Putting the UK on the path to a 100% renewable future

By Juliet Davenport

The announcement from Germany’s Federal Environment Agency that the country could go 100% renewable by 2050 sets a target for the rest of Europe to follow or try and beat.  It seems to me that a country like the UK won’t consider such a big leap forward in strategic thinking and engineering unless somewhere like Germany does it first, which is a shame.  But now we know the scale of Germany’s ambition, the UK government needs to consider what it needs to do to get to 100%.

Where better to start than an island that has already done it?  The Isle of Eigg aims to supply 95% of its electricity from renewable energy.  This includes hydro, wind and solar and is delivered to the community through a high voltage network.  The system has a fossil-fuel based back up, but this is only for occasional use when there is not sufficient renewable supply.  The system includes a bank of batteries that are connected to the grid to allow managing demand and supply, and have sufficient capacity to store 24 hours of electricity.  The limited capacity of the system requires that limits are set on demand and with the approval of the residents, domestic and small business supplies have been capped at 5kW (roughly equivalent to having a kettle and a microwave on at the same time), and larger business supplies at 10kW. According to the community everyone has adapted well to using power within these limits and this has meant that the installation is significantly smaller, and therefore cheaper, than it would have been if the islanders could to use as much power as they liked.

It is this type of approach and consideration of a mixture of technologies including energy storage, renewable power and demand-side management that would mean that the UK too could consider a 100% renewable future.

In fact, a recent report from the Centre for Alternative Technology (a Good Energy partner) set out a roadmap for how the UK could be zero-carbon in just 20 years – by reducing demand and increasing our renewables to 100%.  The report says: “the right mix of wind power, hydro, solar, biomass - plus an intelligent grid to manage demand, can ‘keep the lights on’ and supply the energy the country needs– with major win-wins across the economy.” 

That means we could even beat Germany by several years – especially as we have much better wind and wave resources –and then our World Cup defeat won’t seem to matter so much!