POWER FOR GOOD

LEARN MORE ABOUT WIND ENERGY

There is now a consensus that carbon dioxide emissions are causing climate change and the harmful effects are widely recognised. The impacts of climate change will be global, and in this country it is now widely accepted as a very real threat.

Sir David King, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, wrote in Science in 2004 (i), "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism".

Most of our electricity generation in the UK is produced by large, centralised power plants fuelled by natural gas (43%), coal (34%) and nuclear (15%). In 2007, renewable energy contributed 5% of the total electricity supply.

The combustion of fossil fuels such as gas and coal emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. 40% of carbon dioxide emissions currently come from the energy supply sector.

The drive towards a low carbon economy depends greatly on the successful implementation of renewable energy generation technologies, which do not produce greenhouse gases during operation and which depend on a totally renewable and sustainable fuel source.

Renewable energy has other advantages too - it can help to diversify the UK's electricity generation network, reducing our dependence on imported fuels. By 2020, the Department  for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform calculates that the UK could be dependent on imports for 90% of its gas supplies, by which time some commentators have estimated that we could be reliant on gas for up to 70% of our electricity generation needs.

Climate change has to be tackled at every level, from the individual through to global measures. There are a number of key national and international agreements in place to help to stimulate the development of the low carbon technologies required to cut emissions and targets to drive progress.

One of the key global tools is the Kyoto Protocol (iv), to which the UK has signed up and which came into force in February 2005. This commits the UK to meeting targets to reduce emissions of key greenhouse gases. The UK Climate Change Act has now set legally binding targets for the UK to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050, and carbon dioxide emissions by at least 26% by 2020, both set against a 1990 baseline.

To help tackle this source of CO2 emissions, the UK now has targets in place to generate 10% of its electricity using renewable energy sources by 2010.  By 2020, the Government is committed to meeting 15% of the country’s energy demand by renewables. Given that this is a target for overall energy, and not just electricity supplies, the Government’s own estimate is that roughly a third of the country’s electricity supply will need to come from renewable sources, such as wind, wave and tidal power by 2020.

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