4 ms·

Fantastic news. The UK is making real progress here, and hopefully this will be good news for prices and for energy security in the future. We're already at 70

Fantastic news. The UK is making real progress here, and hopefully this will be good news for prices and for energy security in the future. We're already at 70%+ of our energy coming from non-fossil-fuel sources, much higher than I expected: https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/

youngtaff 9mo ago
> We're already at 70%+ of our energy Just to be picky… electricity… We've still got a lot to do to decarbonise the rest of our energy usage EVs, heat pumps, improving housing stock, electric trains etc
- detritus 9mo ago
  imho, not picky at all - in fact, a critical distinction, as the transportation slice of the energy pie is really quite a large one.
  - blitzar 9mo ago
    My gas usage in KWh vastly outweighs my electricity usage.
    - mjd89 9mo ago
      It's not apples-to-apples though due to the difference in heating efficiency. If you use N kWh to heat your house with a gas boiler, you'll use N/P to heat it with a heat pump. P is something like 3 or 4, depending on various factors (and who you ask).
      - blitzar 9mo ago
        I don't see many heat pumps in the wild - I do see plenty of resistive heaters and electric "power showers" still.
        lm28469 9mo ago
        As long as they're powered by "clean" electricity it doesn't really matter though.
        ben_w 9mo ago
        Depends on the context; if you are presently using x kWh of electricity for non-heating plus 2x kWh of gas for heating, your options for electrical heating are either to 3x your electricity demand by "upgrading" to resistive, or 1.5x (or whatever) your demand by upgrading to a heatpump. There's other stuff you can also do, but costs are all over the place, e.g. my 110 ish sqm house in Berlin is so well insulated (and has heat pump) that even while it's snowing outside it's hot enough indoors to be naked, for an electricity bill that's lower than that of my 37 square meter apartment in the UK, despite German electricity prices being much higher.
      - rsynnott 9mo ago
        Potentially bigger. There are a lot of old non-condenser boilers out there, with a typical efficiency of about 70%. And even condensers are often not much better than 75-80%; to hit the faceplate 90%+ efficiencies the system needs to be balanced such that the return temperature is in quite a narrow range.
      - georgefrowny 9mo ago
        Plus housing insulation. So many British houses are still almost entirely uninsulated. That's not an exaggeration, the roof of my house had zero insulation, solid brick walls, no under floor insulation and single glazing. The only gesture to efficiency was some secondary glazing over the windows. It absolutely ripped though gas just to keep a couple of rooms warm enough to live in, and it was still two jumpers and thermal trousers indoors. God only knows how the pensioner who lived there before managed.
    - thebruce87m 9mo ago
      Yep, just checked and my gas is just under double my electricity for 2025. 9,000kWh for electricity vs 16,000kWh for gas That’s with charging an EV too.
      - laurencerowe 9mo ago
        If your gas boiler were replaced with a heat pump with an average COP of 4 it would only require around 4,000kWh of electricity to provide the same amount of heating. Electric cars are similarly 3-4x more efficient than petrol cars on a kWh of fuel basis. So while we should expect increased electricity demand as transport and heating are electrified, the increase in electricity usage will be far less than the decrease in kWh of fuel.
        thebruce87m 9mo ago
        Sadly for me my gas is 1/4 the rate of electricity so it would cost the same. Ironically it’s the gas marginal rate that keeps the electricity cost high. Rolling the heat pump into the overnight battery calculation could work to offset the cost of install of the heat pump but I can’t stomach the thought of replacing my radiators and pipes.
  - ViewTrick1002 9mo ago
    Usually calculated to be a 15-25% grid increase. Not massive compared to decarbonizing industries relying directly on fossil feedstock/energy.
    - chickenbig 9mo ago
      Heating from gas is quite peaky (morning and evening heating cycles), whereas heat pumps are best when run low-and-steady. Assuming 2/3 of residential heat demand transitions to heat pumps, and assuming an optimistic COP of 3 in the worst weather (highest flow temperatures, lowest air temperatures ... perhaps more like 2.5), then the power required to heat this fraction of houses is 2/3 / 3 = 2/9 of the mean gas demand. [0] linked report figure 1 shows a (smoothed by eyeball) demand of around 140GW "local gas demand" during the Beast from the East. This implies heat pumps would take over 31GW to power, which is more like 60% of the current UK electricity supply. [0] https://ukerc.ac.uk/publications/local-gas-demand-vs-electricity-supply/ https://ukerc.ac.uk/publications/local-gas-demand-vs-electri...
      - ViewTrick1002 9mo ago
        Not sure why you’re talking about heating when the parent, and my comment address transportation?
        chickenbig 9mo ago
        Sorry, alignment issue! Probably transport is less troublesome as it has a decent element of demand side response to it (batteries sufficiently large for a couple of days without charging).
  - philipallstar 9mo ago
    And construction as well. Concrete is emission-y.
  - youngtaff 9mo ago
    Reducing the transportation slice of the pie is a double win as something 50% of marine transport is shipping hydrocarbons around the world
- Lio 9mo ago
  I think a lot of that comes down to cost. If we can drop the price of electricity enough it will naturally become the favoured choice for heating and transportation too.
mytailorisrich 9mo ago
> We're already at 70%+ of our energy coming from non-fossil-fuel sources Is it actually the case on an annualised basis? Or was it just the case when you looked at the live grid data? (There is also the issue with "biomass", which is wood imported from abroad to be burnt)
- iamcalledrob 9mo ago
  Yes -- you can switch to see the past year's data. Fossil fuels are at about 29%!
  - mytailorisrich 9mo ago
    Ah yes, I can see it now: 28.9% for fossil fuels over the past year.

youngtaff 9mo ago

> We're already at 70%+ of our energy Just to be picky… electricity… We've still got a lot to do to decarbonise the rest of our energy usage EVs, heat pumps, improving housing stock, electric trains etc

detritus 9mo ago
imho, not picky at all - in fact, a critical distinction, as the transportation slice of the energy pie is really quite a large one.
- blitzar 9mo ago
  My gas usage in KWh vastly outweighs my electricity usage.
  - mjd89 9mo ago
    It's not apples-to-apples though due to the difference in heating efficiency. If you use N kWh to heat your house with a gas boiler, you'll use N/P to heat it with a heat pump. P is something like 3 or 4, depending on various factors (and who you ask).
    - blitzar 9mo ago
      I don't see many heat pumps in the wild - I do see plenty of resistive heaters and electric "power showers" still.
      - lm28469 9mo ago
        As long as they're powered by "clean" electricity it doesn't really matter though.
        ben_w 9mo ago
        Depends on the context; if you are presently using x kWh of electricity for non-heating plus 2x kWh of gas for heating, your options for electrical heating are either to 3x your electricity demand by "upgrading" to resistive, or 1.5x (or whatever) your demand by upgrading to a heatpump. There's other stuff you can also do, but costs are all over the place, e.g. my 110 ish sqm house in Berlin is so well insulated (and has heat pump) that even while it's snowing outside it's hot enough indoors to be naked, for an electricity bill that's lower than that of my 37 square meter apartment in the UK, despite German electricity prices being much higher.
    - rsynnott 9mo ago
      Potentially bigger. There are a lot of old non-condenser boilers out there, with a typical efficiency of about 70%. And even condensers are often not much better than 75-80%; to hit the faceplate 90%+ efficiencies the system needs to be balanced such that the return temperature is in quite a narrow range.
    - georgefrowny 9mo ago
      Plus housing insulation. So many British houses are still almost entirely uninsulated. That's not an exaggeration, the roof of my house had zero insulation, solid brick walls, no under floor insulation and single glazing. The only gesture to efficiency was some secondary glazing over the windows. It absolutely ripped though gas just to keep a couple of rooms warm enough to live in, and it was still two jumpers and thermal trousers indoors. God only knows how the pensioner who lived there before managed.
  - thebruce87m 9mo ago
    Yep, just checked and my gas is just under double my electricity for 2025. 9,000kWh for electricity vs 16,000kWh for gas That’s with charging an EV too.
    - laurencerowe 9mo ago
      If your gas boiler were replaced with a heat pump with an average COP of 4 it would only require around 4,000kWh of electricity to provide the same amount of heating. Electric cars are similarly 3-4x more efficient than petrol cars on a kWh of fuel basis. So while we should expect increased electricity demand as transport and heating are electrified, the increase in electricity usage will be far less than the decrease in kWh of fuel.
      - thebruce87m 9mo ago
        Sadly for me my gas is 1/4 the rate of electricity so it would cost the same. Ironically it’s the gas marginal rate that keeps the electricity cost high. Rolling the heat pump into the overnight battery calculation could work to offset the cost of install of the heat pump but I can’t stomach the thought of replacing my radiators and pipes.
- ViewTrick1002 9mo ago
  Usually calculated to be a 15-25% grid increase. Not massive compared to decarbonizing industries relying directly on fossil feedstock/energy.
  - chickenbig 9mo ago
    Heating from gas is quite peaky (morning and evening heating cycles), whereas heat pumps are best when run low-and-steady. Assuming 2/3 of residential heat demand transitions to heat pumps, and assuming an optimistic COP of 3 in the worst weather (highest flow temperatures, lowest air temperatures ... perhaps more like 2.5), then the power required to heat this fraction of houses is 2/3 / 3 = 2/9 of the mean gas demand. [0] linked report figure 1 shows a (smoothed by eyeball) demand of around 140GW "local gas demand" during the Beast from the East. This implies heat pumps would take over 31GW to power, which is more like 60% of the current UK electricity supply. [0] https://ukerc.ac.uk/publications/local-gas-demand-vs-electricity-supply/ https://ukerc.ac.uk/publications/local-gas-demand-vs-electri...
    - ViewTrick1002 9mo ago
      Not sure why you’re talking about heating when the parent, and my comment address transportation?
      - chickenbig 9mo ago
        Sorry, alignment issue! Probably transport is less troublesome as it has a decent element of demand side response to it (batteries sufficiently large for a couple of days without charging).
- philipallstar 9mo ago
  And construction as well. Concrete is emission-y.
- youngtaff 9mo ago
  Reducing the transportation slice of the pie is a double win as something 50% of marine transport is shipping hydrocarbons around the world
Lio 9mo ago
I think a lot of that comes down to cost. If we can drop the price of electricity enough it will naturally become the favoured choice for heating and transportation too.

mytailorisrich 9mo ago

> We're already at 70%+ of our energy coming from non-fossil-fuel sources Is it actually the case on an annualised basis? Or was it just the case when you looked at the live grid data? (There is also the issue with "biomass", which is wood imported from abroad to be burnt)

iamcalledrob 9mo ago
Yes -- you can switch to see the past year's data. Fossil fuels are at about 29%!
- mytailorisrich 9mo ago
  Ah yes, I can see it now: 28.9% for fossil fuels over the past year.