Wind powers a record summer for renewable energy in Britain

Great Britain’s electricity system (Northern Ireland is part of the integrated Irish electricity grid) made a leap forward in August 2024. The amount of power generated by fossil fuels fell to 3.6 terrawatt-hours (TWh), its lowest level in over a century. This meant that each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed during August emitted on average just 84 grams of CO₂.

The record-low contribution of fossil fuels to British electricity in August will have affected household emissions. Heating your home with an average heat pump in August would have been eight times cleaner than using a gas boiler for instance, while charging a typical electric vehicle could have been about ten times cleaner than a petrol car.

Before August 2024, monthly generation from fossil fuels had never dipped below 4 TWh, even during the lockdowns of 2020 when demand for electricity and transport fuels plummeted. What’s more exciting is that this was the first time fossil fuels (98.5% gas and 1.5% coal) fell to third place in the British electricity mix over an entire month.

Gas power plants can be quickly and reliably ramped up when there is a surge in electrical demand or a lull in output from weather-dependent renewables like wind and solar. This makes phasing out gas particularly difficult. That’s why the results from August 2024 are so encouraging: gas appears to be losing its dominance.

While the contribution of gas to Britain’s electricity will rise again in autumn and winter, its meagre showing in a low-demand month like August suggests its heyday is waning.

Read the rest of the article from Dr Grant Wilson (School of Chemical Engineering), Dr Daniel Donaldson (School of Engineering) and Dr Iain Staffell (Imperial College London) and view the data over at The Conversation.