{"id":628,"date":"2020-10-14T16:22:07","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T16:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.uk\/?p=628"},"modified":"2021-03-05T14:11:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T14:11:22","slug":"clean-electricity-hits-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/?p=628","title":{"rendered":"Clean electricity hits 50%"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>by Dr Iain Staffell &#8211; Imperial College London&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">This quarter saw a major milestone quietly creep up on the industry: for the first time more than half of Britain\u2019s electricity came from low-carbon sources. <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The share of nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, solar and French imports peaked at 50.2%. This share has risen gradually from just 20% in 2010 and the trend is showing no signs of slowing down, although high-carbon generation will be greater in the winter months due to higher demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Nuclear provided the largest share, at 26%. Renewables provided a further 20%, spurred on by continued growth in capacity. Britain now has over 26 GW of wind and solar installed, a six-fold increase on six years ago; while biomass has increased from nothing to 2 GW.<br><br>Britain imported 7% of its electricity this quarter. Three-fifths of this came from France, where 94% is produced from nuclear and renewables, and so deserves to be classed as lowcarbon. The remainder came from the Netherlands and Ireland, which are still predominantly powered by coal and gas.<br><br><strong><em>Britain\u2019s electricity supply mix in the third quarter of the year:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"481\" src=\"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.1-1024x481.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-618\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.1-1024x481.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.1-300x141.jpg 300w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.1-768x361.jpg 768w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.1.jpg 1430w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>And how this compares to the same quarter in previous years:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"493\" src=\"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.2-1024x493.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-619\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.2-1024x493.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.2-300x144.jpg 300w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.2-768x370.jpg 768w, https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/161104_Drax_QI_Report_Chart_P5.2.jpg 1457w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Authors:<\/em>&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/people\/i.staffell\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dr Iain Staffell<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/people\/r.green\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Professor Richard Green<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/people\/robert.gross\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dr Rob Gross<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imperial.ac.uk\/people\/t.green\">Professor Tim Green<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This quarter saw a major milestone quietly creep up on the industry: for the first time more than half of Britain\u2019s electricity came from low-carbon sources. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-q3-2016"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reports.electricinsights.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}