In the next 20 years a substantial amount of the
UK’s existing electricity generation capacity will
close. How this capacity is replaced will have a
major impact on the UK’s ability to meet its
international and domestic carbon emissions
reduction targets.

To explore this issue WWF-UK and Greenpeace
commissioned Pöyry energy consultants to look
at the implications for the UK electricity sector of
meeting the UK’s share of the EU renewable
energy target. This requires the UK to produce
15% of its energy from renewables by 2020.

The report was based on the assumption
(supported by government analysis) that there
was around 76GW of connected capacity in 2007.
Of this, 22.5GW is expected to close by 2020.
Pöyry constructed various scenarios of energy
demand and renewable energy growth to
ascertain whether these technologies would be
able to meet the so-called ’energy gap’.

This report is a summary of the report Implications
of the UK meeting its 2020 renewable energy targets.