In the first six months of 2017, Scotland set a new wind power record, solidifying the country’s role as a leader in renewable energy. In June alone, the nation’s wind turbines generated over one million megawatt hours of electricity—enough to power 118 percent of Scottish households.
Over the last six months, wind energy has supplied 57 percent of the country’s total energy needs, including electricity consumption from homes, businesses, and industry. “These statistics reinforce our country’s reputation as a renewable energy powerhouse and are a vindication of the Scottish government’s energy policy,” Scotland’s energy minister Paul Wheelhouse said in a statement.
While Scotland has certainly shored up its supply of renewable energy in recent years—renewables accounted for just 10 percent of the country’s energy needs in 2001—progress toward the country’s stated goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020 has been slower than anticipated.
Scotland expected to have nearly 1,000 offshore wind turbines in operation by the end of this year, but only 63 have materialized thanks to legal hurdles and lack of funding, Bloomberg reported in May. Indeed, two years after President Donald Trump lost a legal battle with the Scottish government to block an offshore wind farm off the coast of one of his golf courses for aesthetic reasons, the 11-turbine farm has yet to be constructed.
