Last year was a momentous year for clean energy generation. In October 2024, the very last UK coal plant finally shut down, ending a 142 year run of generating energy by burning coal. The Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant was shut down for good, after burning 4.6 billion tonnes of coal, causing 10.6 billion tones of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere.
However, 2024 was the year for renewables. Oddly, the data doesn't seem to discern between actual renewables and "renewables" that are still burning stuff. The data from Carbon Brief classes biomass, burning wood pellets and landfill gas as renewables, which seems a bit backwards. However, fossil fuels made up only 29% of the energy for the UK in 2024.
In 2024:
- Burning Gas generated 88TWh (28%)
- Wind generated 84TWh (26%)
- Nuclear generated 41TWh (13%)
- Burning Biomass 40TWh (13%
- Importing energy generated 33TWh (11%)
- Solar generated 14TWh (4%)
The current UK Labour government has plans to completely decarbonise the UK grid by 2030 with a combination of increased solar and wind deployments. Throughout the next few months, there are a huge amount of new wind projects coming online. 2024 on a whole, also had below average wind speeds - so if this increases, wind could be the major supplier for energy in the UK.
Despite claims otherwise, for nearly twenty years the electricity demand on the grid has actually been decreasing. Home appliances have become much more efficient and various heavy industries have shut down.
Heat pumps are also going to cause a vast seismic shift in our reliance on fossil fuels. Heat pumps can be used to replace an existing gas boiler and instead use much less energy, are more efficient and effective as well as causing less pollution.
