Renewables Reach Record 50.8% of UK Generation in 2024

[Think. Again.]

Mar 27, 2025, 5:45:32 PM, Article by Plamena Tisheva
Source: https://renewablesnow.com/news/renewables-reach-record-50-8-percent-of-uk-generation-in-2024-1272978/

Renewable generation in the UK hit a record 144.7 TWh in 2024, increasing by 6.5% from 2023 and accounting for 50.8% of total generation - the first year in which the renewables share has surpassed 50%, government statistics showed today.

Wind generation rose by 2.1% to record 84.1 TWh, although offshore wind fell by 1.5% to 48.9 TWh due in part to a fault in one subsea export cable. The share of wind in total generation expanded by 1.4 percentage points from 2023 to 29.5%.

Solar generation increased by 6.5% to 14.8 TWh as increased capacity more than offset lower average daily sun hours.

-snip-

In 2024, 4.2 GW of renewable power capacity was added in the UK, including 1.4 GW of offshore wind, 0.8 GW of onshore wind and 1.6 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV). These additions brought the UK’s installed renewable capacity to 60.7 GW.

-snip-

[NNadir]

1. Wow!!!! Over the last 12 months Britain's carbon intensity was only...

...255% greater than France's, in "percent talk," 192 grams of CO₂/kwh for Britain vs 49 grams of CO₂/kwh forFrance. Of course Britain has nuclear plants, so there's that.

93% of France's electricity was low carbon, Britain 67%.

30.84% of British electricity, 8.64 TWh came from the combustion of dangerous natural gas; the waste was dumped directly into the planetary atmosphere.

Of course I have never met an apologist for the failed enormously expensive so called "renewable energy" scam, of course, who gives a fuck about fossil fuels. Decades of their "rah-rah" "percent talk" has left the planet in flames, not that they give a rat's ass about extreme global heating. The reality is without fossil fuels, the wind and solar garbage would leave people living in the dark.

The figures come from the Energy Map website.

[Think. Again.]

2. Yes, as everyone (should) know...

...the world's increasing carbon intensity is directly caused by the world's increasing energy consumption.

We are not building out non-CO2 energy production fast enough to keep up with those increases, although those non-CO2 sources are definitely making headway against fossil fuels.

We must build much more non-CO2 energy plants of every kind as quickly as possible, and so we must stop public discussion that discourages that.

[NNadir]

3. Bullshit. Carbon intensity of electrical generation has not a fucking thing to do with population.

It's normalized.

[Think. Again.]

4. Wuh?

Sorry, but no. Atmospheric CO2 is increasing due to increasing emissions from increasing energy production.

[NNadir]

5. I was perfectly clear.

It's not my responsibility to assure that a reader is literate.

So called "renewable energy" results on high normalized carbon intensity because so called "renewable energy" depends on access to fossil fuels.

The exception would be hydroelectricity, but the world is fresh out of major river systems to destroy.

This is true everywhere in Europe and, in fact, everywhere in the world.

[Think. Again.]

6. I see, yes, an investment of CO2 must be made...

...to build out the non-CO2 energy production plants because we do not yet have enough non-CO2 production plants to supply the energy needed to build them out.

But it is a misdirection to state that non-CO2 energy plants "depend" on access to fossil fuels. They do not.

[NNadir]

7. Bullshit again. When the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine...

...the assholes in Germany - they have actually had to add a word to their language to describe the condition, Dunkleflaute - the Germans burn coal and suck electricity out of the rest of Europe, driving up prices for everyone on the continent.

Let's be clear on something, OK?

Whenever anyone uses "percent talk" to describe so called "renewable energy" they are in effect announcing they are OK with fossil fuels.

I note as well that people engaged in "percent talk" don't give a rat's ass as to when so called "renewable energy" is available. Instead the mutter insipid nonsense about hydrogen and/or batteries, demonstrating their ignorance of the laws of thermodynamics or the economic and environmental cost of building redundant systems that mostly represent stranded assets 90% or more of the time.

I'm not OK with fossil fuels at all. I favor reliable systems that operate independently of fossil fuels for decades at at a time. Every nuclear plant built today is a gift to three or four following generations.

Every wind turbine by contrast represents a liability that today's toddlers may face before they graduate from college.

Neither do I agree that we should tear the shit out of the Earth to build two or three redundant systems because a set of people endorse a questionable dogma that has obvious failed to produce significant energy at a cost of trillions of dollars for no result other than accelerating the collapse of the planetary atmosphere.

By the way, the primary scientific literature is rich with LCA papers comparing the external costs of energy. The wind and solar garbage can't come close to matching nuclear in these calculations for low impact.

Instead of spending trillions on so called "renewable energy" and only a few hundred billion on nuclear, we should stop picking around and sink all of our investments in nuclear. It's far too late to undo the enormous damage done to the future by antinukes, but at least we can start now at preventing even more damage from this celebration of stupidity.

For the same money we squandered on solar and wind in the last ten years, we could be looking at 60 Exajoules per year from reliable nuclear rather than 16 EJ per year from unreliable solar and wind combined. I would expect had we built a few hundred reactors in the last ten years, their production would be streamlined with a highly trained experienced workforce and infrastructure. Instead we sit on our asses hoping wind turbines don't fall apart.

As a result the planet is burning.

[Think. Again.]

8. Except that renewable methods of storage like H2 are part of the clean energy transition.

And as I've mentioned before, I agree that nuclear is an important part of the coming non-CO2 energy industry, but I disagree with you that it is possible to run our societies on only grid-connected nuclear, and it wrong to discourage all of the other forms of non-CO2 energy production and storage that are far more practical in so many various scenarios.