Scotland is, to all intents and purposes, the nation of wind — alongside countries such as Denmark, Germany and Portugal. And confirmation that the British nation is making great strides in its energy transition comes unmistakably from the figures on electricity production for the first six months of 2017: the installed wind turbines produced more than 6 million megawatt-hours, just over one million in June alone. In that last month, electricity production reached 118 per cent, comfortably exceeding domestic electricity demand.

This is reported by the Independent, drawing on updated data provided by WWF Scotland, which in turn analysed figures released by WeatherEnergy. In practice, it means that for 6 days the entire electricity supplied by the national grid came from renewable sources.

Wind power in Scotland generates electricity for everyone

"The first six months of 2017 have been incredible for renewable energy, with wind turbines alone helping to avoid millions of tonnes of climate-altering carbon emissions," said Sam Gardner, as reported by the British media. "Scotland continues to set records when it comes to electricity generated from renewable sources."

Over the past six months, the land of the highlands consumed a total of 11,689,385 MWh of electricity, including both domestic and industrial consumption. This means that 57 per cent of the total electricity consumed at home came from renewable sources. By way of comparison with Italy, in May of this year alone, electricity demand stood at 25.1 million MWh — a figure considerably higher than all the first months of the year combined.

Erik Solheim ✓ @ErikSolheim

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First floating wind farm starting to take shape.
It can operate in waters up to 1 km deep. Exciting innovation!
bbc.com/news/business-…

♥ 149💬 2 24 lug 2017 · Apri su X →

Scotland's first floating wind farm

But the country continues to invest in new technologies. Indeed, in recent days taking shape is what will be the world's first floating wind farm, Hywind. The technology will allow turbines to be installed in the open sea, where depths are greatest and conventional technologies cannot be deployed. According to Statoil, the company working on the project in partnership with Masdar of Abu Dhabi, this type of installation could bring offshore wind farm costs crashing down in a short space of time and make the technology competitive on the market, even without subsidies.