Renewables Are Now Scotland's Biggest Energy Source

AmiMoJo writes Government figures revealed that Scotland is now generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal and gas. The combination of wind, solar and hydroelectric, along with less-publicized sources such as landfill gas and biomass, produced 10.3TWh in the first half of 2014. Over the same period, Scotland generated 7.8TWh from nuclear, 5.6TWh from coal and 1.4TWh from gas, according to figures supplied by National Grid. Renewable sources tend to fluctuate throughout the year, especially in Scotland where the weather is notoriously volatile, but in six-month chunks the country has consistently increased its renewable output.

Comments

AND, notT OR

[frovingslosh]

They did say combined, although they used the short form of it "and". The only thing close to being literally correct would have been to say "generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal or gas". It would still be deceptive though, since they are taking the total of every dubiously clean technology and contrasting that to each individual traditional source.

Nuclear certainly can be clean, particularly if you are not trying to produce plutonium for use in weapons. China, for one, is doing a lot of work on Thorium reactors, and they should be extremely clean, extremely inexpensive, and extremely safe. I also wonder how clean Scotland's "clean" technologies are if you factor in the energy spent to produce them. Many supposedly clean technologies are very dirty when you factor in all production. (Which the eco-freaks tend not to do.)