It’s been hovering around the 0.5% to 1.5% mark for years, but it’s finally gone now.
For the past 12 months, this is how the energy mix of the UK has looked:
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Wind, 32.1%
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Gas, 26.6%
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Nuclear, 14.8%
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Biomass, 7.0%
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Solar, 5.1%
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Hydroelectric, 1.4%
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Coal, 1.1%
The remainder gets imported, mostly from France and Norway, so is likely primarily Nuclear and Hydroelectric.
The remainder gets imported
32,1+26,6+14,8+7+5,1+1,4+1,1 = 88,1So 11,9 % gets/got imported?
Yes. Imports/exports are as follows:
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France, 7.6%
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Norway, 3.3%
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Belgium, 1.5%
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Denmark, 0.9%
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Netherlands, 0.6%
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Ireland, -1.9%
There’s a remaining 0.1%, which comes from pumped energy storage.
The fact that the majority of power imports
isare from France and Norway is also good news as they both have very high zero carbon generation (nuclear and hydro respectively)
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Possible. This bad boy makes up 5% of the UK power supply by itself:
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Fwiw, not to diminish this feat but rather as context: A significant part of the (calculated) wins in the early/mid 2010s came from moving from coal to fossil gas. Unfortunately, fossil gas tends to be much more polluting than (usually) assumed, because of flaring and pipeline losses. Thus some of earlier CO2e wins may be due to number fiddling rather than real reductions.
However, recent years do show massive wind power growth and that’s fantastic.
Side note 2: The UK has a lot of work ahead on electrifying heating and installing heat pumps.
Great! Now do the same for natural gas.
