It’s been a year since we last looked at the fuel mix used to create our electricity.
So what was powering your electric car in 2018? Renewables have grown again and now represent almost half of all the electricity produced. Coal fell again, over 30% (down from 10% last year to 7% this year) and gas slipped a little too. Here are the ‘all island’ figures and graphs for 2018…
2.2 The use of fossil fuels as a fuel source has decreased from 2017 to 2018. Correspondingly the share of renewable fuel sources has increased by approximately 10% between 2017 and 2018. This has been a continuous trend over the past number of years
The average carbon dioxide emissions per MWh of electricity decreased by 10% from 0.325 t/MWh in 2017 to 0.291 t/MWh in 2018 for the island. This is in line with a downward trend in CO2 emissions as a result of the increase in renewables as shown in the table below.
Check out the methodology and All-Island Residual Mix figures from the full report on the link below.
2 Responses
That’s great to see the rise of renewables, long may it continue. I do raise an eyebrow at burning peat, a peat powered EV! At 50% the Kwh/kg of natural gas, peat seems an unusual energy source and it has remained relatively constant in generating electric in the chart. Not that I’m advocating more fossil fuels, quite the contrary but let’s stop digging up our peat lands.
As an electric consumer in NI I look on with envy at those in GB who are on dynamic smart tariffs from the likes of OVO, Octopus and Ohm. Fellow EV drivers charging at night for 2.2p a unit! On top of this they have the option for V2G. We need our regulator to remove barriers to entry for these supply techniques and turn on a smart grid.
@Mark B – We asked the Utility Regulator just last week about GB energy suppliers serving NI customers. They told us there was currently no barrrier for them to do this. The reason they don’t may be that there’s a cap on the margin suppliers can make here, plus we have a relatively small market.