Britain for the first time now has more wind capacity than gas capacity as its wind farms reached 27.9 GW in June, surpassing the 27.7 GW of natural gas power stations, according to the latest quarterly report prepared by Imperial College London for Drax Electric Insights.
“Wind power is blowing away gas and coal from Britain’s energy mix and in just a decade, we’ve gone from relying completely on the polluting fuels of the past to embracing the clean energy technologies of the future,” said Iain Staffell of Imperial College London.
Britain’s installed capacity of power stations over the past two decades. Drax Electric Insights.
According to the report, Britain has become only the fifth country where wind is the leading form of power generation in terms of capacity.
The report also showed that coal and gas power generation fell at the fastest rate except for the Covid pandemic times. Output from gas-fired power stations dropped 23% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2023, while output from coal plunged 75% to a record low.
“At Drax, we believe the UK’s next big focus should be on unlocking investment in technologies which permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere. That’s why we are progressing plans to deploy Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technology at scale in the UK and the US,” said Penny Small, Group Generation Director at Drax, which has converted Drax Power Station, once the largest coal-fired power station in Western Europe, to biomass.
