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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

#81

Post by philipkglass »

Wind and solar supply much more electricity than wood pellets. This link in another comment by regularfry shows charts and tables:

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-...

In 2019, wind and solar generated a total of 76.55 terawatt hours. Bioenergy (which includes wood pellets) generated 31.12 TWh. Coal generated 6.53 TWh and gas generated 129.99 TWh.

In 2009, wind and solar generated 9.30 TWh. Bioenergy generated 9.61 TWh. Coal generated 97.80 TWh and gas generated 163.46 TWh.

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

#82

Post by VBprogrammer »

hinkley wrote: post #67
VBprogrammer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some back of the envelope maths, he said it takes an area 18 miles by 18 miles every year to produce 7% of the UKs electricity demand. Pine trees are harvested around 30 years old (ignoring thinnings deliberately here). So to set up a 30 year rotation of 300 square miles you are looking at an area roughly the size of Wales. That seems pretty unsustainable from a UK point of view but obviously there are less densely p…

Carbon neutral has to cover the entire supply chain, for which pellets are going to have a lot of sooty diesel engines in the mix.

There are few coal mines left in the UK so coal has the same issue. I think we can all agree that biomass might be a slightly less bad than coal solution to reliably dispatchable power generation. It's far from perfect though.

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

#83

Post by 08-15 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9
wazoox wrote: post #8

And nuclear . Because Brits know that you can't rely 100% on renewables (30% is about the maximum for most countries; "wood pellet" isn't actually renewable, it's forest mining).

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]…

Capacity factor for wind is about 20%, for solar about 12.5%, for nuclear 90%. So let me restate it for you:

The UK's combined annual wind (40TWh) and solar (14TWh) generation capacity is still less than 3/4 of nuclear (72TWh).

Capacity factor aside, unreliability aside, seasonal variation aside, real word aside... you can argue literally anything.

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

#84

Post by jschwartzi »

chrisco255 wrote: post #78
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with that is two-fold: 1. Not nearly enough trees are being planted to offset the ones being cut down. 2. Neutral on a scale of 30 years doesn't much matter when we have to reduce the degree to which we're accelerating a highly non-linear climate change process right now.

I'm not sure about in Britain, but in the U.S. we do sustainably farm trees used for timber and have done so for the past 100 years.

What kind of vehicles do you use to move the lumber from the farm to market, how are the pellet factories powered, and what kind of vehicles are used to move the bulk pellets from US to UK ports?

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

#85

Post by bobthepanda »

nicoburns wrote: post #77
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK already has around 12,000 sq miles of forest, which is about 13% of the area. Half of the UK's land is owned by 1% of the population - a mix of aristocrats, wealthy individuals, and corporations. There is no practical issue with mass reforestation contributing to energy self-sufficiency, but there would be huge political issues.

And huge environmental issues. Forests of 30 years old pine are not the same as ancient forests.

Indeed. Japan is actually thinning its forests because its forests are largely monocultures that are so thickly grown that no sunlight reaches the forest floor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC4gRGPbTqE

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/17/science/japan-s-cedar-for...

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

08-15 wrote: post #83
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]…

Capacity factor for wind is about 20%, for solar about 12.5%, for nuclear 90%. So let me restate it for you: The UK's combined annual wind (40TWh) and solar (14TWh) generation capacity is still less than 3/4 of nuclear (72TWh). Capacity factor aside, unreliability aside, seasonal variation aside, real word aside... you can argue literally anything.

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by tomp »

iguy wrote: post #30

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 no…

> If it displaces growing food crops

But does it? Not all food is suitable for growing crops; even less industrial farming crops, which requires tons of (fossil-fueled) fertilizer, so almost no soil is appropriate. But still, I imagine you need certain flatness to even begin thinking about machine farming. Forests on the other hand can grow on all kinds of land, same with free range animals, and presumably doesn't require so much fertilizer. Therefore, why not both?

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

#88

Post by neilwilson »

leonardaustin wrote: post #5

Hummm, not sure wood pellets are carbon neutral. I think the UK has just offshored its CO2 emissions to the US. Great video below explaining in more detail. https://youtu.be/6RP-jYDgiMg?t=100

Not to mention importing fuel in a COVID world. Relying on imports for strategically important resources is a bad idea. As we’ve seen you can’t get enough diversity of supply with sufficient burst capacity to get you through when the brown stuff vs. fan impact occurs.

Shortage of PPE is one thing. Brownouts quite another.

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

#89

Post by catalogia »

mywittyname wrote: post #62
jjoonathan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cleaner nuclear If we (USA) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had merely continued building it at the same pace, our grid would be (approximately) carbon-free today. Not twenty years from now, not fifty years from now, today. But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe, and we made the grown-up responsible decision to pump our atmosphere fu…

> But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe This is such bullshit. We have reactors that are 40 years old still operating safely. And in the 40 years since, safety systems have improved considerably. A modern reactor could probably have a 100 year service life and no accidents. But such is the world we live in: people are scared of stuff they shouldn't b…

As far as I'm aware, the US Navy has operated hundreds of nuclear reactors for more than 60 years without any major incidents. That's several thousand reactor-years of positive experience.

(They did lose two nuclear powered submarines, the Thresher and Scorpion, but in neither case is a problem with the reactors believed to be the cause. Though the Thresher's reactor is thought to have SCRAMed in response to it's control circuitry being shorted out, causing a loss of propulsion.)

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

#90

Post by jacobush »

hinkley wrote: post #70
torpfactory wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wood pellet burning is a temporary distraction and distortion caused by regulation that allows it to be counted as "renewable". I believe you can make a reasonable argument wood burning is carbon neutral. Unfortunately, land used for growing forests of fuel represents a terrible opportunity cost - you could grow food or let the forests absorb atmospheric carbon, provide animal habitat, re-wilding, etc. However, there…

Or a carbon sink. Most of these trees are coming from temperate forests, and while tropical forests don't put much carbon in the soil, temperate forests do. Or rather, mature trees in temperate forests do. As long as you can keep the temperate zones from moving too far toward the poles (and plant tundra aggressively as it thaws) that's another opportunity cost of cutting them down before they hit their stride.

In Sweden, our agencies classify pellets as better than fossil fuels, but with problematic local effects, and it's estimated that each year 1 in 10000 die from its pollution. (1000 people in Sweden, in a population of 10 million.)

One can assume that locally the effects must be worse?

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