131–140 of 313 posts
These titles are misleading, they always omit the rest of the grid and the final carbon footprint. In March, the UK emitted 161g CO2/kWh. France did 6 times less CO2/kWh with 2x less renewables ! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/12mo/monthly
That's only because that chart isn't bookkeeping nuclear as renewable, which is misleading at best.
> Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world for second year running > Ed Miliband’s net zero targets are facing fresh scrutiny after Britain was found to be paying the highest electricity prices in the developed world. > New data published on Tuesday showed the price paid by UK industry for power was 63pc higher than in France and 27pc higher than in Germany. > Britain is also the second-most expensive c…
This is Telegraph for you. The cost of electricity is not driven by green levies or net zero targets, but by gas prices, as gas is a backstop when all other sources are exhausted. Therefore electricity prices are pretty much tied to gas.
The strategy should have been to build an energy architecture that reduces prices while being robust against force majeure events.
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That's only because that chart isn't bookkeeping nuclear as renewable, which is misleading at best.
Why would you classify nuclear as renewable? You can say it's clean energy but it's not renewable.
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Exactly, and the Tories banned onshore wind, and refused to really invest in offshore wind. We've got the North Sea and its perfect for wind farms we should have had for decades
They didn't refuse to invest in offshore wind. Tories were the ones who started this ball rolling in the mid-2010s by breaknecking the removal of non-renewable energy production without any clear plan. The issue with offshore wind is that it isn't always windy. If you look at modelling with energy system with a high proportion of offshore wind, you need other sources of energy which often isn't factored into the econ…
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If you’ve got even a passing interest in the UK energy market you’d know this is because of the wholesale price of gas, not the actual wholesale cost of solar and wind. If you really want to pay less for green energy, which is cheap when it’s plentiful (like anything) get on a variable tariff and install some storage.
how does the wholesale price of gas explain how the UK is the most expensive in the world/europe?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of...
> In the UK, the marginal unit is almost always a gas-fired power plant. As a result, one widely cited academic analysis found that gas set the price of power 97% of the time in the UK in 2021.
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Isn't pumped hydro severely limited by geography in many places? I'm hoping for some other technology apart from pumped hydro or batteries to be used for capturing surplus renewable energy for later use. It's unfortunate that hydrogen seems to be too complex to handle at these scales, it'd be utopian if it wasn't and the excess of renewables could be transformed into hydrogen for use in turbines instead of nat gas...
> Isn't pumped hydro severely limited by geography in many places? Scotland seems to be a perfect place for pumped storage. I see that UK has 4 pumped storage stations, 2 in Wales, 2 in Scotland. But Scotland being quite far from most of UK's population may not be ideal if we're talking about supporting the whole country with pumped storage. It would be like 600km to the south of England.
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The study you have linked is completely wrong. There is no international market for gas because export/import is physically complex. This is why gas is priced very differently despite it being chemically similar (unlike oil). Anyone who says anything different should be immediately disregarded as someone who should not have an opinion. This is technically true for oil but there are two other factors. One, importing o…
> paying huge amounts of carbon to import from the Middle East is a good idea You are wrong here. UK oil has a very high carbon footprint. British North Sea oil is sour (high in sulphur). It is the "wrong" type of oil for UK refineries. So it gets sent to other countries around the world for refining. UK oil is viscous, waxy, crude which needs to be heated to pipe it. This means it takes a lot of energy to pipe (hell…
A handy explainer on Brent quality is here: https://kimray.com/training/types-crude-oil-heavy-vs-light-s...
This is a 'lawyer-worded' headline. I am an enormous fan of renewables, I am an electrical engineer who designs control systems for renewables exclusively. My career depends on renewables. Headlines like this do nobody any favors. The problem with renewables is that you cannot run a grid on renewables alone. Many days will have an abundant oversupply, like the day shown. Many days will not. Consumers are not tolerant…
Isn't pumped hydro severely limited by geography in many places? I'm hoping for some other technology apart from pumped hydro or batteries to be used for capturing surplus renewable energy for later use. It's unfortunate that hydrogen seems to be too complex to handle at these scales, it'd be utopian if it wasn't and the excess of renewables could be transformed into hydrogen for use in turbines instead of nat gas...
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France has much more nuclear. You can argue that is better but even if you agree it would take decades to get there.
South Korea builds nuclear power plants in five years.
Newly approved Korean plans are aiming for 2038. Best of luck to them. I'm sceptical they'll make it.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/plans-for-two-ne...
Edit to add:
They used to be pretty fast but like everyone else seem to be slowing down significantly.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
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> So why not refine it in the UK? I already gave the answer in my original post.... UK crude is the wrong type of oil for UK refineries. Almost all UK refineries were built back in the day (late 60's/early 70's), before North Sea, when the UK was mostly importing oil from Libya and elsewhere in that region. All the stuff from Libya and elsewhere is far removed from the viscous, waxy sludge that emerges from the North…
That begs the question why aren't we building refineries that can process our own oil without having to ship it abroad for processing.
Putting aside the legal and "public appetite" aspects that someone else already mentioned, it all comes back to privitisation in the end.
Given that the extraction was privitised, clearly market theory dictates that you cannot then interfere with where the extracted oil goes.
So if a private company is deciding on refining then it will follow the path of most profit, i.e. build/expand vs use existing capacity elsewhere. Given that most oil companies are large multinationals they will likely also prioritise using their own facilities vs paying a third-party refinery.
And clearly at the time, carbon footprint was not on the agenda of the private companies, either directly or enforced via legislation.