Last Sunday, Scotland reached a milestone. For the first time ever, the autonomous region (and possible future independent state) generated all the electricity it needed for an entire day solely from wind turbines. This huge level of production could mark a turning point for Scotland, proving a harbinger of things to come.
By 2020 the Scottish regional government expects all of the area under its jurisdiction to get 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources, meaning that one of the most developed, oil-producing regions in Europe will soon be able to provide itself with power almost entirely without carbon emissions. [...]
This might sound like smoke ring fantasy—even if, for once, no smoke is actually involved. Another current U.K. energy story nonetheless suggests that, across Britain, the wind is indeed blowing (forgive me) in the direction of renewables. Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May decided to postpone construction of a new nuclear power plant at Hinckley Point in Southwest England. One reason suggested for the delay is Chinese partners in the project stand accused of nuclear espionage against the U.S. Another, more immediate practical reason emerged Thursday, however. A new government report suggests that if constructed, the nuclear plant’s electricity could be a third more expensive to produce than that generated by renewables by the time the plant would be actually finished. The cost of generating power with wind in the U.K. has already dropped slightly below that of generating it from fossil fuels. A modal shift may thus already be underway in which renewables become a power source sought out less for their relative cleanness and more for their simple affordability.
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