UK’s renewable energy drive had ‘one of the most successful years ever’

Last year was “one of the most successful years ever for Britain’s renewable energy drive”, according to a new government report.

The second progress report to the European Commission on the UK’s performance against their interim renewable energy targets stated Britain made “considerable progress in levels of deployment, in announced new projects and in longer term policy completion” in 2013.

A “significant growth” in the sector resulted in a record 15.5 per cent of electricity being generated from renewable sources in the second quarter of 2013.

Between June 2012 and 2013, overall renewable capacity grew by 38 per cent to 19.5GW, and the report added “deployment pipelines are strong for all key technologies across all stages of development”.

The impact of Electricity Market Reform (EMR) is praised for providing long term certainty and “is expected to support more than 30 per cent renewable electricity by 2020”.

It added that the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s analysis suggests theUKis set to meet its 2013/14 interim target of 5.4 per cent of consumed energy coming from renewable sources.

The government will “closely monitor” theUK’s progress towards these targets and will ensure there are “enough measures in place” to achieve the targets and “overcome barriers to delivery”.

Trade association Renewable UK said it was happy to see “continued progress” towards the targets by that it is “important momentum does not slip”.

It added: “This progress shows how important the 2020 renewable energy target has been, and why it is important that Europe adopts similar targets to drive forward renewable energy, and particularly the less-developed technologies, over the next decade, which will lead to more clean energy and tens of thousands of high-skilled jobs”.

However, while the Renewable Energy Association (REA) welcomed the progress to date, it was more critical of how theUKhas performed.

An REA spokesperson said: “The UK still lags well behind the EU average on renewables deployment, so we would like to see theUKraise its ambition.

“It has only met its interim target by rounding up while many other Member States have more than exceeded their targets.”