The UK’s funding in renewable power has lagged considerably behind the remainder of the world in recent times, in accordance with an evaluation of world knowledge.
The most recent authorities figures reveal the UK’s renewable capability has fallen to a mean enhance of 4.45% prior to now three years, in contrast with a mean 9.67% annual enhance globally.
The evaluation follows the federal government’s announcement that it’s going to approve greater than 100 new oil and fuel licences.
Within the UK, whole renewable capability grew by 1.96% in 2020, 3.65% in 2021 and seven.74% in 2022, averaging a capability of simply 4.45% a yr – properly down from the 24.26% progress recorded in 2015.
The remainder of the world recorded a lot larger ranges of progress in renewable capability in contrast with the UK within the final three years. In 2020, renewable capability grew by 10.3%, adopted by 9.1% in 2021 and 9.6% in 2022. This averages a 9.67% enhance, greater than double that of the UK over the identical interval.
The Liberal Democrats’ power and local weather spokesperson, Wera Hobhouse, criticised the federal government’s failure “to invest in the greenest, cheapest and most popular form of energy” and demanded it do extra, together with eradicating restrictions on new photo voltaic and wind and empowering native authorities to help decentralised power that can “not only bring down bills, but also provide skilled jobs for the future”.
She mentioned the figures confirmed the Conservative occasion couldn’t be trusted with the setting. “They would rather new onshore oilfields than solar farms and wind turbines,” she mentioned.
Roger Fouquet, a senior analysis fellow on the Vitality Research Institute within the Nationwide College of Singapore, mentioned that as international locations similar to Iceland transfer in direction of 100% renewable power, “its investment is likely to slow down, only increasing to meet the rising demand of power”. Nevertheless, he famous that the UK can not evaluate.
“The UK’s current renewable electricity capacity is below 50%, and has a great deal of further investment to undertake to claim to be a leader in low-carbon energy systems. In fact, 45% of European economies have a higher share of renewable electricity capacity,” Fouquet mentioned.
RenewableUK, a number one non-profit power commerce affiliation, believes the federal government must develop a plan to compete with the EU and US in a aggressive renewables market.
after e-newsletter promotion
Its govt director of coverage, Ana Musat, mentioned: “The government urgently needs to develop a comprehensive strategy for making the UK renewables sector the most attractive to global investors, so that we can continue to build new clean energy projects at scale and attract supply chain investment in key areas such as blades, cables and floating offshore wind.”
The Division for Vitality Safety and Web Zero mentioned: “We won’t apologise for moving faster and earlier on renewable energy than many other countries, and we are glad to see that nations across Europe and the rest of the world are starting to catch up.
“We have already attracted around £120bn investment in renewables since 2010, and are expected to attract a further £100bn in net zero by 2030 – powering up Britain and supporting up to 480,000 jobs. This has meant we have increased the amount of energy coming from renewables from 6.7% in 2010 to 41.5% in 2022.”
