Britain has a massive renewable resource. There is enough renewable energy available to supply the reduced national demand which would be stimulated by the national policy of TEQs recommended in the report – a 50% reduction of current demand in our ‘Island Britain’ scenario.

Due to the nature of renewables, there will be times when Britain can generate more energy than is needed in a local area. In these situations, energy could be exported to other areas, or stored in vehicle-to-grid systems, flow batteries, pumped storage or geological hydrogen stores.

In the opposite situation, when the available renewable resource is insufficient to meet local demand, grid distribution brings power from other parts of the country.

If required, further energy reserves can be accessed from discharge of electric vehicle batteries and CHP from national strategic hydrogen reserves.

Essentially, the need for power balancing would be minimised by intelligent load management, wide geographical distribution of renewable generators, and the use of ‘firm’ renewables such as tidal and biomass fuelled CHP. Tidal energy, unlike wind and solar electric, is highly predictable and regular.

Complementary to wind and marine renewables, Britain’s solar resource can deliver both electricity and heat in summer.

Read more summaries...

• Overview
• International Policy
• National Policy
• Energy Saving
• Buildings
• Transport
• Aviation
• Agriculture
• Nuclear
• Island Britain
• TEQs
• C&C
• V2G Power