For renewables in Scotland, October 2014 was a bumper month according to the figures published by WWF Scotland.
For the month of October, wind energy produced in Scotland was 982,842MWh of electricity, enough to power 3,045,000 homes in the UK.
This is equivalent to 126 percent of the electricity needs of every home in Scotland.
An estimated 46 percent of the electricity needs of a home in Edinburgh, 38 percent in Inverness, 37 percent in Glasgow, and 33 percent in Aberdeen were taken care by solar PV panels.
For those homes fitted with solar hot water panels, an estimated 41percent of the hot water needs of an average home in Edinburgh, 31percent in Inverness, 30 percent in Glasgow, and 27 percent in Aberdeen was accounted.
Scotland’s wind power generating enough electricity to power 126 percent of the needs of every home in Scotland, it was a bumper month for renewables in Scotland, said, Lang Banks, director, WWF Scotland.
Summer may be a distant memory, but for the tens of thousands of Scottish households that have installed solar panels to generate electricity or heat water, a third or more of their needs were met from the sun this October, helping reduce their reliance on coal, gas, or even oil, added Banks.
The science is clear, if the worst impacts of global climate change are to be prevented, then the world needs to move away from fossil fuels. The good news is that Scotland is making good use of wind power to create clean electricity, he pointed out.
However, if Scotland is going to meet its future climate change targets, then greater support is needed for energy efficiency and renewable heat, as well as action to curb emissions from transport, explained Banks.
In August the U.K set a new record for wind power generation, with wind accounting for seventeen percent of national demand. For the U.K., Scotland is a green energy leader.
In September, the country got 29.8 percent of its electricity from renewables and hopes to generate the equivalent of 100 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2020.
In the first quarter of this year, Scotland generated a record 6,678 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity, an increase of 55.9 percent from a year before. Wind generation in the first quarter of 2014 was also at a record high level of 4,214 GWh, up 4 percent year over year.
As of March of this year Scotland had 6.8 gigawatts of installed renewable electricity generation capacity, with an additional 6.5 gigawatts of capacity either under construction or consented, the majority of which is from onshore wind generation. Including projects in the planning stages, this figure totals 20.5 gigawatts.
Scotland’s largest wind farm is also the U.K.’s largest. Whitelee Windfarm near Glasgow is with a 539 megawatt capacity, and generates enough electricity to power just under 300,000 homes.
The figures come immediately after United Nations scientists published their latest report on global climate change, warning that without action the world faces severe, pervasive and irreversible damage.
Sabeena Wahid
editor@greentechlead.com