Scotland Got Half of Its Power From Renewables in 2014

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Scotland got half of its power from renewables in 2014...http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/26/3674316/scotland-gets-half-its-power-from-renewables/


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New data from the Scottish government shows that the country generated 49.8 percent of its electricity from renewables in 2014, effectively meeting its target of generating half of electricity demand from clean sources by the end of this year.The milestone means the 50 percent target was met a year early, with overall total renewable generation up 5.4 percent from 2013. The next benchmark in the government’s plan is to generate enough renewable energy to power 100 percent of the country’s demand by 2020.

Results from the first quarter of 2015 show that growth is continuing at a rapid rate. Scottish wind farms produced a record amount of power in the first three months of this year, up 4.3 percent from the first quarter of 2014. The wind farms produced a total of 4,452 gigawatt hours (GWh), enough to power some one million U.K. homes for a year.

Thanks to a massive investment in onshore and offshore wind, Scotland has established itself as a renewable energy leader in the region. According to the new figures, Scotland’s renewable electricity generation of just over 19,000 GWh made up about 30 percent of the U.K.’s total renewable generation in 2014. More than half of this came from wind, with nearly another third coming from hydropower. Only 137.9 GWh came from solar.

While Scotland’s renewable energy sector is currently thriving, prospects are not necessarily as sunny going forward. Last week the U.K. government, led by recently re-elected conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, announced intentions to end new subsidies for onshore wind farms next April. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd said that “onshore wind is an important part of our energy mix,” but that the U.K. now has enough “subsidized projects in the pipeline to meet our renewable energy commitments.”

The U.K. has an overall binding target of getting 15 percent of the energy it uses for heat, transport, and power from clean sources by 2020. On Thursday, the Department of Energy and Climate Change announced that the share of renewables in 2014 was 6.3 percent, ahead of the interim 2014 target of 5.4 percent.

The amount of electricity generated from renewable sources in the U.K. in 2014 was 64,654 GWh, a 21 percent increase on 2013. The greatest increase in renewable generation came from biomass, which has become a controversial source of power due to the local environmental impacts of logging and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with transporting the fuel, oftentimes from American forests across the Atlantic. Wind energy still accounted for about half of all renewable generation in the U.K.

According to the U.K. government, as much as 5.2 gigawatts of onshore wind capacity could be eligible for installation before the subsidies expire. Rudd also recently said that 7.1 gigawatts, or some 250 projects, are “unlikely to be built.”
“We are committed to cutting our carbon emissions by fostering enterprise, competition, opportunity and growth,” said Rudd in a statement. “We want to help technologies stand on their own two feet, not encourage a reliance on public subsidies,”

Fergus Ewing, Scotland’s energy minister, is unhappy with this assessment, saying that the “U.K. government’s proposals will have a profound and disproportionate impact on Scotland.”
“Onshore wind is one of the most cost-effective renewable energies, yet the U.K. government’s perverse decision to end support puts this hard work and progress in jeopardy and the Scottish government will continue to argue against it,” he said.

Ewing recently told Parliament that £3 billion-worth ($4.7 billion) of onshore wind projects in Scotland and over 5,000 Scottish jobs will be at risk if the subsidy ends early.
Those in the wind industry are also protesting the U.K. government’s move to cut the subsidies, with Ian Marchant from the British Wind partnership, saying that “it surely cannot be the government’s intention to deny local communities the chance to host onshore wind projects if that is what they want to do.”
“Energy policy needs to honestly reflect the views of voters: the government’s own polls show onshore wind is backed by 65 percent of the public — more than supported any political party at the election,” he said.
Rudd and Ewing recently agreed to hold talks this fall to determine the best way to move forward with onshore wind subsidies. Conservatives’ promised to end state support for the program in their recent election campaign.
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Well done the Scots. :clap:

Our government thinks we are getting too much power from renewables and has reduced our renewable energy target.
Our PM thinks climate change is crap an that wind farms are ugly.
This from a man who goes out in public in budgie smugglers and lycra bike pants.
 
I think wind farms are great Warrigal. LOL on the budgie smugglers! :D
 

Dame Warrigal said:
Well done the Scots. :clap:

Our government thinks we are getting too much power from renewables and has reduced our renewable energy target.
Our PM thinks climate change is crap an that wind farms are ugly.
This from a man who goes out in public in budgie smugglers and lycra bike pants.
Click to expand...

Who elected him to office? imp
 
The "wind-farm" concept has been picked to pieces here in the U.S. Southwest. Hundreds of propellors spinning gigantic diameters across Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, have given rise to claims that the "noise they make is an environmental concern"; the numbers of birds they kill make them morally unacceptable; the "unnatural disruption" of normal movements of air and weather patterns, "threatens the proper culmination of crop production".

How much of this can possibly be believed? imp
 
Wind farms are everywhere here and as far as I've seen, many in very isolated areas - of which we have many.

The Tory government in London want to end the startup subsidies to Scotland a year early! Thanks Cameron.

As for Rupert, we won't subscribe to Sky TV here because he owns it and we won't put a penny I his pocket.
 
imp said:
The "wind-farm" concept has been picked to pieces here in the U.S. Southwest. Hundreds of propellors spinning gigantic diameters across Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, have given rise to claims that the "noise they make is an environmental concern"; the numbers of birds they kill make them morally unacceptable; the "unnatural disruption" of normal movements of air and weather patterns, "threatens the proper culmination of crop production".

How much of this can possibly be believed? imp
Click to expand...

A few years ago the village across the loch from us wanted a money making scheme and decided on 5 wind turbines as tall as Big Ben. This would have been a blight on the landscape, endanger some of the birds nesting there, and since it is so quiet here, the noise would have been like constant tinnitus. It is a mile to the other side of the loch but noise carries and we can even hear their dogs barking. Our communities on our side of the loch fought it and won.

These would have destroyed the view from our windows. Many isolated areas to put these.
 
I feel the same about Murdoch.
I won't have pay TV (Foxtel) or buy any of this papers.
His media presence is a lot more concentrated over here and he wields his political power to increase his own profits.
 
Dame Warrigal said:
Well done the Scots. :clap:

Our government thinks we are getting too much power from renewables and has reduced our renewable energy target.
Our PM thinks climate change is crap an that wind farms are ugly.
This from a man who goes out in public in budgie smugglers and lycra bike pants.
Click to expand...

How did this idiot get elected?! My sil in Melbourne is always complaining about him. It sounds like he is trying to destroy Australia!
 
"As for Rupert, we won't subscribe to Sky TV here because he owns it and we won't put a penny I his pocket."

How on earth do you manage over where you are?

I'd leave Sky tomorrow, but it's the only game in town over this side. No cable, no fibre optics.
 
Dame Warrigal said:
Well done the Scots. :clap:

Our government thinks we are getting too much power from renewables and has reduced our renewable energy target.
Our PM thinks climate change is crap an that wind farms are ugly.
This from a man who goes out in public in budgie smugglers and lycra bike pants.
Click to expand...

Well, we have the same problem, the republican side of our government do everything in their power to oppose anything to combat climate change and renewable energy.....the ignorance increases our decline.
 
Dame Warrigal said:
Well done the Scots. :clap:

Our government thinks we are getting too much power from renewables and has reduced our renewable energy target.
Our PM thinks climate change is crap an that wind farms are ugly.
This from a man who goes out in public in budgie smugglers and lycra bike pants.
Click to expand...


Too funny Dame Warrigal! Thanks for the mental image.
 
Ameriscot brought up the issue of noise with the turbines and it reminded me of a thing I saw on TV just a couple days ago. They're actually working on redesigning the blades on those turbines so that they emulate the shape of owl feathers so that they will be soundless.

And while I'm sure that there is likely a problem with bird deaths, think how many more deaths and extinctions are in the offing because of climate change. Is this one of those instances when we're forced to pick the lesser of two evils? I haven't really studied this issue so won't venture more of an opinion than that.

Other than that, I'd say kudos to Scotland for taking the problems seriously and doing something proactive. Maybe if we have a different government after the next election, we'll finally begin to remake our image on the climate issue.
 
Ameriscot said:
Free sat and Netflix. Still have the Sky dish but no subscription. Also Amazon Prime movies.
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Ah! Netflix requires a decent phone line. Once again, BT the only game in town. A radio programme takes longer to download than it does to listen to, and a film can only be downloaded overnight!
 
Laurie said:
Ah! Netflix requires a decent phone line. Once again, BT the only game in town. A radio programme takes longer to download than it does to listen to, and a film can only be downloaded overnight!
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We are stuck with BT but streaming is usually okay.
 
It seems to me that solar energy is the least productive source in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States

Renewable energy in the United States


Renewable energy in the United States accounted for 12.9 percent of the domestically produced electricity in 2013,[SUP][1][/SUP] and 11.2 percent of total energy generation.[SUP][2][/SUP] As of 2014, more than 143,000 people work in the solar industry and 43 states deploy net metering, where energy utilities buy back excess power generated by solar arrays.[SUP][3][/SUP]
Renewable energy reached a major milestone in the first quarter of 2011, when it contributed 11.7 percent of total U.S. energy production (2.245 quadrillion BTUs of energy), surpassing energy production from nuclear power (2.125 quadrillion BTUs).[SUP][4][/SUP] 2011 was the first year since 1997 that renewables exceeded nuclear in US total energy production.[SUP][5][/SUP]



Sources of total United States renewable energy, 2012 (US EIA)
..................................

And much more in the article. This graph does show how our energy is being made these days. To me, the solar is really disappointing in that it takes up so much space for such small gains. They are putting them on roof tops and building large fields of these arrays and all in all they produce very little in return. Cloudy days or at nights other sources are needed. Wind does better but having lived in a state that uses wind as a supplement, we see them also not producing much at all. When winds are blowing too hard the windmills shut down and protect themselves from wind damage. They do produce on nights and days when the winds are proper.

I think that some day the scientist and engineers will come up with something better than these current solar panels. Something much more productive and able to take up much less space.
 
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When I was young, a long time ago, Scotland
got more than half of its energy from renewables,
most of the electricity came from Hydro-Electric
plants, with a few coal fired stations in the south.

Long before Wind Farms were thought of, they even
had a Nuclear Power Station, the first in the UK.

Mike.
 
Mike said:
When I was young, a long time ago, Scotland
got more than half of its energy from renewables,
most of the electricity came from Hydro-Electric
plants, with a few coal fired stations in the south.

Long before Wind Farms were thought of, they even
had a Nuclear Power Station, the first in the UK.

Mike.
Click to expand...

In the US we have plenty of nuclear power plants, over 50 of them. I wonder why they were not shown on that chart I posted. Maybe trying to not scare all the folks. I would like to see more and forget some of these barely working ideas.
 
Current Wind Turbines, with their massive blades, are a noisy and inefficient way to produce electricity. However, there are several prototypes of wind turbines currently in test that resolve most of the current problems, and increase the output of these turbines. Within the next few years, new designs will be available that increase the output of wind generated electricity, AND eliminate the problems.
Solar is also on the brink of becoming the major producer of electricity. Solar prices are coming down substantially, and if battery technology can be improved...hopefully by research such as that being done by Tesla...it may not be many more years before solar power becomes economically feasible for individual homeowners.

Presently, the biggest hurdle that has to be overcome is the powerful influence the fossil fuel industry has on our government. These corporations can see the beginning of their demise, and they will fight Clean Energy projects at every opportunity. If they were smart, they would be taking some of their massive profits and begin investing in clean energy, themselves. It will take some time to transition away from fossil fuels for transportation purposes, but for electrical generation purposes, wind and solar could very easily supply the vast majority of the nations needs within another decade, or two.
 
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