Anyone watch the documentary planet of the humans on YouTube? After watching that, I’m no longer sure what renewable energy even means anymore, which no longer gives these accomplishments any meaning. Can someone help with my disillusionment?
Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
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Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#12Anyone watch the documentary planet of the humans on YouTube? After watching that, I’m no longer sure what renewable energy even means anymore, which no longer gives these accomplishments any meaning. Can someone help with my disillusionment?
Yeah I can help.
It's called not listening to that hack Michael Moore.
Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#13> He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year and says Drax will phase out coal entirely by March next year. Anyone know more about using ‘compressed wooden pellets sourced from the US’? First time I’ve heard of an easy? transition option for existing coal power plants, achieved by changing the fuel burnt.
It's called "biomass" and it's a massive scam that harms the environment. Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs released a recent documentary on it [0] that was censored by the "green" industry. As you watch the documentary, do some fact checking on your own [1]. [0] https://vimeo.com/423114384 [1] https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/
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Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#14And 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]…
there's a lot more than 4GW of nuclear in the UK
more like 10GW
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#15Bhutan is actually carbon-negative for a while but this is significant. A complete country going off coal. To compare this with one of the biggest contributors to pollution, India, has around 50% of electricity generated by coal.
Of course, Britain's electricity consumption may not be comparable to India, or COVID has some effect on this. This certainly is the first step towards a better future
Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#16The wood pellets are interesting —- if we were growing forests at the same rate as we consume them via the pellets, would it be close enough to a closed loop system?
This is unfortunately not the case. Lots of wood is imported from the third world, potentially the Amazon. Even if it was grown in the country it is consumed in, it would eventually suffer the same issues that industrial farming does. The soil becomes depleted and requires fossil-fuel based fertilizer. Burning the Amazon is now progress, apparently. Something like fusion, or cleaner nuclear, is our only hope. I worry…
> He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year
Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#17Earlier 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]…
there's a lot more than 4GW of nuclear in the UK more like 10GW https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
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Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#18I'm old enough to remember strikes and protests for coal mines being closed down. Now we're celebrating it.
Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#19The wood pellets are interesting —- if we were growing forests at the same rate as we consume them via the pellets, would it be close enough to a closed loop system?
I'm not sure that would scale. According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year. The Drax plant uses 7 million tonnes / year, so you would need 14 equivalent plants to produce enough wood pellets for just one power plant.
In the 1980's, old growth logging was shut down in my state (Oregon) for environmental reasons. The new growth forests had a long growth cycle, so the two big operators (Georgia Pacific and Louisiana Pacific) moved the bulk of their operations back to the South, where the Southern Pine had a 12 year growth cycle.
I think a reasonable guesstimate would be that the max wood pellet production from renewable forest land would be far less than the input required to convert all the existing coal-fired plants to biomass. It's just one play in what will have to be a multi-faceted approach to green energy.
Re: Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power
#20Britain achieves 21% of their power from Nuclear energy. Where is the rest of the power coming from? Hydro and wind?
In the meantime, Germany is phasing nuclear energy out of its grid and is facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables.