Renewables and domestic energy, lessons from Europe, Part 2
This is how the UK has done on encouraging renewables since 1990:
Source: Eurostat database (epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu)
Not quite as bad. Now Belgium, France, Greece and Luxemburg have joined Malta in the ranks of countries that are even more useless than the UK.
But every single ex-communist New Member State has managed to do better than us, along with 10 of the EU-15 and all the other developed European nations (like Switzerland, Iceland* and Norway).
The deep green of hydro has now shrunk, as expected, and indeed turned negative in one or two countries (hydro production has fallen in many places in recent years, due to lack of precipitation at key periods of the year). And the other colours have gained share. But the deep blue representing wood remains dominant.
No country (other than Iceland, for obvious reasons*) has achieved a significant increase in renewables without wood-energy playing a major role. In the UK, wood fuels under 0.5% of our gross energy consumption. And what little we have is delivered largely through the co-firing incentives under the Renewables Obligation, which encourage one of the most inefficient uses of wood possible. Only around 30% of that energy from wood reaches the final customer, unlike the countries where wood is used much more and largely to produce heat-only or combined heat-and-power (CHP), where 80-90% of the energy from wood reaches the final customer.
So why are we so rubbish?
* Hydro-electricity increased by over 6% of Iceland's gross energy consumption in the period, on top of the 37% increase shown for geothermal's share. The Icelanders had been so successful at diversifying away from fossil fuels that they were well off the scale compared to other European countries.
