Renewable electricity use in Scotland: EIR release

Information requested

1. Information and associated data which supports the statement from the First Minister that almost 100% of the electricity we use in Scotland comes from renewable sources.

2. Information/data for when electricity demand in Scotland is met only with electricity generated from renewable sources.

3. When the provisional figure relating to gross electricity consumption for 2020 will be confirmed.

4. A figure for the ‘equivalent’ of gross electricity consumption coming from non-renewable sources in 2020.

Response

1. The data supporting First Minister’s statement is available from the Energy Statistics Hub: https://scotland.shinyapps.io/Energy/ Section=RenLowCarbon&Subsection=RenElec&Chart=RenElecTarget.

Provisional estimates show that in 2020, renewable electricity generated in Scotland was equivalent to 95.9% of gross electricity consumption. Provisional estimates released earlier in 2021 had indicated a value of 97.4%, to which FM appears to have inadvertently referred. This figure was revised to 95.9% in June 2021.

2. Scotland’s rapid rise in renewable electricity generation means that renewables alone met over half of electricity demand for an estimated 54.3% of the time in 2020, rising from 0.0% as recently as 2012. Electricity demand from renewable sources can be found on the following page of the Energy Statistics hub (Please note we only have this data for electricity generated within Scotland): https://scotland.shinyapps.io/Energy/?Section=SystemSecurity&Chart=ScotGenDemand.

3. Final figures will be published in the energy statistics summary on the 23rd December 2021 on the Scottish Government webpages: https://www.gov.scot/publications/quarterly-energy-statistics-bulletins/.

4. We do not calculate the equivalent value for non-renewable sources, so cannot provide this figure.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.