UK Well on its Way to Green Energy Transition with Two Months of Coal-less Energy

United Kingdom has had a silver lining due to the COVID crisis which has led to hundreds of thousands of cases in the country. The lockdown that was imposed resulted in a sharp fall in the demand for power which is similar to what has been seen in other countries as well.  Also like other countries, the coal power plants were shut down before the other power plants which sourced power from nuclear, solar, and wind energy. It has been two months and the coal power plants have not been started which means that the United Kingdom has been running for two months on renewable energy.

This shows that with very little effort developed countries such as the UK can completely transition themselves to renewable energy and lead the way to a low carbon future. The COVID crisis is stress testing different systems in a forced manner and is showing results in a positive way for a number of different scenarios. Work from Home has been working so well for so many companies, that it will result in permanent structural changes with many companies deciding to make it an integral part of their business strategies. In the same manner, many countries seeing that they can completely run on renewable energy may decide to accelerate the transition by making further investments into RE.

The COVID crisis has shown that the UK can completely run its power industry through its offshore wind energy farms where it is a leader as well as land-based wind and solar farms along with nuclear reactors. They can provide enough energy to power the whole country. It will be a dramatic change for a country which is the birthplace of the whole industrial revolution which was powered by coal. The UK has one of the oldest coal industries and still runs four coal power plants. One of the coal power plants now runs on biomass which makes it a green source while others may be shut down soon. With the battery prices becoming cheap and solar and wind becoming cheaper and cheaper, it does not make sense at least for developed countries to burn coal for their needs. With little investment, they can completely become green and make a major dent in the fight against climate change.