Solar Power and Tidal Power
(asked on 20th February 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what proportion of the UK's energy was generated by (a) tidal and (b) solar power in each year from 2005.
a) Tidal power includes tidal stream and tidal range devices (i.e. barrages or lagoons). Due to the very small scale nature of tidal stream deployments (all of which were limited-period tests of innovative devices) a negligible portion of the UK’s energy was generated by tidal stream devices. No energy was generated by tidal range devices.
b) The proportion of the UK’s indigenous energy production generated by solar sources (photovoltaics and solar heating) before 2010 was negligible. Figures for 2010 to 2015 are presented below.
Proportion of UK electricity and UK energy production generated from solar, 2010-15(1)
| 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
% of electricity generation | 0.01 | 0.07 | 0.38 | 0.57 | 1.21 | 2.25 |
% of energy production | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.13 | 0.19 | 0.34 | 0.56 |
(1) Energy and electricity generated from solar sources before 2010 was negligible, less than 0.05% of UK production.
Source: DUKES table 6.6, table 5.1 and table 1.1 available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes.