Great Britain Generates More Than 80% of Summer Electricity From Renewables

Great Britain just had its greenest summer on record, with less than one-fifth of electricity coming from non-renewable sources, according to data commissioned by The Guardian.

The record comes after the UK’s now-annual Contracts for Difference (CfD) event — a government-funded auction that provides clean energy subsidies for renewable and clean energy efforts — which awarded a record amount of funding for 131 projects, reportedly enough to power more than 11 million homes.

This year’s budget, which was approved in July by the newly-elected Labour government, included £1.5 billion in funding — a 50% increase compared to last year’s. The increase in funding is in line with the Labour Party’s goals to achieve both net-zero carbon emissions and 60 gigawatts (GW) of electricity produced by offshore wind by 2030.

Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, the think tank that analyzed the data, told The Guardian, “Having the lowest monthly fossil fuel share on record shows that homegrown wind and solar can reduce reliance on imports. This is a great starting point on the path to clean power by 2030 for the new government.

The auction also awarded contracts for 90 solar farms and six tidal power projects.

Luke Clark, director of Renewable UK told The Guardian that while this progress is promising, the UK still needs to step up green energy efforts.

“These record-breaking figures show that we’re making great progress, but to achieve the new government’s target of decarbonizing our electricity system by 2030, we’ll need to increase the rate at which we build new wind and solar farms by securing even higher volumes of new capacity in each annual auction for contracts,” he said.

Tom Glover, CEO of RWE, a leading energy company based in the UK that did not receive funding this year, told The Guardian, “It is a little disappointing in the context of the government’s targets that only 30% of eligible new projects won – but this shows how competitive the auction was, which is a good thing for the consumer.”

Data from Ember shows a steep decline in the UK’s fossil fuel usage over the past decade. In 2014, just over 62% of energy came from fossil fuels. As of August 2024, it had fallen to about 21%. 

While this is impressive, Glover says “the government will now need to work harder to get more offshore wind farms away in future auctions if it wants to achieve its goal of quadrupling offshore wind capacity to 60GW by 2030.”

Ed Miliband, UK energy secretary, told The Guardian, “This auction has produced a record number of solar projects bolstering our mission for a solar revolution, we have powered forward with onshore wind, secured the largest commercial floating offshore wind project in the world and got the offshore industry back on its feet.”

“While these figures are to be welcomed, we have a mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower, with solar and wind power at the heart of our plans,” he said. 

Emma Pinchbeck, CEO of Energy UK, told The Guardian, “It wasn’t that long ago that coal was providing 40% of our electricity and the prospect of running the grid on predominantly low-carbon power would have been dismissed by many as impossible.”

“The regularity with which new records like this are set shows the pace at which cleaner homegrown sources are providing an ever-increasing share of our power,” she said.