Assess the Future Potential of Renewable Sources of Energy as Major Contributors to the Uk’s Energy Mix?

Currently renewable resources produce around 7% of the UK’s energy and when compared to other fuels such as oil and gas, it is still clear that the UK is still heavily depended on fossil fuels, showing that it will be along time before the UK becomes dependent on renewable resources.

Wind power has been chosen to be the main renewable resource to provide most of the energy in the future. According to UKWED there is nearly 6000 turbines in the UK, which shows a lot more, must be built to produce most of the UK’s energy.3% of the UK’s energy is produced by wind meaning that 2000 turbines can produce 1% of the UK’s energy. At the moment.to build an offshore wind farm it cost £3 billion to produce 341 turbines and it costs only £300 million to build a onshore wind farm consisting of 215 turbines. This show wind power is very expensive and will cost the country a lot of money to build more. This shows that wind power may not be a major contributor in the future. Also building more wind turbines will upset the people in the UK as most people don’t like the look of them and they ruin a lot of beautiful landscapes. But at the moment the wind turbines combined produce 30,000,000 MWh which is quite a lot and is more than some of the power plants in the UK combined, which shows it could still be a major contributor as the wind turbines are very power efficient and we do have the right climate for it.

Currently solar doesn’t produce much of the UK’s energy as the UK doesn’t have the right climate for solar to have a major effect of the UK’s energy. One reason why I don’t think solar will be a major contributor to the UK’s energy in the future because we don’t get a lot of sun during the year and when we do its only for short periods of time in the spring and the summer. Another reason I don’t think solar will be a major contributor in the future is because solar energy can only harvested in the day and not a night,