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Without commenting on the veracity of E.ON's particular claim, the UK does import renewable from overseas, so the UK could well consume more renewable than it p

• tialaramex 7y ago
  It definitely does, because it produces loads of non-renewables and then exports them for a nice profit. But consuming more renewables than we produce doesn't make a big dent in overall supply needed. As I explain above E.ON's plan there is to rely on the stubborn British consumer to continue to pay more for worse from their competitors. Or not so much "plan" as just what they're resigned to having happen. The UK needs about 30-40GW of electricity. The import cables can move _maybe_ 5GW flat out if we import in every direction, although of those 2GW is ultimately from France which is nukes, so that's not renewable (it's green, but it isn't renewable) and another 1GW is Ireland, which is as likely to be burning peat (!) as running a wind farm. About 20GW peak comes from CCGT, ie huge plants that burn natural gas and then use that to spin turbines while also capturing the excess heat to "close" the cycle and improve efficiency. Deeply non-renewable. On a windy, bright summer's day that's still cool enough for people not to run all their air conditioning and fans, you might get the CCGT down to 5GW with the interconnects importing from most directions and some wood burners (which are technically renewable even though they aren't green at all) helping the wind + solar + nukes. More likely, right now for example as I write this, the CCGT runs full blast, 20GW of fossil fuel electricity. It's very clean by 1980s standards, only producing water vapour and er... carbon dioxide. Shame the carbon dioxide might destroy our civilisation.