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This is an era of plentiful, cheap, renewable energy, but the fossil fuel dinosaurs can’t admit it
(The Guardian, 20 Jan 2023) For a couple of days this month, wind power supplied over half the UK’s electricity. You wouldn’t know it from our bills – or our politicians.
I remember the first time wind energy emerged as a serious contender in the UK’s energy provision. It was 6 November 2012, and the country’s electricity use from wind hit an all-time high in the middle of the afternoon, at 9.3%. The casual observer wouldn’t have noticed, and the expert wouldn’t have been surprised, but for people between those poles, it was astonishing. Windfarms were then perceived as a nascent technology, so infant and speculative they needed endless subsidy, intervention, special pleading.
To this day, it remains a mystery how a reputation for well-meant inadequacy clings to renewable energy sources: it can’t all be the result of lobbying by the fossil fuel industry. Sometimes, it feels like we just don’t want good news.
Last week, for two days straight, wind power hit a peak of supplying over half of all the UK’s electricity use. For five months last year, low-carbon electricity sources (solar, wind, hydrogen and nuclear) constituted more than 50% of the country’s energy use. And unbelievably, the National Grid spends hundreds of millions to billions a year constraining energy supplies, that is, paying renewable suppliers when they’re generating too much power for the grid to handle.
The Guardian, 20 Jan 2023: This is an era of plentiful, cheap, renewable energy, but the fossil fuel dinosaurs can’t admit it
