Guide to the Future of UK Renewable Energy

Renewable energy innovations in the solar field are making solar panels increasingly affordable and widespread. The UK’s solar power capacity has surpassed 15 GW, and the country aims to achieve 40 GW by 2030.

The UK currently exempts residential rooftop solar panels from VAT, and this is encouraging households to install them on their homes. On the business side of things, the Smart Export Guarantee allows companies with solar panels installed to be paid for surplus energy they supply to the grid. Also, some city councils offer grants for commercial solar installations.

As energy from traditional sources becomes scarce and expensive (and inflates other costs of living and doing business), families and companies with finances and the environment on their minds will turn to solar power as a remedy.

Solar farms, however, have faced more resistance, though they are becoming more accepted. The long rows of solar panels needed to generate meaningful energy quantities require considerable land, which could often otherwise be used for agriculture. There are recent solutions to this, though, such as spacing or elevating solar panels to also allow growing crops or grazing cattle. This win-win industrial ecosystem can help realise the renewable energy predictions for solar power’s bright future.

UK investment in renewable energy includes the development of alternative, renewable fuel sources, including hydrogen and biomass.

The Powering Up Britain plan for improving the country’s energy security features multiple initiatives for developing an economy for hydrogen fuel. These include:

• Certification for hydrogen produced with low carbon emissions
• A Net Zero Hydrogen Fund for supporting commercial hydrogen production
• Funding through a Hydrogen Production Business Model to help hydrogen fuel projects compete with ones that use higher carbon fuels

All this is possible thanks to recent renewable energy innovations in the hydrogen fuel space:

• Hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles
• Green hydrogen (produced from renewable energy sources)
• Hydrogen carriers (materials that can mix with hydrogen to allow easier transportation of it)
• Using carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) to lessen the carbon footprint of hydrogen production

The UK also has a strategy for using biomass (organic waste) for energy production. Biomass already contributes more than 5% of the country’s electricity generation, and the Government intends to keep cultivating this through incentive programmes.

Deploying biomass feedstocks to where they achieve the most benefits will be key, so net-zero strategies will need to prioritise domestic biomass production and consider the feedstocks’ various types. Renewable energy predictions for biomass also show greater use of carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) to minimise the emissions from this energy production.

As UK renewable energy generation becomes more practical and widespread, storing this generated energy will be a separate challenge. Wind and sunlight obviously vary, but electricity needs are constant. This makes storing renewable energy for on-demand deployment essential.

Batteries for renewable energy storage include electric vehicle batteries and large grid-scale devices, and each category has its challenges. The electric vehicle market in the UK is growing fast, but their batteries (and their charging infrastructure) still need further development to get their storage capacities to a level practical for all consumers. Meanwhile, renewable energy for the grid remains intermittent and challenging to store, so for now we depend on non-renewable sources to provide a baseline supply.

There are ongoing innovations in terms of batteries for renewable energy storage at grid scale, but this means staggering numbers of lithium-ion batteries that must be built to last for decades (to avoid excessive pollution from spent batteries). Renewable energy projections foresee these three types of energy storage (personal devices, vehicles, grids) working together to exchange surplus energy and optimise the country’s overall energy usage.