Over the last year I have been increasingly supportive of the Governments committment to making the UK carbon neutral by 2050, it seems a long way in the future but 30 years goes by in no time, I remember finishing university and spending a year in Australia that seems like yesterday but was 30 ago years now..!
We are making progress in two areas, Wind power and in particular offshore wind is really moving quickly and before long more than 50% of the UK’s energy will come from this source, another 7 Gigawatts of capacity is moving forward via Dogger Bank and the three wind farms whose construction there has just started.
In time I can see us being able to phase out oil and then gas fired power stations and in time biomass also.
Solar power is popular but less than 5% of homes have them installed and the UK is not a very sunny place so the potential there must be limited.
Electric cars are becoming more available and people really want to make the switch once mileage range is a little higher and prices a little lower, I sense that the automotive industry is at a tipping point and we’ll soon see electric vehicle sales rising as a % just as fast as we have seen wind power increasing as a proportion of generation.
A really big challenge however is domestic heating, all new homes must be electric only heated and that has to be made law very soon. Then existing homes need to convert to electric via heat pumps either air or ground source, that will be very expensive and hard to achieve.
But the good thing is that we are at least making progress.
