The Department of Business, Energy & Industry Strategy have released their quarterly ‘Energy Trends’ bulletin containing statistics on all major aspects of energy in the UK for the time-period July to Sept 2020.
As can be seen from this report, energy consumption in the UK remains low driven mainly by Covid restrictions. Energy consumption has trended upwards since it hit its record low in May 2020, but it remains substantially below the same quarter of 2019.
Report highlights include:
- While both industry and services energy usage have dropped almost 10%, it is transport demand that has shown the largest fall at 30%, with air transport demand down almost 66% on last year.
- Covid has also impacted energy production which is down 9% with drops in oil and gas production caused by delayed maintenance activity. Coal production reached another record low.
- Electricity generation from coal was down nearly 30% on the same period last year and now comprises just 0.7% of total generation. Despite a small increase in renewable capacity, year-on-year, renewables generation is now up to 40.2% of the total generation. This is a 8.2% increase for the same quarter 10 years ago which is a respectable increase.
- Nuclear generation reached record low in this quarter as a result of maintenance activities across the region, resulting in Low Carbon generation falling in the same period.
To view the Energy Trends document in full please click here.