The Renewable Energy Roadmap Update released by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change reveals that there has been strong growth in renewable electricity deployment over the last year.
The update sets out the progress and changes delivered in the sector over the past year, and discusses the challenges and actions for the year ahead. It shows that the UK is on track to meet the first interim target on the way to the ambitious target of 15% renewable energy consumption by 2020.
And for the first time, solar PV has been declared a key technology to help the UK meet this target.
Other key statistics
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Renewable electricity has seen dramatic growth since the Roadmap was published last year. In the year July 2011 to June 2012, the total electricity generation from renewables increased by 27%, reaching 37.9TWh from a total of 14.4GW installed capacity.
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Both offshore and onshore wind showed a marked increase in installed capacity, up 60% to 2.5GW and up 24% to 5.3GW respectively over the period.
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The UK’s first coal-fired to biomass-fired electricity generation conversion opened during 2012 at Tilbury.
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Solar photovoltaics (solar PV) recorded the highest growth with a five and a half times increase in capacity to 1.4GW by the end of June 2012 compared to June 2011.
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Solar PV is now identified as a key technology in this Renewable Energy Roadmap Update as costs have fallen dramatically and deployment increased markedly.
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In 2011, around 14TWh of UK heat was generated from renewable sources, an increase of 5% over the year.
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Renewable transport is on track to meet the interim transport target, as defined by the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, of around 5% by 2013/2014.
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Sources indicate that the Renewables sector (covering electricity, heat and transport) currently supports around 110,000 jobs directly and in immediate supply chains, with around 160,000 jobs supported further along the supply chain.