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ORKNEY'S ENERGY FUTURE
CONCLUSIONS
Scenario 3b, with 8 new wind farms and new cable, is the best scenario to allow for maximum decarbonisation and minimum curtailment.
Orkney already has enough annual surplus electricity generation to decarbonise domestic heating, cars and 12 ferries and could still decarbonise further with the current surplus.
Domestic heating is the most cost-effective sector for reducing CO₂ emissions – EVs were found to be the most expensive.
If new wind farms are built without cable, wasted electricity could exceed 350 GWh/year.
Furthermore, it is important that the energy network is more carefully managed in future; if many more wind farms are added on top of these 8, the distribution network could once again become oversaturated.
The maximum calculated energy storage required is 4 MWh but if Orkney were to fully decarbonise without upgrading the electricity infrastructure, a greater storage capacity would be required.
Decarbonising these sectors reduces CO₂ emissions by 60.9 kt or 41% - with the potential to increase this to 70.3 kt CO₂ if the two largest mainland ferries could be decarbonised.
Although some technologies have zero-emissions at the point of use, there are still environmental impacts associated with them, particularly battery prodution.
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