The Welsh Government’s latest statistics on renewable energy make interesting reading. The report, titled ‘Low Carbon Energy Generation in Wales‘, is an update of the original ‘baseline’ study of 2013, and shows considerable improvement in generating capacity.
The biggest contributors to the surge in generation are onshore and offshore wind, PV and biomass, which together make up 86% of the growth. The total capacity in Wales has grown by an impressive 70% since 2012.
A big growth in number of installations and capacity
The figures are also broken down by local authority. Excluding the big ticket item of offshore wind, and the non-renewable nuclear power plant, Powys is still the leading local authority despite the suicidal approach of paying huge sums of constituents’ money to fight projects which would make the county richer. The fact that it has a fantastic resource, as well as a huge land area, probably accounts for this anomaly.
Denbighshire emerges as the champion of anaerobic digestion, and Pembrokeshire as the home of photovoltaics.
Commenting on the numbers, David Clubb said:
“Whilst it is undoubtedly good news that we are becoming less reliant on fossil fuel, the large increase is a legacy situation of poor planning and effective subsidy. Wales is now moving in a direction of much stronger political support, a better planning system and greatly reduced subsidy – the latter an impact of the UK Government’s decisions.
“The next baseline study will demonstrate whether the negative impacts of subsidy reduction can be offset in Wales by a more proactive and enlightened approach by Welsh Government.”