Fears over solar and wind power reliability 'overblown', says UK energy secretary Fears over intermittent solar and wind power were "overblown" and those who said they would jeopardise Britain’s ability to keep the lights on have been "proved wrong", Greg Clark, the new business and energy secretary has claimed. In his first major speech on energy since his appointment in July, Mr Clark set out his stall firmly in favour of green technologies, vowing it was "imperative" that Britain used "every industrial policy lever that we have" to hit its climate change targets. While he acknowledged that the intermittent nature of wind and solar farms - which only generate power when the wind blows or the sun shines - was "creating new challenges for the system", he insisted that "the fears we had, even less than a decade ago, of the impact of intermittency - those fears were overblown". "It was said our power system couldn't cope with a significant percentage of our power coming from renewables. The doubters are being proved wrong," he told EnergyUK's annual conference on Thursday evening. "We now get 14pc of our electricity from intermittent sources and yet our electricity supply remains the most reliable in Europe." By contrast, Mr Clark said that while "we must recognise this intermittency does add some costs", the onus was on the Government and regulators to cope. See http://ift.tt/2fDBL88
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