Tag: solar

Counting on … day 79

6th June 2025

North Sea oil and gas which, because they are traded on the international market, have their price determined by international rates are there subject to geo-political fluctuations. Even if North Sea oil and gas comes ashore in the UK, it does not offer any price advantages to British consumers. 

On the other hand energy from offshore sources of power – wind, wave and tidal –  offers the UK, with our extensive coast line, vast amounts of energy at an affordable cost (and with reference to earlier posts this week, the more renewable energy in the power generation mix the greater the opportunity of bringing down the wholesale price). Research from Plymouth University demonstrates the scale of the benefits to be gained from  offshore energy:-

  • the installed capacity of offshore wind has grown from 1 gigawatt in 2010, to over 10 gigawatts in 2020 – powering the equivalent of 4.5 million homes a year
  • by 2026 offshore wind is likely to provide almost 30 percent of the total UK electricity demand
  • the UK holds 35 percent of Europe’s wave energy resource and 50 percent of its tidal energy resource, with over 1 gigawatt of leased tidal stream sites and over 40 gigawatt hours of marine energy generated
  • wave and tidal energy technologies have the potential to provide at least 20 percent of the UK’s annual electricity demand. (1)

Renewable energy – despite what the fossil fuel industry says – is better able to ensure affordable and secure energy ongoing into the future, and in a way that also protects the environment.

  1. https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/institutes/sustainable-earth/sphere/our-energy-transition-the-supergen-offshore-renewable-energy-hub

Counting on … day 89

18th April 2024

How Renewable are Renewables?

Many things are renewable as in they can be naturally replaced – timber is a renewable resource in that for every tree used/ consumed, another tree can be grown. Water is a renewable resource in that once used it can be recaptured and reused: this might be through the natural water cycle of evaporation, transpiration, condensation and rainfall, or through collecting and cleaning waste water for further use. Fish for use as food is a renewable resource – this supply of food is maintained through the natural reproductive processes of the fish. 

However the renewability of things isn’t necessarily limitless. 

If oceans are overfished, the rate at which new fish are born and mature will not keep pace with the rate at which fish are caught. Eventually there will be no fish.

If trees are felled faster than the rate at which new trees reach maturity – which can be  40 to 150+ years depending on the species – the landscape will become deforested. 

If an ecosystem is not maintained, more can be lost through evaporation in a locality than falls as rain. Without forests in the middle of large continents, rainfall in these areas would be negligible reducing the landscape to desert. If rainforests are cleared, rainfall in those areas will be diminished reducing the landscape to bare earth.

Solar energy is a renewable energy source – the sun is constantly producing heat – as is wind, as the earth’s weather system continues to be generate wind. (Sometimes resources such as sunshine, wind, tides and geothermal energy are known as perpetual resources).

 But whilst solar and wind energy are constant/ renewable, the means by which we capture that energy may not be as readily replaced. Solar panels that convert the sun’s energy into electricity are  made of non-renewable minerals – silicon, silver, aluminium, and copper. Wind turbines that capture the wind’s energy converting it into electricity are made of large amounts of non renewable materials such as steel and carbon fibre.

The source of the energy is renewable but not always the means by which we capture the energy.

Here is an interesting blog describing how solar panels are made – https://blog.ucsusa.org/charlie-hoffs/how-are-solar-panels-made/

and wind turbines – https://blog.ucsusa.org/charlie-hoffs/how-are-wind-turbines-made/