It is no mystery that Scotland has many wind farms, but how much wind energy can they produce? Until yesterday, an overall estimate was incredibly lacking.
The data finally comes to us from an analysis by WeatherEnergy. This study (Here's the excerpt for anyone who wants to check it out) is based on concrete data showing that in the first 6 months of 2019 the turbines generated 9.8MWh of electricity from wind energy.
On its own, the figure would already be astounding (and indicative of how rapid the changes in renewable energy), but when compared with housing capacity it makes the idea much, much better.
To be clear, it is enough to power almost 4.5 million homes, which is double the number of homes (residential and otherwise) that there are in the whole country.
In other words (and in theory) Scotland would be able to power a piece of northern England on its own.
Remarkable, right? Even England might agree, given its plans to phase out coal as an energy source. In the month of May alone, the Kingdom of Windsor traveled for two weeks out of four without using this energy source. If Scotland had an abundance of energy, even territories without the possibility of installing wind farms could benefit from this energy.
So why this caution?
The Scottish Government has already announced plans to increase the share of renewables to 50% of total energy consumed, while also eliminating CO2 emissions.
Even given the results of this study, I personally find 2050 to be too "soft" and deferred.
All the more reason for two reasons: first, the wind requires the right context to perform well. Second, Scotland has steady strong winds, wide coastline and other stretches that make it really easy to get wind power.
