How can the UK decarbonise its electricity supply? What about when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow? Here's the answer!

This chart is from a new report from the UK Climate Change Committee based on hour-by-hour modeling of the country's electricity system out to 2035.

But what about dunkelflaute? The modeling included stress tests of how the system could ride out extended wind droughts.

The heavy lifting is done by #offshorewind, whose output triples between now and 2035. In total, #wind and #solar meet over 70% of demand.

Note that this chart is generation, not capacity. Solar capacity is higher than it looks but it generates less since the UK isn't such a sunny country, as we all know 😁

#Nuclear and #biomass make up another 20%, but are considered "relatively inflexible", so that last 10% becomes key.

This will mostly come from "Dispatchable low-carbon" sources. While this does include #batteries, compressed air storage and demand flexibility, for gaps lasting days or weeks, the current idea is that this will have to be met by gas with carbon capture and storage (#CCS) or #hydrogen.

Since CCS doesn't really work, let's assume that's hydrogen. It will be interesting to see how expensive that is expected to be.

I'm surprised not to see more reliance on nuclear, as the UK generally seems to be a pro-nuclear country. Is this because new plants wouldn't be online by 2035?

In some ways we have it easy in Australia, with a lot of high quality wind and solar, often complementing each other. For me personally it's very interesting to see how a country in northern Europe, without much hydro, can decarbonise its electricity system.