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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

#261

Post by adrianN »

noir_lord wrote: post #101
praveen9920 wrote: post #15

Bhutan 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

Britain's electricity consumption isn't comparable to India for many reasons - We use ~4 times as much per person but have only 5% the population. 1) We are geographically tiny by comparison 2) Our population is tiny by comparison 3) Our temperatures don't require active cooling in our homes (most of the time) though we do use electricity for heating 4) We are a developed economy which means for the most part highly…

The state of the art for renewables is good enough. There are zero reasons today not to produce 30-60% of your energy with wind and solar. We still need R&D for storage solutions, but those aren't really needed until you already get a large chunk of your energy from non-dispatchable sources.

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

#262

Post by logicprog »

tomr_stargazer wrote: post #147
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…

This image was shocking. Thank you for sharing. I feel like Treebeard, from the Lord of the Rings, coming across Saruman’s destruction of Isengard.

I was always a man after Saruman's own heart....

But seriously, I do agree that's not aesthetically pleasing.

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

#263

Post by yongjik »

ip26 wrote: post #233
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…

I don't think anti-nuclear activists intend to support coal. They just don't consider what should replace the nuclear plants they wish to shutter.

If these anti-nuclear activists live in coal-burning countries, and they protest nuclear power until it shuts down, and they do not protest coal power until it shuts down, then for all practical purposes, they are supporting coal.

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

#264

Post by skrause »

yongjik wrote: post #263
ip26 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anti-nuclear activists intend to support coal. They just don't consider what should replace the nuclear plants they wish to shutter.

If these anti-nuclear activists live in coal-burning countries, and they protest nuclear power until it shuts down, and they do not protest coal power until it shuts down, then for all practical purposes, they are supporting coal.

In Germany they do protest coal power. 100% renewables is the goal.

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

#265

Post by bjelkeman-again »

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…

Norway is about 95% hydro. Sweden is 40% hydro, 40% nuclear, 10% wind and 7-8% biomass, 2% fossil (the last two an estimate based on a graph). Source Wikipedia.

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

#266

Post by Tuna-Fish »

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

> Basically we just bury it and hope for the best, it will be someone else's problem anyway.

It's rather more involved than that. The short version is that we find a place where the rock has remained undisturbed for more than a billion years, and bury them deep enough that they should remain undisturbed for the next billion years.

Then it's no-one's problem.

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

#267

Post by gm3dmo »

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…

We must also thank the nuclear industry for Windscale, Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl. They've also been generous enough to allow us to pay to store their nuclear sewage for thousands of years.

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

#268

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Jerry2 wrote: post #157
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the first time I heard that the "green" industry gets to censor what I watch. Comments like yours make me doubt objections to biomass. There is no need to use this sort of language if you have some real arguments against it.

They did censor it. https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-you...

That isn't censorship.

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

#269

Post by voldacar »

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?

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

#270

Post by goatsi »

stubish wrote: post #252
Scoundreller wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.
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