OilPrice.com features an interview with Scotland's green-energy-obsessed First Minister, Alex Salmond. Here's an excerpt.
Oilprice.com: Scotland is famously doing very well in achieving its renewable energy goals with provisional generation statistics confirming that 2011 was a record year for renewable generation in Scotland, up 28.1 % from the previous record in 2009. Your well publicized target is 100% renewable electricity by 2020. How are you coming along with that? Is this figure really achievable?
Alex Salmond: Our Electricity Generation Policy Statement confirms that our 100% renewable electricity is technically feasible although we are not complacent and accept that it will be challenging. Delivery of the target will require around 16GW of capacity. We currently have almost 5GW operational. With a further 3.3 GW consented or operational and over 20GW in planning or scoping we are confident that the target can be delivered.
These numbers don't seem to quite stack up. Peak demand in Scotland appears to be 6GW, and an optimistic assessment of wind turbine efficiency would be 20% or so. Therefore, to meet peak demand you'd need 30GW of capacity. If Salmond is assuming that he can double the efficiency of wind farms then it's quite a leap.