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Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

bbc.com

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Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#21

Post by toomuchtodo »

blibble wrote: post #14
toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK's combined wind (23GW) and solar (13GW) generation capacity is at least 3x that of nuclear (9.3GW). Capacity factor aside, nuclear is not a necessary component of a future UK grid (with the caveat that it can import nuclear generated power from France over a 2GW interconnector). [1] There are ~269 renewables projects, roughly 40GW, in the planning stages that will add to that existing renewables capacity. [2]…

there's a lot more than 4GW of nuclear in the UK more like 10GW https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Here's a more friendly reference:

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

Something to note:

> The UK has 15 reactors generating about 21% of its electricity but almost half of this capacity is to be retired by 2025.

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#22

Post by Avicebron »

TheUndead96 wrote: post #4
abhorrence wrote: post #2

The wood pellets are interesting —- if we were growing forests at the same rate as we consume them via the pellets, would it be close enough to a closed loop system?

This is unfortunately not the case. Lots of wood is imported from the third world, potentially the Amazon. Even if it was grown in the country it is consumed in, it would eventually suffer the same issues that industrial farming does. The soil becomes depleted and requires fossil-fuel based fertilizer. Burning the Amazon is now progress, apparently. Something like fusion, or cleaner nuclear, is our only hope. I worry…

I worry about us as well, it seems sustainable to burn wood, but no one ever talks about the rate of burning vs. growth. It's deceptive.

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#23

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Jerry2 wrote: post #7
evolve2k wrote: post #3

> He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year and says Drax will phase out coal entirely by March next year. Anyone know more about using ‘compressed wooden pellets sourced from the US’? First time I’ve heard of an easy? transition option for existing coal power plants, achieved by changing the fuel burnt.

It's called "biomass" and it's a massive scam that harms the environment. Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs released a recent documentary on it [0] that was censored by the "green" industry. As you watch the documentary, do some fact checking on your own [1]. [0] https://vimeo.com/423114384 [1] https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/

That's the first time I heard that the "green" industry gets to censor what I watch.

Comments like yours make me doubt objections to biomass. There is no need to use this sort of language if you have some real arguments against it.

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#24

Post by bengale »

FreeBricklayer wrote: post #20

Britain achieves 21% of their power from Nuclear energy. Where is the rest of the power coming from? Hydro and wind? In the meantime, Germany is phasing nuclear energy out of its grid and is facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables.

We've got huge nuclear issues in the pipeline though. The latest reactor is going to cost us a fortune and almost all of our existing infrastructure is at the end of its life.

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#25

Post by jonnypotty »

Burning wood pellets puts out co2. claiming zero carbon output for this means people could literally burn forests and claim they're being carbon neutral. It's scandalous. The only option would be forests that are managed and burnt for fuel. I'd be interested to know what area of forest you'd need to bring under this sort of management in order to produce say, enough power for a medium sized city.

But ultimately this is hopeless as a solution, you're basically planning to burn wood to produce power producing massive amounts of co2. It doesn't solve anything.

Downvotes edit. Pls correct my math. Copypasta Google. A standard 500 megawatt coal power plant produces 3.5 billion kWh per year That's 3.5 million MWh. From https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomas...

Best case here biofuel is 63per hectare. Which means you need around 55,000 hectares of forest to replace one coal fired power station.

Seriously, I hope I'm wrong.

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#26

Post by pgeorgi »

FreeBricklayer wrote: post #20

Britain achieves 21% of their power from Nuclear energy. Where is the rest of the power coming from? Hydro and wind? In the meantime, Germany is phasing nuclear energy out of its grid and is facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables.

> facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables.

Most of these challenges are going by 3 letters and pretend to be political parties

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#27

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Jerry2 wrote: post #7
evolve2k wrote: post #3

> He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year and says Drax will phase out coal entirely by March next year. Anyone know more about using ‘compressed wooden pellets sourced from the US’? First time I’ve heard of an easy? transition option for existing coal power plants, achieved by changing the fuel burnt.

It's called "biomass" and it's a massive scam that harms the environment. Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs released a recent documentary on it [0] that was censored by the "green" industry. As you watch the documentary, do some fact checking on your own [1]. [0] https://vimeo.com/423114384 [1] https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/

> do some fact checking on your own

At a glance, it doesn't look good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientifi...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/28/climate-...

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#28

Post by regularfry »

FreeBricklayer wrote: post #20

Britain achieves 21% of their power from Nuclear energy. Where is the rest of the power coming from? Hydro and wind? In the meantime, Germany is phasing nuclear energy out of its grid and is facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables.

In short, yeah, wind has seen a huge growth, but we've also dropped our peak a bit. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-... shows what's going on.

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#29

Post by [deleted] »

jonnypotty wrote: post #25

Burning wood pellets puts out co2. claiming zero carbon output for this means people could literally burn forests and claim they're being carbon neutral. It's scandalous. The only option would be forests that are managed and burnt for fuel. I'd be interested to know what area of forest you'd need to bring under this sort of management in order to produce say, enough power for a medium sized city. But ultimately this…

[deleted]

Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

#30

Post by iguy »

This is a good discussion of the accounting of biofuels, with a guy called Tim Searchinger (there is a transcript if you don't want to listen):

https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/11/manifold-podcast-23-ti...

One takeaway is that you should think of farming trees as fuel as a competitor for land use. If it displaces growing food crops, then they will be grown elsewhere, possibly in newly cleared rainforest. Even if none of your wood comes from there.

Edit -- I may have mis-remembered slightly... the food competition story would more obviously apply to corn ethanol, which could otherwise be turned into beef.

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