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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

#271

Post by stan_rogers »

LilBytes wrote: post #229
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there anything like Clarke and Dawe anymore? [1] I'd have thought they'd have a broad chorus started by now.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/ClarkeAndDawe

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

#272

Post by Joof »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #69
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…

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.

Heterogeneous forests sustain more wildlife, sink more carbon, are healthier for the land and use less resources than would be the case for a farmed forest.

Cutting down trees and 'reforesting' is unlikely to be sustainable over the long term for a variety of reasons (soil depletion, inefficient water use, etc. Forests are their own resource. You can't simply grow them back.

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

#273

Post by Yaggo »

voldacar wrote: post #269
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…

What's up with estonia and serbia?

No hydro or nuclear.

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

#274

Post by grey-area »

Brakenshire wrote: post #202
grey-area wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you got that maximum figure from. Scotland is already near 70% and aiming for 100% renewables. With sufficient storage capacity (hydro and batteries), there's no reason any country couldn't be 100% renewables. Biofuels are a very small part of the mix, and I agree pretty pointless except on a small scale in remote locations to provide heat as well as power. https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/09/23/sco…

Scotland is integrated into the UK grid.

All grids are connected, for example the UK has several power sharing lines to other countries.

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

#275

Post by grey-area »

aksss wrote: post #119
grey-area wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you got that maximum figure from. Scotland is already near 70% and aiming for 100% renewables. With sufficient storage capacity (hydro and batteries), there's no reason any country couldn't be 100% renewables. Biofuels are a very small part of the mix, and I agree pretty pointless except on a small scale in remote locations to provide heat as well as power. https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/09/23/sco…

The article (probably unintentionally) paints a rosier picture than reality: >> "Scotland will soon be meeting the equivalent of 100% of its electricity needs from clean energy sources." This is kind of a weaselly. Two parts of this sentence need explanation: 1) "equivalent of" 2) "electricity needs" The equivalency is a murky way of saying that they still use fossil fuels but are also engaged in carbon offsets to re…

It's a long way from 30%.

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

#276

Post by tialaramex »

wazoox wrote: post #196
nimish wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind are getting so cheap that you could feasibly overbuild to deal with low production times. And no, 30% is nowhere near the max, especially with storage

They're getting so cheap because they produce energy at times we don't need it, so market price fall through the ground to zero or even negative flash prices. Low prices are an compound artefact of heavy subsidizing and production in complete inadequacy with demand. Electricity storage doesn't exist. There is no existing industrial solution at scale (except hydro, but there's no room left for expansion in Europe). We…

The subsidies used in the UK are primarily Contracts for Difference. A Contract for Difference works by assuring the power plant they will always get paid a fixed price regardless. When the actual price paid for power is higher, the government gets the difference, when it's lower the government pays a subsidy. This is effective because it provides investors with certainty - if the power plant they're paying to build makes 100MWh of electricity at CfD strike price of £60/MWh they definitely get paid £6000.

As well as storage there are interconnects. Most of the time we buy French power, they have a lot of Nukes, but Wind is cheaper even than the French Nukes, so when we have lots of wind we do not buy French nuclear power. The interconnects have the effect of somewhat smearing European weather effects across the continent as far as power is concerned.

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

#277

Post by tuatoru »

somedudetbh wrote: post #112
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…

> Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. What's the rationale for comparing indirect deaths from coal to direct deaths from radiation?

The rationale is to point out that the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl caused one fully attributable death (and an expected 50 excess deaths in 50 years), but coal plants cause 10,000 deaths per year (500,000 in 50 years) when they are working as designed.

Yet nuclear is labelled dangerous and unhealthy.

I have seen it alleged (I have yet to confirm) that the coal funded scare campaign about nuclear power in the 1960s was where tobacco learned its science-denying tactics used in the 1970s-1990s, which were later adopted by the climate change denial astroturfers.

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

#278

Post by jasoncartwright »

pfdietz wrote: post #224
jasoncartwright wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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".

My apologies, you're correct. I use 394 gCO2/kWh for CCGT and 651 gCO2/kW for OCGT in my calculations

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

#279

Post by MauranKilom »

goatsi wrote: post #270
stubish wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article discusses the switch of a major plant in the UK to compressed wood pellets, sourced from the US. I would think that Germany (and most of Europe) would have a good climate for wood pellet production.

Ironically Germany removed a significant amount of forest to create those open pit coal mines.

I'd be curious what the dimensions here are. Surely a few km squares of strip mines isn't going to make a dent in the forested area?

I mean, yeah, it's slightly ironic, but is it not irrelevant?

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

#280

Post by mrpopo »

hatboat wrote: post #260
mrpopo wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most do, they want to replace them with nothing, e.g. reduce electricity usage. And that may be a hard thing to swallow, but reducing energy usage is the only realistic pathway towards a <2deg world goal.

Perhaps you didn't mean it in a literal sense, however you and I have a very different opinion on the term realistic. I believe a deus ex machina type carbon capture solution is a far more likely scenario than getting industrialised nations, let alone emerging ones, to actually reduce their energy usage.

Good point, I meant "realistic" as the only technologically plausible scenario. Is it realistic from a human point of view, I don't know.

I see what you mean, but even if a magical carbon capture solution was invented, it would take several decades for it to be implemented on a sufficient scale - given that the current emissions don't increase even faster!! I can't consider it as part of any "likely" scenario.

Also, emerging nations don't really need policies to reduce their own energy usage, as long as most of their own energy usage is linked to the production chain of industrialized nations, it will decrease by itself.

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