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Newsletter (copy 03)
How Scotland and Uruguay got to nearly 100% renewables
Good morning!
This week, we’re focusing on two (small) countries that have nearly eliminated fossil fuels from their electricity mixes. Over the past decade, Scotland and Uruguay have invested heavily in wind. In doing so, they’ve become less exposed to the volatility of the global coal, oil & gas markets.
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Scotland’s efforts to phase out fossil fuels took another step forward in mid-October after a gigantic new offshore wind farm was fully synchronised to the grid.
The 1.1GW Seagreen facility in the North Sea — a joint venture between TotalEnergies and SSE Renewables — was completed in slightly over three years. Its foundations plunge to depths of nearly 60 meters below sea level.
According to the developers, Seagreen alone will deliver enough energy each year to power two-thirds of the country’s households. That’s a significant addition to an electricity mix that is already one of the world’s cleanest…
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Renewables alone have powered the Uruguayan economy for nearly four straight months.
In the three months to end-September 2023, the South American nation generated all of its electricity from renewable sources — with wind the single-biggest contributor, according to data from the country’s electricity market operator. And as of October 24, it’s on track to extend that streak by another month.
Uruguay hit the same milestone in 2022 during the spring months. But it had to turn back to fossil fuels — in the form of imported oil — over the summer period when a historic drought curbed hydro output. The polluting fuel accounted for roughly 10% of the power mix through 2022.
How it got here: Uruguay used to rely almost entirely on hydro- and oil & gas-based power. But as the economy grew and electricity demand threatened to overtake supply from the early 2010s, it needed to add additional generating capacity, and fast. New hydro wasn’t an option as it had already made the most of that resource.
To chart the way forward, the president appointed Ramón Méndez Galain, a particle physicist from the private sector, as the country’s director of energy — a position he held until 2015.
A modest global tax on billionaires, alongside a more effective minimum tax on multinational companies, would raise as much as $500 billion every year for public spending programmes, according to the findings of a European Union-backed study.
The status quo: With effective tax rates of just 0% to 0.5% of their wealth, dollar billionaires are taxed far less than ordinary citizens in proportional terms, says the report by the EU Tax Observatory, which is housed within the Paris School of Economics.
The fix: The study says that introducing a minimum tax on the world’s 2,500 billionaires, equal to 2% of their wealth, would yield close to $250 billion annually.
Meanwhile, a strengthened global minimum tax on multinational companies — free of loopholes — would raise an additional $250 billion per year.
The combined amount is equal to what developing countries need annually in additional public revenue to address the challenges of climate change.
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South Australia, Denmark, and Portugal are among those that are rapidly moving towards 100% renewable power systems. They’re working it all out for the rest of us.
- Continue reading here.
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