The UK and energy

I have an addiction to reading nonsense. Others may flee from reading dumb documents; I find them irresistable. I had great fun reading the UK's Renewable Energy Strategy - a 238 page of New Labour posturing:

"We need to radically increase our use of renewable electricity, heat and transport. This Strategy explains how and why we will do so. It sets out the path for us to meet our legally-binding target to ensure 15 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by 2020".

The problem is that at the moment, just under 3 percent of the UK's primary energy supply comes from renewable sources. That amount is far lower than any other major European economy.

There is an obvious case for increasing renewable energy, but a dose of realism would be nice. Increasing the proportion of energy coming from renewable sources from 3 to 15 percent in nine years isn't terribly likely. Without any increase in total energy supply, the UK renewable supplies would have to grow at 20 percent a year. With the benefit of compounding, this would give us the 5 fold increase demanded by the UK energy strategy.

(The data used in the chart is from the OECD).