UK increases renewables generation by almost fifth in 2017

Author: .Martin. License: Creative Commons, Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic

Renewable electricity generation in the UK rose by almost one fifth to a record 98.9 TWh in 2017, driven by a steep increase in wind generation, government figures showed today.

The share of renewables in electricity generation was 29.4%, an expansion of 4.9 percentage points from a year earlier and ranking second only behind gas.

Renewable electricity generation	2017 TWh	y/y change
Onshore wind	28.7	+37%
Offshore wind	20.9	+27.3%
Hydro	5.9	+10.2%
Solar PV	11.5	+10.2%
Bioenergy (inc. co-firing)	31.8	+5.9%
All renewables	98.9	+18.8%

Onshore wind generation and offshore wind generation grew to record levels as a result of increased capacity and higher wind speeds. Industry body RenewableUK pointed out that wind generated 15% of the UK's electricity demand in 2017, up from 11% in 2016. In the final quarter of 2017 the share of wind was 18.5%.

Figures for the 2017 fourth quarter showed that renewables' share of electricity generation was 30.2%, up from 22% in the same quarter of 2016, but short of the record 30.8% in the second quarter of 2017.

At the end of 2017, the UK had 40.5 GW of renewable electricity capacity, an increase of 13.3% or 4.8 GW from a year earlier. Onshore wind capacity grew by 1.9 GW to 12.9 GW, solar photovoltaics (PV) by 0.9 GW to 12.8 GW, while offshore wind by 1.7 GW to 7 GW.

The annual statistics also showed that the share of liquid biofuels in petrol and diesel consumption for road transport was almost unchanged on 2016 at 3.1%.

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