The UK, the birthplace of coal power, produced more electricity from zero-carbon sources such as wind, solar and nuclear than from fossil fuel plants for the first time last year, National Grid PLC said yesterday.
Having built the world’s first coal-fired power plant in the 1880s, coal became the UK’s dominant electricity source and a major economic driver for the next century.
However, last year it became the first G7 country to commit to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and in November is to host the UN’s international climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.
“As we enter a new decade, this truly is a historic moment,” National Grid chief executive John Pettigrew said, referring to the company’s latest data.
The data showed that wind, solar, hydro, nuclear and imports produced about 48.5 percent of the UK’s electricity last year, while fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, contributed about 43 percent. The rest came from biomass.
The increase in zero-carbon power marks a huge shift from almost two decades ago, when fossil fuels provided about three-quarters of the country’s electricity.
The shift has been mainly thanks to a rapid increase in the UK’s renewable power capacity, with wind, solar and hydro producing more than one-quarter of its electricity last year, up from only 2.3 percent in 1990.
The figure is expected to continue to grow as more large offshore wind farms are built.
Eight percent of the UK’s electricity came from imports from Europe via interconnectors with France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, the data showed.
About 66 percent of these imports came from zero-carbon generation, they showed.
The data confirmed expectations for growth in low-carbon power published by National Grid in the middle of last year, based on data for the first five months of the year.
The UK’s windy coastlines in particular have proved to be an ideal host for large wind projects, with the northwest coast of England home to the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Orsted’s Walney Extension.
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