Q4 2017 report

by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

2017 finished by continuing the familiar trends for Britain’s electricity: renewables replacing fossil fuels and carbon emissions falling. 

Article 2 begins with a review of events in 2017 – which saw half of Britain’s electricity come from low-carbon sources, as coal and gas output fell by a tenth and wind farms posted a record year.

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by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

Britain’s power system once again enjoyed its greenest year, with 50% of electricity coming from low-carbon sources. 

2017 saw generation from fossil fuels fall by a tenth; driven down by lower demand and greater wind output (see Article 3). Even after the historic reductions in carbon emissions in 2016, the CO₂ from British electricity fell by another 12% in 2017 (see Article 5).

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by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

Wind farms produced a record 15% of Britain’s electricity last year, up from 10% in 2016. 

They produced 45 TWh of electricity over the year, more than twice the output from coal. The dramatic increase comes from both higher wind speeds and a jump in installed capacity. Several large offshore farms came online and onshore wind had a record year for deployment.

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by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

Britain’s renewable output grew 27% last year, and would have been sufficient to power the entire country 60 years ago. 

This year’s renewables produced more than the country’s annual electricity demand in 1958. At the height of Beatlemania in 1964, electricity use had risen sharply, but putting this year’s renewables and nuclear together could have powered Britain without fossil fuels.

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by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

2017 was once again the cleanest year for electricity production in Britain. 

Carbon emissions (including those from imported electricity) were 72 million tonnes over the year, down 12% on 2016 due to lower coal and gas production. This amounts to 150 kg of CO₂ saved per person – equivalent to taking one in seven cars off the road (4.7 million in total).¹ Yet this saving comes without requiring any active change in people’s lifestyles.

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by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

Electricity trade between Britain and France was exactly balanced, but still worth nearly £34 million this quarter. 

Since the interconnector between France and England was built, Britain has tended to import electricity from France. There have been periods when the power flows in the other direction, such as in Quarter 4 of 2016 when many French nuclear reactors were offline for safety tests. This quarter, the flows were almost exactly in balance with 1.57 TWh going in each direction.

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by Dr Iain Staffell – Imperial College London 

This quarter saw wind output grow by 65% on this quarter last year, increasing its share of generation by 8 percentage points. 

This extra wind pushed down output from gas plants, which lost 6 percentage points of the mix versus Quarter 4 2016. Output from nuclear and biomass plants was lower than last year due to outages. Sizewell B went offline for statutory maintenance in November, and a small fire closed two biomass units at Drax in late December.

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