BEIS has published the provisional data for 2018’s energy trends, reporting that renewable energy production increased 8.7% in 2018 to over 20mn tonnes of oil equivalent. Published on 28 February, the release said that 2018 saw primary energy production increase by 2.9% on 2017 to 130.4mn tonnes of oil equivalent – the fourth increase in successive years. There was also an increase in bioenergy output of 7.2% and an increase in wind, solar and hydro output of 12% due to increased wind and solar capacity. Nuclear production was down by 7.5% due to outages in the fourth quarter of 2018. It was also found that coal production fell 15% in 2018, to a new record low of around 2mn tonnes of oil equivalent. Oil production was up 9% and gas production was down 3.4%.
