Ross Clark Ross Clark

Our coal-free months aren’t as impressive as they seem

(photo: iStock)

At midnight last night Britain passed a milestone: it was two months since a coal plant anywhere in the country fed any electricity into the national grid. You have to go back to the 1880s for the last time this occurred – to 1882, to be precise, when a single coal-fired power station was opened in Holborn to feed the street lights. Unsurprisingly, the moment has caught the imagination of the green lobby which have hailed it as a triumph for renewable energy.

Maybe not so fast. Few will mourn the passing of coal, which is the dirtiest form of electricity generation and which might have passed into history before now, had we been more enthusiastic about developing a shale gas industry. But the coal hard reality is that we are still a long, long way away from ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The contribution from wind and solar, in particular, is hugely inflated in the popular imagination.

This was the situation at 11 am this morning. Britain was consuming 32.3 GW of electricity. On this, 18.2 GW came from gas plants and 4.2 GW from nuclear plants. Solar – in the middle of the day, in the brightest month of the year – was producing 2.4 GW and wind 1.7 GW. In fact, we were importing more electricity from France (1.4 GW) and Belgium (0.6 GW) than was being generated by British wind farms. You can keep an eye on the current picture here.

We often see a figure published for ‘renewables’ – which accounted for 37 per cent of electricity generation last year. These lump wind and solar with a variety of other things, including hydro and biomass.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in