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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

#161

Post by macspoofing »

Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it.

I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are never a significant contributor. If coal is replaced it is ONLY ever replaced with one or more of hydro, nuclear, natural gas. Are wind and solar just vanity projects?

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

#162

Post by alex_young »

glogla wrote: post #138
Ma8ee wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are. My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy.

> My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long term storage of the nuclear waste. And before that, we don’t know the full actual cost of the energy. That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel. Only, we're not building them. B…

> That's a red herring. The "waste" has a lot of energy remaining (otherwise, it would not be radioactive [1]). There are reactor designs that can use "waste" from current reactors as fuel.

Don't these reactors produce nuclear weapons products? Seems like that may be a reason we don't want a lot of them around.

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

#163

Post by knuffelbert »

dmos62 wrote: post #145
renaudg wrote: post #106

Every time there's a thread on the topic, I like to share this fantastic realtime map of the carbon intensity of electricity production in various countries : https://www.electricitymap.org/map As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about. This is better than the worst European offender (coal-loving Poland : 652g) as well as Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Germany…

The color value is misleading though, since it doesn't account for differences in energy consumption per unit of area. For example Belgium is very densely populated compared to France, so if for example both had the same gCO₂eq/kWh, Belgium would have higher CO₂ intensity per unit of area, but this map would color them the same.

One of us is misunderstanding the map. My understanding the color is gram of CO2 (equivalent) per kWh, so not per area, but per unit of electricity consumed.

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

#164

Post by patall »

macspoofing wrote: post #161

Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it. I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are neve…

Because its cheaper? Britain is building one new nuclear power plant (Hinkley Point C) which is delayed by many years but has guranteed energy prices of 10 ct per kWh. That's about double what energy costs are usually in europe at this point.

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

#165

Post by nsl73 »

macspoofing wrote: post #161

Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it. I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are neve…

> Are wind and solar just vanity projects?

Solar is great for lots of non-grid applications, such as places without a grid connection or satellites. The entire technology isn’t vanity.

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

#166

Post by macspoofing »

tomp wrote: post #87
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 re…

>But does it?

It uses land that otherwise would be used for something else, like food, or natural habitat. Biofuels are a disaster because we are not just dealing with climate change, but environmental collapse.

If only there was an power source that was energy-dense, carbon-free with minimal land-use ... If only there was such a thing....

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

#168

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Jerry2 wrote: post #156
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

The Guardian is an extremely biased source. They even refused, multiple times, to run an Op-Ed from the creators. https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-you...

They insist on spinning the YouTube takedown issue as 'blatant censorship', but in fact the YouTube video received a copyright takedown notice from a photographer whose content the film uses, not from some green energy lobby. That alone seems like enough to bring the filmmakers' credibility into serious doubt.

It doesn't seem crystal clear at a glance whether the copyright complaint is well founded, or if it's fair-use, but I don't see that it matters much either way. Spinning it as 'blatant censorship' seems pretty silly.

Even discounting this, and the Guardian article, Wikipedia lists a number of serious issues with the film.

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

#169

Post by patall »

renaudg wrote: post #106

Every time there's a thread on the topic, I like to share this fantastic realtime map of the carbon intensity of electricity production in various countries : https://www.electricitymap.org/map As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about. This is better than the worst European offender (coal-loving Poland : 652g) as well as Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Germany…

While its not that high (about 5%), Germany also has biogas which is also a baseload capable energy source that is renewable and can use most of the existing gas infrastructure

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

#170

Post by macspoofing »

nsl73 wrote: post #165
macspoofing wrote: post #161

Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it. I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are neve…

> Are wind and solar just vanity projects? Solar is great for lots of non-grid applications, such as places without a grid connection or satellites. The entire technology isn’t vanity.

Sure. Vanity as grid-scale power source. If you want to charge your phone battery while camping, solar is great.
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