Simon Watson — a professor of wind energy at Loughborough University — says it is possible for wind, solar and water power to take over from nuclear, coal and gas within 36 years. He claims that Britain could generate all its electricity from renewable sources by 2050 if politicians act now.
“There is no reason at all why we can’t be generating 100% of our electricity needs from renewables by 2050, but it’s down to political will and the social acceptance. Also, the fossil fuel lobby is very strong; 36 years is not a long time to complete the change-over, but look back to where we were in 1990 and how much renewable generation we had then. There was some small scale hydro, and renewables were at about 2% of all the electricity generated. Now it’s 15%, and the rate of uptake is accelerating.”
Wind power is at the forefront of the drive towards renewable energy. World-wide, there was 320GW of wind-generating capacity at the end of 2013. This would produce enough electrical energy to power all the households in the EU. Of the 15% of electricity currently generated by renewables, wind power provides about 8%; the remaining 7% comes from solar, biomass and hydro. The rest comes from gas (25-30%), coal (35-40%) and nuclear (15-20%, depending on the relative price of fuel).
Critics point to the cost of wind energy, but Professor Watson says that onshore wind farms are cost-efficient and off-shore farms will be, once the technology has been developed fully to cope with the hostile marine environment.