UK Renewables Outperform Gas For First Quarter Ever

December 27th, 2019 by Joshua S Hill

New figures from the UK Government published just before Christmas showed that renewable energy generation across the country generated a record quarterly amount of electricity between July and September, outperforming natural gas for the first time ever.

The UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published its latest “Energy Trends” report just before Christmas which showed that in the third quarter of 2019 renewable energy sources provided a record 38.9% of the country’s electricity — exceeding natural gas for the first time ever, which provided 38.8%.

This new quarterly record for renewable energy generation beat out the previous quarterly record of 36.8% set in the fourth quarter of 2018, highlighting the potential for a new record to be set again as we come to the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. This is particularly important as the report highlighted that the third quarter’s new record was caused by a combination of favorable weather conditions and increased renewable energy generation sources, with combined renewable electricity capacity increasing to 46.9 GW at the end of the third quarter — a 7.2% year-over-year increase.

This was unsurprisingly led by offshore wind — given the country’s current dominance in offshore wind deployment — which for the first time ever exceeded onshore wind generation.

“We’ve reached a historic tipping point with renewables outperforming gas for the first quarter ever,” said RenewableUK’s Head of Policy and Regulation Rebecca Williams. “This is great news all of us who are committed to reaching net zero emissions as fast and as cheaply as possible. As MPs take their seats in the new Parliament today, we’re looking forward to working closely with the new Government to speed up the transition to clean power.

“Wind is playing the leading role in this, generating nearly 20% of our electricity between July and September. We need to use a wide range of technologies to tackle dangerous climate change, including onshore wind as well as offshore, innovative floating wind and tidal power.”

Widening the scope, somewhat, low-carbon electricity generation, essentially adding nuclear generation to that of renewables, rose to a similarly record high of 57.3%. Meanwhile, generation from fossil fuels — which, again, essentially adds all fossil fuel generation to that of natural gas — fell to a record low of 40.1%.











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