Thread by @davidfickling

I love some of the chortling of late that the UK! thought! it could decarbonize!

And yet fossil fuels are still occasionally tipping 50% of grid demand, how curious!

Here's some context.

In 2011, fossil fuels were 70.4% of demand:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

So far this year, they're about 40.5% of demand, a ~30 percentage point fall in a decade:

grid.iamkate.com

Occasionally, seasonal factors will tip that up above 50%, to be sure. But let's compare to where we thought we would be.

In 2011, the National Grid did a study of what decarbonization might look like.

nationalgrideso.com/sites/eso/file…

The ambitious scenario saw renewables at 31% of grid power in 2020. In practice we were at 43%.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

As a share of total primary energy, renewables in 2020 were at 21.5% vs. the 15% in 2011's ambitious "Gone Green" scenario.

(This includes all the waste heat in thermal power generation, which accounts for about half of fossil fuel energy "supply")

The idea that energy transition *outperforming every expectation* might be considered a knock on energy transition because fossil fuels are still, indeed, in use in 2021?

To me, that's a telling example of how drastically expectations have already been reset.

Gah typo here, *42.5%, not 40.5%

https://twitter.com/davidfickling/status/1463366751266107396