RE: 97.4% of Scotland's electricity was generated from renewables in 2020

michaelkellett — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 09:19:06 GMT

Scottish Renewables, the source of this press release, is an interested party and it's messages should be treated with due caution.

Although it is true that wind and hydro energy generated in Scotland met nearly 100% of its annual electricity consumption (not quite the same as power demand to most people) it was only able to do this by using fossil fuel and nuclear based generation connected to the UK national grid during the times when the wind was too light (or strong) for the windmills to work, and feeding into the UK grid at other times.

There is also a significant envrinomental cost to the mass use of wind turbines, on land or at sea, which should be factored in to this story.

The Scottish Government is dominated by the SNP and its 90.1% figure for "energy consumption from renewable technologies" is a typical SNP style manipulation of truth. (It conflates energy consumption with electrical energy consumption.)

Windmills have a place in the energy generation mix but we need to be thinking about nukes as well. Scotland is not sufficiently sunny to do that much with solar.