China is continuing to put increased emphasis on its expanding domestic wind power sector to help provide ever-increasing amounts of emissions-free electricity.

The latest evidence of China’s unrelenting faith in wind power comes in a report that predicts the rapidly-developing Asian nation could have 1,000 GW of installed wind power capacity by 2050.

A leading German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), has reported on a leaked European Commission document on energy futures for 2050, saying that the European Commission’s calculations could be questionable.

In the leaked document – containing seven energy scenarios for 2050 – only the ‘high renewable energy’ scenario shows electricity prices to rise after 2030. In all the other scenarios electricity prices decrease after 2030.

By Susanne Nies, EURELECTRIC

Renewables will play an increasingly important role in the electricity mix, with their share more than doubling over the next ten years. Indeed, the EU’s goal of reaching 20% renewable energy by 2020 implies that almost 35% of electricity will need to be generated from renewable energy sources (RES).

The take-off of RES is a key investment opportunity. But it also poses unique challenges: variable renewables will have a profound, transformative effect on the electricity system as a whole.

Renewable energy could meet almost all of the UK’s electricity needs by 2030, a new report published by WWF has found. Between 60-90% of the UK’s electricity demand could be covered by wind, solar, tidal and other renewable power sources, with a firm renewable energy target for 2030 in place, WWF said.

The report added that renewables can decarbonise the UK’s power sector without resorting to new nuclear power.

Later on this year the European Commission is set to publish a plan on how to decarbonise the EU’s energy sector up to 2050. It’s still a while until publication, but leaked drafts made their way into the media last week.

The Financial Times reported that a leaked Commission document – which looks into different scenarios on how to replace fossil fuels with clean energy up to 2050  – shows that wind power will become, “the biggest source of electricity in the bloc by 2050, outstripping both coal and nuclear power. Wind farms could provide as much as 49 per cent of EU electricity by then,” it said on 17 October.