Renew Extra Weekly

The Renewable Energy for the 21st Century group (REN21) produce invaluable annual overviews.  Their annual renewables review for 2021 reports that renewables generating capacity is still growing globally, with hydro still leading at 1,170GW, PV solar coming next at 760GW, while wind is at 743GW. In terms of output, renewables now supply around 27% of global electricity and about 11.2% of total global energy.  Renewable capacity is likely to continue to expand, given that costs are still falling. IRENA has noted that costs for electricity from utility-scale solar PV fell 85% in 2010-20 and, on the basis of its learning curve projections, it looks to continuing price falls for solar and to a lesser extent wind.  However, that may not translate into significantly increased renewable shares in the overall mix. REN21 says that ‘despite tremendous growth in some renewable energy sectors, the share of renewables has increased only moderately each year’, which is it says is ‘du...

A new green transition plan has emerged after a two-year consultation with citizens’ juries, business leaders and trade unions, by the IPPR-led cross-party Environmental Justice Commission, co-chaired by Green MP Caroline Lucas, former Tory MP Laura Sandys, and Labour MP/former environment secretary Hilary Benn. It says efforts to drive down carbon emissions should deliver an equitable ‘people’s dividend’ of improvements to lives, homes, jobs and transport.  It reviews the issues and options in detail, looking in particular at employment and location implications and it wants quite radical changes, with some headline catching budgetary demands. It calls for an extra £30 bn of public investment in a low-carbon economy each year until 2030; a £7.5bn green subsidy scheme promoting zero-carbon tech for home heating & insulation; redistribution of carbon tax revenues to the less well-off; free bus travel by 2025; and a right to retrain for workers in carbon-intensive industries....

National Grid ESO’s latest round in their Future Energy Scenarios (FES) series sees the UK reaching net zero carbon by 2050, with one scenario (‘Leading the Way’) achieving that by 2047. The UK can also achieve its legally-binding target of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035. But all this will only be possible if consumers embrace new ways of using energy, and it will require urgent policy decisions to drive immediate energy efficiency measures. In terms of the energy supply mix, the NG- Energy Systems Operator study says, depending on the scenario ‘between 34 GW and 77 GW of new wind and solar generation could be required to meet demand in 2030.  This could require as much as 13 GW of new electricity storage in 2030 to help balance periods of high and low renewable output.  6 GW of new flexible residential demand reduction is available in Leading the Way by 2030.’ In addition ‘by 2035, at least 2 TWh of hydrogen storage is required in net zero scenarios to prov...

In a white paper ‘Net-zero GB electricity: cost-optimal generation and storage mix’, published in June,  a team from Imperial College London projects a need for 108 GW of offshore wind by 2035, to achieve net-zero carbon electricity. That’s two and a half times the UK government’s target for 2030.  The report says that this finding ‘is robust to changes in the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) of offshore wind of ±£5/MWh on the Central case of £35/MWh’. As an alternative, the Imperial team looked at the option of building 10 GW more nuclear power and 18.5 GW more solar generation than is optimal in their Central case. That, it said, would ‘reduce the required build of offshore wind for 2035 by 24 GW, but increases the total cost of the system by about 3.3%.’  That’s a slightly odd way to look at it, but the Imperial College team seem convinced that offshore wind is the way ahead since everything else will be more expensive. Since it has a lower load factor than offshore wi...