Wind power surged past fossil fuels in 2024, a historic energy shift not seen in over a century. Yet, nearly a tenth of this clean energy was lost due to grid congestion. As the UK accelerates towards a net-zero future, investors are eyeing a pivotal moment: the race to scale up energy storage and infrastructure fast enough to capture the full value of renewable generation.
Britain has reached a defining moment in its energy journey. In 2024, wind power became the largest source of electricity for the first time since the 1880s, accounting for 31% of the country’s supply and overtaking fossil fuels. This landmark achievement signals both progress and an urgent problem. Despite the milestone, 8.3 terawatt-hours of wind energy—enough to power over two million homes—was curtailed due to a lack of storage and transmission capacity, costing UK consumers close to £400 million. This waste reflects not a failure of renewable energy, but of infrastructure to keep pace with its growth.
The findings, published in the latest Drax Electric Insights report compiled in collaboration with Imperial College London, highlight a stark truth: without strategic investment in long-duration energy storage (LDES), battery energy storage systems (BESS), and grid upgrades, Britain’s clean power advantage could slip through its fingers. Wind’s intermittency, while manageable, becomes a liability without a robust framework to store surplus electricity and dispatch it during low-wind periods—particularly during ‘dunkelflaute’ events, when calm, cold weather stalls renewable output and forces reliance on gas.
The report underscores how rapidly the situation is escalating. In just one year, the volume of curtailed wind energy nearly doubled—from 5.5% to over 10%—driven largely by Scotland’s wind farms outpacing the grid’s ability to transport power to demand-heavy regions in England. The bottleneck highlights a critical gap between generation and consumption that investors and policymakers must urgently bridge.
Dr Iain Staffell, the report’s lead author, pointed to the dual nature of wind’s growth: cause for optimism on emissions, but also a challenge for system resilience. The 17% drop in emissions from 2023 is significant, but so is the warning that clean energy can only succeed if it’s usable when and where it’s needed. That hinges on large-scale storage deployment and faster infrastructure rollout.
Drax, already invested in flexible assets like pumped hydro and run-of-river hydro stations, sees an opportunity for leadership. As Ian Kinnaird of Drax emphasises, achieving the 2030 clean grid target requires more than just ambition—it demands swift policy reform, investor confidence, and innovation in storage technology.
Drax Group plc (LON:DRX), trading as Drax, is a power generation business. The principal downstream enterprises are based in the UK and include Drax Power Limited, which runs the biomass fuelled Drax power station, near Selby in North Yorkshire.
