Renewable Energy

Oxfordshire’s Ray Valley Solar already generates clean energy for 7,000 homes, and is now crowdfunding storage to marry daylight with evening demand

Tucked away among hedgerows on a large field between a motorway and the River Ray, one of the UK’s largest community-owned solar parks is hard to spot from the surrounding country lanes.

But the nearly 36,000 solar panels installed on the site are literally a shining example of what can be achieved when a renewable energy project is co-owned by local people.

There will still be a need to have gas in the wings to keep the lights on, so the financials stack up on Severn plant purchase

The eye-catching non-Hormuz news in energy-land last month was that Great Britain is set for a record-breaking summer for wind and solar power generation. The national energy system operator even thought there could be periods – a sunny weekend or a bank holiday afternoon of low demand, for example – when more renewable power would be available than the electricity grid needed.

So, on the face of it, it is an odd moment for Centrica, the owner of British Gas, to fork out £370m to buy a 16-year-old combined-cycle gas turbine plant in south Wales. After all, the government’s clean power plan imagines that, come 2030, Great Britain’s entire fleet of gas plants will be used to generate only 5% of its electricity, down from 31.5% in 2025.

Readers respond to an editorial on the need to speed up the shift to renewables

Your editorial is spot-on (The Guardian view on the green transition: politicians should speed it up – and households too, 4 May). Sadly many of the policies implemented by politicians are counterproductive, based on the fear of public backlash. Fossil fuel tax cuts encourage climate harm and will exacerbate the coming shortages.

Nuclear power is a way to spend billions today that will have no impact for at least a decade, while readily available competitive solutions go begging. Fuel rationing and efforts to hasten the transition nudge us in the right direction, though they still lack a clear financial signal for the wider economy and households.

Decades of complacency cannot be magicked away by drilling in the North Sea – or even by hoping that renewables will quickly power everything

• Ewan Gibbs is a historian of energy at the University of Glasgow

First it was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now it is the blockade of the world’s petroleum artery in the Gulf. For the second time in four years, Britain is facing an energy crisis that has been made much worse because of the absence of preparation by its political leaders.

The fact is that our energy politics were conceived for a world where convulsive, global events were a thing of the past. The notion that it would be difficult to access supplies of oil or liquefied natural gas from the international markets did not figure in the understanding of the politicians and officials who shaped our perilous current moment. But even today, the advocates of energy sovereignty on the left and right appear to lack knowledge, understanding or power over this very foundational matter.

Ewan Gibbs is a historian of energy, industry, work and protest at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland

As Reform vows to block solar and windfarms, energy leaders say renewables offer most secure future, insulating UK from hostile forces

• UK politics live – latest updates

• May elections: What’s at stake across England, Wales and Scotland?

The defining issue of Thursday’s local elections, feedback from doorsteps suggests, will be the UK’s soaring cost of living. But voters should be told about the links between inflation and the effects of fossil fuels and the climate crisis – or the remedies they choose – may make the situation worse, green campaigners have warned.

Ami McCarthy, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said: “With people’s bills and prices soaring from yet another fossil fuel crisis, these local elections have a global context – driven by the Iran war.