£39.6bn invested in UK on renewable power generation, says report

UK has invested around £39.6bn for renewable energy developments within 2010 and 2014, according to UK Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) report.

Wind power sector has received the maximum capital investment, while the offshore projects attracted nearly £9.5bn and the onshore developments received £7.9bn.

During the four year period till the third quarter of 2014, offshore wind power had supplied up to 3.7% of the country’s combined power generation. UK expects offshore developments in the next five years to offer around 12% of the total power produced.

Onshore wind energy projects have supplied around 5.5% of the power mix, which the country expects to grow up to 10% by 2020.

Around £11.4bn capital investment has been done on solar PV set ups in the country within the four years, DECC stated.

Marine energy sector have received investments of around £100m from 2010 to 2014. The country, however, is expected to have more investments for the sector in the future with potential for 27GW of wave, 32GW of tidal stream, 45GW of tidal barrages and 14GW of tidal lagoons.

Biomass and bioenergy accounted for around £8.8bn during the period, while hydro sector received around £300m.

DECC said: "Overall, turnover in the UK’s low carbon economy is now valued at around £122bn and has been growing at an average rate of more than 7% per year since 2010 in nominal terms.

"The sector now supports more than 460,000 jobs and the number employed has been increasing at an average rate of 3.8% per annum."

At present, renewable sources account for around 20% of the country’s power demands, supplying nearly 14.5 million households every year.

Besides being the leading offshore wind producer globally, UK also intends to drive renewable energy generation with several projects lined up for development.