Not only has the UK not stopped building wind, they have over 30GW of installed wind capacity and sell electricity to Ireland for most of the year.
Not only has the UK not stopped building wind, they have over 30GW of installed wind capacity and sell electricity to Ireland for most of the year.
The 'sell electricity to Ireland' bit here is doing an awful lot of work. It's more complicated than that.
For those who don't know, Ireland operates an all-island grid, and EirGrid (the grid operator for the Republic) owns SONI (the grid operator for Northern Ireland). That means that 'UK' and 'Ireland' in this has a large Northern Ireland shaped lump of ambiguity that statement.
It shouldn't be that complicated. The UK sells electricity to Ireland (and vice-versa?) in the same way that Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway sell electricity to the UK, and vice-versa.
Don't tell me EirGrid's EWIC that comes onshore at Dublin and Greenlink at County Wexford are an "NI-shaped lump". They are sources of electricity for the whole island, when it's needed, just like the UK's interconnects with the continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-voltage_transmiss...