News of milestone comes as MPs say policy changes have caused collapse in investment in renewables.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s windfarms provided more electricity than its eight nuclear power stations in the first three months of 2018, marking the first time wind has overtaken nuclear across a quarter.<\/p>\n
The renewable energy industry hailed the milestone as a sign the UK was well on its way to an electricity system powered by cheap, domestic green energy.<\/p>\n
Across the first quarter, wind power produced 18.8% of electricity, second only to gas, said a report by researchers at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n
At one point overnight on 17 March, wind turbines briefly provided almost half of the UK\u2019s electricity.\u00a0Wind power\u00a0helped during the cold snaps, too, supplying 12-43% of electricity during the six subzero days in the first three months of the year.<\/p>\n
Two nuclear plants were temporarily offline for routine maintenance, while another\u00a0was shut because of seaweed\u00a0in the cooling system.<\/p>\n
While wind together with solar\u00a0supplied more power than nuclear in the final three months of 2017, thiswas the first time wind has managed the feat alone.<\/p>\n
Dr Rob Gross, one of the authors of the Drax Electric Insights report, said: \u201cThere\u2019s no sign of a limit to what we\u2019re able to do with wind in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The opening in December of a new power cable between Scotland and north Wales also helped unlock electricity from Scottish windfarms, some of which would normally be turned off to help National Grid cope.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Western Link connection\u00a0has drastically cut the amount of money paid by National Grid to windfarm owners for that curtailment. The company paid \u00a3100m in 2017 for curtailment. This year payments are already down by two-thirds.<\/p>\n
Emma Pinchbeck, the executive director at industry group RenewableUK, said: \u201cIt is great news for everyone that rather than turning turbines off to manage our ageing grid, the new cable instead will make best use of wind energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
News of the quarterly milestone came as MPs said UK emissions targets were threatened by government policy changes, which had caused a collapse in clean energy investment since 2015, including\u00a0a 56% fall in 2017.<\/p>\n
Mary Creagh, Labour MP and chair of the environmental audit committee, said: \u201cBillions of pounds of investment is needed in clean energy, transport, heating and industry to meet our carbon targets. But a dramatic fall in investment is threatening the government\u2019s ability to meet legally binding climate change targets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Separately, the spending watchdog concluded that \u00a323bn spent on a government subsidy scheme for low-carbon heating had been poor value for money and did not deliver its aims.<\/p>\n
The public accounts committee said the renewable heat incentive had \u201cwildly optimistic\u201d goals and that the government failed to understand what consumers wanted. (Source: theguradian.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
News of milestone comes as MPs say policy changes have caused collapse in investment in renewables. Britain\u2019s windfarms provided more electricity than its eight nuclear power stations in the first three months of 2018, marking the first time wind has overtaken nuclear across a quarter. The renewable energy industry hailed the milestone as a sign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7325],"tags":[8340,778],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wind-energy-sector-news","tag-uk","tag-wind-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18220,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions\/18220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruzgarenerjisi.com.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}