The growth of the UK renewable industry
Foreign fuel imports now dominate the UK electricity market although renewables have shown tremendous growth. The UK now imports over 60 per cent of the fuel it used to generate electricity in 2012, up by 12 per cent since 2011. Calculations show that renewable technologies such as solar, wind and marine technologies provided over a quarter of all the UK-based power used to generate electricity in 2012. An important part of the growth in renewables has been the impact of small generators under the Feed-in Tariff, more than 430,000 installations with a total capacity of more than 2GW. There has been a 28 per cent growth in its network of home and commercial micro-generators in the past 12 months.