\nLast updated:<\/p>\n
20 Apr. 2026\n<\/p>\n
The Welsh government has set a target of meeting 100% of its electricity demand from renewable sources by\u00a02035 (3). Renewable generation has grown\u00a0nearly eightfold\u00a0since 2024, with renewables now meeting around a third of Welsh electricity demand. However, growth has stalled since 2019 and experts have warned that Wales\u2019s renewables planning pipeline, although still\u00a0substantial, is smaller and less developed than in England and Scotland.<\/p>\n
This recent slow progress in scaling up\u00a0renewables\u00a0capacity, coupled with a rising demand for electricity, which is forecast to double by 2050 (4), means that renewables\u2019 share of generation is currently forecast to fall, according to ECIU projections.\u00a0This risks\u00a0leaving Wales more dependent on gas generation, which already accounts for 58% of Wales\u2019s power output \u2013 more than any other nation in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the UK, the cost of gas dictates domestic electricity\u00a0prices\u00a0the vast majority\u00a0(85%)\u00a0of the time (5). As the price of gas is itself\u00a0largely\u00a0set by international markets, this leaves British consumers acutely\u00a0vulnerable\u00a0to global price shocks \u2013 with the IMF\u00a0warning\u00a0that the UK\u00a0will be \u201cespecially exposed\u201d to\u00a0the\u00a0fallout from\u00a0the\u00a0war in Iran as a result\u00a0of\u00a0its dependence on gas-powered generation (6).<\/p>\n
Experts, including the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Energy Crisis Commission, have said that accelerating the deployment of new renewables is essential to squeezing gas off the grid and shielding consumers from volatility in international markets (7). Last year, large wind farms alone lowered the day-ahead price of wholesale electricity by a third (8).<\/p>\n
Commenting, Laura Dunn, Senior Associate at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said:\u00a0\u201cThe\u00a0cost-of-living is voters\u2019 number one priority heading into the Senedd elections, with growing fears of a repeat of the energy crisis which followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an increasingly uncertain world, the best way to offer Welsh households and industry the long-term certainty they need is by untethering the cost of electricity from unstable international gas markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Wales has seen\u00a0significant progress\u00a0in rolling out new renewables and, across the UK, renewables are already helping to squeeze gas off the grid.\u00a0With\u00a0demand for electricity set to grow as homes and industry electrify, more action is urgently needed to speed up the pace at which new renewables are coming online if the Welsh government is to meet its clean energy targets and prevent Wales becoming more dependent on imported electricity\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The crisis in oil and gas markets has accentuated concerns about the UK\u2019s dependence on imported energy, with last year\u2019s National Security Assessment stating that the UK needed to reduce its energy reliance on other nations (9). According to\u00a0polling\u00a0conducted by More in Common on behalf of the ECIU, seven in ten Welsh voters (70%) expressed concerned about Wales being dependent on energy imported from the United States and nearly as many (67%) about Wales being reliant on energy imported from the rest of the world (10). In recent years, the United States has become the UK\u2019s largest supplier of Liquefied Natural Gas, supplying 68% of UK imports (11). This has led experts to warn of the possibility of the Trump administration leveraging energy supplies to extract policy concessions from European governments (12).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last updated: 20 Apr. 2026 The Welsh government has set a target of meeting 100% of its electricity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[394,395,234,396,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-17868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-climate","9":"tag-debate","10":"tag-energy","11":"tag-net-zero","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116437155961826750","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}