Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 364 posts

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

#221

Post by jeromegv »

toyg wrote: post #154
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mining and transport of uranium ore, processed fuel and nuclear waste. I don’t know how significant those are. Completely and utterly insignificant, to the point where it is downright insulting when they are brought into a discussion about how 10000 people die of coal-related air quality problems every year in Europe. > My main concern with nuclear power is that they still haven’t managed to create any active long…

> Sure we have. Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway. > The Onkalo repository is expected to be large enough to accept canisters [...] until around 2120.[13] At this point, the final encapsulation and burial will take place, and the access tunnel will be backfilled and sealed. We go from "dig it out" to "dig it in". Very sustainable. /s

Isn't carbon offset also someone else problem? Can't we argue that it is a bigger problem?

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

#222

Post by renaudg »

scotty79 wrote: post #199
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…

Poland looks horrible when you count CO2 per kWh. But pretty good if you count CO2 per capita per unit of time. We use so little energy per capita when compared to western world that our CO2 emissions look better than some bit greener countries (for example UK or Germany) despite getting nearly all of energy from coal.

Not really, Poland burns so much coal that even the absolute numbers don't look great : https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-e...

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

#223

Post by Scoundreller »

TwoHeadedBeast wrote: post #213
Scoundreller wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quickest and most straightforward would be to convert those coal plants to natural gas. But that gas has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think they like knowing that “somewhere” is Russia.

I love the way you say it so casually. In the grand scheme of things you are of course right, but I reckon converting a coal plant to gas is a non-trivial undertaking.

It's a lot quicker than nuclear. Dunno if it's cheaper to just raze the coal plant and build a natural gas one somewhere.

I'll assume any hydro opportunities are tapped out. Conservation is already big in Germany.

Wind and solar can only go so far. And natural gas would provide better peaking capacity to balance it out.

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

#224

Post by pfdietz »

jasoncartwright wrote: post #111
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…

>As I write this, the UK's intensity is 326 gCO₂eq/kWh, which is nothing to write home about. Yeah, that's true, but you've taken a reading there at the worst time of day whilst it's not windy here. The other week we achieved the second lowest carbon intensity daily average ever (the lowest was in the summer last year). Here's what the UK carbon intensity of electricity looks over a larger time scale (8yrs) https://e…

> The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.

The efficiency of OCGT is about 40%. The efficiency of CCGT is about 60%. So, no, the CO2 intensity is not "3x".

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

#225

Post by Someone »

jcheng wrote: post #153
heipei wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how any German in their right mind can continue supporting coal (especially lignite) even if you were to ignore all the fancy carbon emission calculations. Lignite is won using strip-mining here, and by here I mean in the most populous state of Germany between the major Ruhr area and Düsseldorf/Cologne, all major population centers. From where I live, I have to drive straight through these mines whenever…

Look at the size of those excavators--the bulldozer in the lower left of the image looks like a forgotten child's toy by comparison! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine#/media...

What’s more, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator has the same photo, and says “Note the 90-ton CAT front loader at lower left for size comparison”

⇒ chances are a normal-sized bulldozer is half the height of that one.

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

#226

Post by eeh »

TwoHeadedBeast wrote: post #211
dmoy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is bagger288, it weighs over 10Gg and it's like 100m tall or something

I love the metric system and all that, but perhaps 10,000 tonnes might be a better way of expressing the mass of the digger.

Yes. Also, tonne is accepted for use in SI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#...

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

#227

Post by kalenx »

aksss wrote: post #136
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…

Great points, great site. I would just note that those scores are near real-time, so they don't reflect the full picture for a country year-round (summer will have better scores than winter, and thus better than an annual score). For instance, the Yukon Territory in Canada shows on electricitymap.org as 100% hydro with 24g Carbon Intensity score (and 3x that only 12 hours ago). Which is great, but a look during winte…

Maybe for small hydro plants, but definitely not the major ones. Quebec uses almost only hydro all year long (with the major dams being far in the north), and houses and buildings heating is mostly electrical.

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

#228

Post by icebraining »

scotty79 wrote: post #207
knuffelbert wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Map being a map suggests that some of the geographical information is factored into the displayed data. In case of this map it isn't. This map could be just a list of country names.

There's one geographical information: the border flows of energy (Portugal imports from Spain, Spain from France, etc).

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

#229

Post by LilBytes »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #158
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like somebody needs to inform Australia that solar exists and they get a lot of sunlight.

Australians know. The government, however, behaves as if beholden to the fossil fuel lobby. South Australia installed the largest lithium ion battery in the world[0], and the federal government rubbished it as not fit for purpose and to small too make any difference. Have you ever known the government of any country to play down the installation of the biggest X in the world, in their own country, rather than using i…

Australian and former ex-pat of the UK here. I'm happy to see our Government getting rightly ridiculed on an increasing basis in more and more of these types of conversations.

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

#230

Post by xvilka »

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…

Yes, shows the danger of following populist agenda just to please clueless public.
Post reply on HN