol Phadke said that ‘previous studies concluded either we need to wait until 2050 to decarbonize or the bills will go up if you decarbonize. I think we really need to revisit these conclusions because of the dramatic decline in costs.’ And so, overall, the cost of wholesale electricity would be 13% lower than it is today. In its ‘90% Clean Energy’ scenario, ‘all existing coal plants are retired by 2035, and no new fossil fuel plants are built. During normal periods of generation and demand, wind, solar, and batteries provide 70% of annual generation, while hydropower and nuclear provide 20%. During periods of very high demand and/or very low renewable generation, existing natural gas, hydropower, and nuclear plants comb...

Renewable energy has developed rapidly in the UK. It now supplies over third of grid electricity, and there have been a range of proposals for expansion as part of the zero carbon energy transition.   For example, trade lobby group   Renewable UK (RUK) has produced Powering the Future, outlining its vision of the energy transition . It predicts that wind capacity could surge six-fold to more than 120 GW by 2050. With the right policies, it says that UK offshore wind could reach 40 GW by 2030, which would cover one-third of UK's electricity demand, rising to 90GW by 2050. RUK notes that, since 2010, the UK has attracted 48% of the roughly £80bn invested in offshore wind in Europe, and with the US and China as yet not very active in this area, the UK was the largest offshore wind market in the world. Continued expansion looked likely: the 40 GW by 2030 goal would require a further £54bn of investment. In addition to the parallel expansion of on-shore wind, RUK says that ...