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Britain has gone two months without burning coal to generate power

443 points by willvarfar 6y ago

abhorrence 6y ago
The 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?
- TheUndead96 6y ago
  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 about us.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    Do you have any source for that? I find shipping wood half way around the world for power troubling but I've never heard anyone claim that the wood is not sourced from sustainable forestry. For the most part the Amazon is being burned to provide farm and grazing land.
    - DFHippie 6y ago
      I would be surprised if the pellets weren't sourced from Canada, where it's probably white pine, not tropical hardwoods.
  - yaacov 6y ago
    > He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    I worry about us as well, it seems sustainable to burn wood, but no one ever talks about the rate of burning vs. growth. It's deceptive.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    > cleaner nuclear If we (USA) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had merely continued building it at the same pace, our grid would be (approximately) carbon-free today. Not twenty years from now, not fifty years from now, today. But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe, and we made the grown-up responsible decision to pump our atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Facepalm.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      > But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe This is such bullshit. We have reactors that are 40 years old still operating safely. And in the 40 years since, safety systems have improved considerably. A modern reactor could probably have a 100 year service life and no accidents. But such is the world we live in: people are scared of stuff they shouldn't be, and ignorant of all that should scare them.
      - catalogia 6y ago
        As far as I'm aware, the US Navy has operated hundreds of nuclear reactors for more than 60 years without any major incidents. That's several thousand reactor-years of positive experience. (They did lose two nuclear powered submarines, the Thresher and Scorpion, but in neither case is a problem with the reactors believed to be the cause. Though the Thresher's reactor is thought to have SCRAMed in response to it's control circuitry being shorted out, causing a loss of propulsion.)
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      The reason we stopped building nuclear power palnts is that growth in energy demand suddenly slowed or stopped, nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted, and because of a 1978 law called PURPA that opened up the grid to non-utility generators.
      - jjoonathan 6y ago
        > nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted We didn't suddenly forget how to economically build nuclear power plants. What changed was that > we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe and prices rose without bound to reflect that decision.
- Anon4Now 6y ago
  I'm not sure that would scale. According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ 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.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    > According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year This is off by a factor of a million, though I think you reached the right conclusion.
    - Anon4Now 6y ago
      Oops, yeah, each production plant lists capacity at about 1/2 _million_ metric tonnes / yr.
- rapnie 6y ago
  I saw a documentary a while back related to the Netherlands, where they traced lots of these wood imports as coming from the US, mostly bought from private land owners cutting down pristine forest.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    The margins on that must be awful. A simple tax on imported wood would probably resolve the matter by rendering it commercially infeasible to import wood as fuel.
    - rapnie 6y ago
      There is also a bad influence of this within the country. As nature reserve organizations saw their budgets cut for many years, there is now a commercial incentive to cut some extra wood here and there. Even the government's own 'Staatsbosbeheer' is suspected (note: not proven) to be doing this.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - rapnie 6y ago
    Coincidentally on TV today (program Beau). About wood pellets coming from North Carolina where large areas of forest are completely cut down. Enviva Biomass is one of the big producers driving things in NL. There's lotsa subsidies involved, and local governments like it, as it constitutes a transition from gas to an 'intermediary' fuel.
evolve2k 6y ago
> 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.
- Jerry2 6y ago
  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 https://vimeo.com/423114384 [1] https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/ https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    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.
    - Jerry2 6y ago
      They did censor it. https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-youtube-michael-moore-jeff-gibbs-censorship-1202942938/ https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-you...
      - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
        That isn't censorship.
  - 6y ago
leonardaustin 6y ago
Hummm, not sure wood pellets are carbon neutral. I think the UK has just offshored its CO2 emissions to the US. Great video below explaining in more detail. https://youtu.be/6RP-jYDgiMg?t=100 https://youtu.be/6RP-jYDgiMg?t=100
- renegading 6y ago
  The carbon is captured when the tree grows and then released when the wood is burned. This is different from fossil fuels where it is underground.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    And how does it get from the forest into compressed form, and then to the UK?
    - deleted 6y ago
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  - rowanG077 6y ago
    How is that different? Fossil fuels were also captured many years ago. The only difference is the number of years.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      The time it takes to renew.
    - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
      Main difference is releasing co2 from fossil fuels introduces carbon that wood pellets don’t. Imagine we burn 100% of fossil fuels and then start burning wood pellets, versus going straight to wood pellets. The former releases a lot more carbon than the latter.
    - woodandsteel 6y ago
      The difference is ff's were captured over many millions of years, and natural forces controlled the total amount of co2 in the atmosphere. What is happening today is the ff's captured co2 is being released a thousand times faster than it was captured, and that is overwhelming natural forces and causing co2 levels to skyrocket. Wood pellets are one of the ways to counter this. I could be wrong, but my guess is that you already knew all this and were only pretending to be ill-informed because you are a member of the fossil fuels forever club. If I wrong, then please let us know your views on global climate change.
wazoox 6y ago
And 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).
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  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] Hydro imports from Scandinavia over an underwater HVDC transmission cable would also be a possibility. [1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/GB?wind=false&solar=false https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/GB?wind=false&solar=fals... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/16/planning-applications-for-uk-clean-energy-projects-hit-new-high https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/16/planning-ap... Note: Edits were made to this comment to the multiplier and the total nuclear generator capacity based on blibble's comment below.
  - blibble 6y ago
    there's a lot more than 4GW of nuclear in the UK more like 10GW https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/604271/Nuclear_Capacity_in_the_UK.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Here's a more friendly reference: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/united-kingdom.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... Something to note: > The UK has 15 reactors generating about 21% of its electricity but almost half of this capacity is to be retired by 2025.
fersho311 6y ago
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?
- spacegod 6y ago
  Yeah I can help. It's called not listening to that hack Michael Moore.
- kitotik 6y ago
  I just watched this and was left feeling rather disillusioned. I’ve not yet found any credible counter arguments to the case the documentary presents against biofuels. For those that haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth a watch[0]. The side story of YouTube taking it down because it contained 4 seconds worth of supposed copyright infringement is silly. It had roughly 8,000,000 views before this take down happened. [0] https://youtu.be/MrOcBdnC3kw https://youtu.be/MrOcBdnC3kw
- gpanders 6y ago
  The Wikipedia page[1] has some information on the scientific inaccuracies in the film. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientific_accuracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientifi...
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- aksss 6y ago
  I think the only decent criticisms had to do with incremental technological process, i.e. solar panels are marginally more efficient than they were when the film was made. On the balance though, I don't think this negates the points the film made - the amount of mining, manufacturing and transportation balanced against the in-service life and the energy actually produced make for a very bad story. Burning biomass is also not good for the planet for the reasons outlined in that film and in this comment thread. I'm a Vaclav Smil fanboy, so I get repetitive, but he has criticized the renewables industry pretty consistently and long before Michael Moore's film, so his material may be worth a look for those that want a stronger critique that doesn't have Moore's name in the sentence. "Energy and Civilization: A History" is a great book of his, and was relatively recently updated.
praveen9920 6y ago
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
- rsynnott 6y ago
  France has been effectively off coal now, for a while.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  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 energy intensive processes (aluminium and steel production) have moved offshore...to places like India. However per capita we use 4,795kWh per year, India - 1,181kWh and the mix of sources definitely matters For reference: United States 12,000, Iceland: 55,000, France: 6648 You can't however compare it like for like even amongst developed economies, Iceland uses a lot per capita but they are a cold (tiny population) country and heavy on renewables, France uses nearly 50% more than the UK but they built and operate a huge number of nuclear plants so electricity has been cheap enough for long enough that it's much more prevalent for heating. If the western world wants to try and influence the energy usage in India and China et al then we need to get our consumption down while advancing the state of the art in renewables because can afford to do so exactly because saying "You need to not have the same living standards as us to save the planet while we use as much energy as we want" isn't a reasonable argument in the slightest. The UK has done somewhat well there, it was within the last decade that our usage was >6000 so we've dropped 25% per capita so total energy usage has dropped while we've increased usage of renewables, we are almost uniquely suited for wind energy and in fact 7 of the 10 largest wind farms in the world are in the UK and the single largest is currently been off the coast of a town not 25 miles from where I am now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm The UK has committed to 50GW of Wind capacity by 2030 which is greater than our current energy consumption (though iiirc that's 50GW if every turbine is running optimally so we'll still need base-load/grid level storage for when they aren't) - It's a hell of a thing.
billpg 6y ago
I'm old enough to remember strikes and protests for coal mines being closed down. Now we're celebrating it.
- deleted 6y ago
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FreeBricklayer 6y ago
Britain 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.
- bengale 6y ago
  We've got huge nuclear issues in the pipeline though. The latest reactor is going to cost us a fortune and almost all of our existing infrastructure is at the end of its life.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    Well past the original design life, in some cases. Last I heard (and this was a few years ago, so I'm well out of the loop) we were going to commission a bunch of gas plants around the M25 to plug the gap.
- pgeorgi 6y ago
  > facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables. Most of these challenges are going by 3 letters and pretend to be political parties
- regularfry 6y ago
  In short, yeah, wind has seen a huge growth, but we've also dropped our peak a bit. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-... shows what's going on.
jonnypotty 6y ago
Burning wood pellets puts out co2. claiming zero carbon output for this means people could literally burn forests and claim they're being carbon neutral. It's scandalous. The only option would be forests that are managed and burnt for fuel. I'd be interested to know what area of forest you'd need to bring under this sort of management in order to produce say, enough power for a medium sized city. But ultimately this is hopeless as a solution, you're basically planning to burn wood to produce power producing massive amounts of co2. It doesn't solve anything. Downvotes edit. Pls correct my math. Copypasta Google. A standard 500 megawatt coal power plant produces 3.5 billion kWh per year That's 3.5 million MWh. From https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomass-energy-resources/reference-biomass/facts-figures/potential-yields-of-biofuels-per-ha-pa/ https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomas... Best case here biofuel is 63per hectare. Which means you need around 55,000 hectares of forest to replace one coal fired power station. Seriously, I hope I'm wrong.
- deleted 6y ago
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- eloff 6y ago
  The CO2 in wood comes from the atmosphere recently, while the CO2 in coal came from the prehistoric atmosphere. That's an improvement. That's also how biofuels work. Wood is a renewable resource when managed sustainably, and carbon neutral. How practical it is, is another matter entirely.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    Wood can even be carbon negative if you bury a portion of the biochar. Obviously, there's some challenges in scaling a biochar industry in terms of space, efficiency, etc., but it is possible.
    - kristianp 6y ago
      You're not going to get any significant biochar from burning the wood pellets efficiently, are you?
iguy 6y ago
This is a good discussion of the accounting of biofuels, with a guy called Tim Searchinger (there is a transcript if you don't want to listen): https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/11/manifold-podcast-23-tim-searchinger.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/11/manifold-podcast-23-ti... One takeaway is that you should think of farming trees as fuel as a competitor for land use. If it displaces growing food crops, then they will be grown elsewhere, possibly in newly cleared rainforest. Even if none of your wood comes from there. Edit -- I may have mis-remembered slightly... the food competition story would more obviously apply to corn ethanol, which could otherwise be turned into beef.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  That doesn't pass a smell test to me. Land which is used for forestry is usually not suitable for growing crops. Usually because it's on too great a slope and on poor quality soils.
  - fred_is_fred 6y ago
    This is especially true in the US where the article says they are sourcing from. US forest cover has been increasing for years as marginal farm land is reclaimed by trees - intentionally or otherwise - http://www.fao.org/3/x4995e/x4995e.htm http://www.fao.org/3/x4995e/x4995e.htm
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - neilwilson 6y ago
    Nut trees can grow there. And so can sheep and goats. Quite a lot of pine is grown in areas that would support broad lead if you gave it time.
- tomp 6y ago
  > If it displaces growing food crops But does it? Not all food is suitable for growing crops; even less industrial farming crops, which requires tons of (fossil-fueled) fertilizer, so almost no soil is appropriate. But still, I imagine you need certain flatness to even begin thinking about machine farming. Forests on the other hand can grow on all kinds of land, same with free range animals, and presumably doesn't require so much fertilizer. Therefore, why not both?
99_00 6y ago
Good for Britain for going coal free by using hydro and nuclear power.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Great, now we just need to do it for the other 364 days a year,m and when we're not half closed for a pandemic. Then remove gas from the breakdown. Then we'll have solved about 25% of the problem and only have to fix transport and home heat and industry, all much harder.
philipkglass 6y ago
Wind and solar supply much more electricity than wood pellets. This link in another comment by regularfry shows charts and tables: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-... In 2019, wind and solar generated a total of 76.55 terawatt hours. Bioenergy (which includes wood pellets) generated 31.12 TWh. Coal generated 6.53 TWh and gas generated 129.99 TWh. In 2009, wind and solar generated 9.30 TWh. Bioenergy generated 9.61 TWh. Coal generated 97.80 TWh and gas generated 163.46 TWh.
renaudg 6y ago
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 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 (373). But it's far from the best in class : Nordic countries (around 20-30, thanks to hydro) or for a more comparable country, France (around 60, thanks to nuclear) Germany is interesting because it consistently has one of the worst carbon intensity figures of all developed countries, in spite of a record-setting share of renewables that its green activists like to boast about, and hundreds of billions of € in subsidies poured into them in the past 20 years. That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough). That leaves 4 options for handling the base load : nuclear, hydro, gas or coal. Only 2 of those are low-carbon. And if you don't have the geography for hydro (like the Nordics do) but still decide to go nuclear-free for political reasons, guess what you're left with ? IIRC, German coal power plants have 7 spots in the top 10 worst air pollution emitters across the EU. Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. Thanks, Die Grüne.
- jasoncartwright 6y ago
  >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://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y https://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y Also, I don't believe that (whilst I love their visualisation) the Electricity Map UK gCO2/kWh measurement is very accurate. For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.
  - deleted 6y ago
basicplus2 6y ago
But how much, and what is the generation breakdown of power Britain gets from Europe?
tpmx 6y ago
Well, duh, it's June. Get back to us when they do the same "feat" in wintertime.
macspoofing 6y ago
Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it. I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are never a significant contributor. If coal is replaced it is ONLY ever replaced with one or more of hydro, nuclear, natural gas. Are wind and solar just vanity projects?
- jwilliamson 6y ago
  A big driver is that wind and solar have only recently become economical. The price of solar power has fallen by 80% since 2010, so large scale plants are all very new. Capacity factors for wind are also improving rapidly, from 25% in 2000 to over 40% today. Basically we've had 150 years to build out hydro, 70 to build out nuclear, and only a few for wind and solar.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  > Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) That’s not even remotely true.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    You're correct. I misread the caption in the artcle. Those are world numbers. The overall point holds. Britain uses a tremendous amount of wind but it forces it to rely on natural gas for base-load... why not just build out hydro and nuclear? These are live numbers for my province: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html At the time of the posting, hydro and nuclear account for 75% (though I've seen it at levels of 90%+). And of course wind/natural gas are 9% and 13% respectively .. because they go hand in hand. Ontario could just buy hydro from Quebec and not even bother with solar and wind (and natural gas) and we could hit 100% renewable by this year instead of 2060 like Germany is planning. We're only building windmills because the population feels that they will a difference when we don't need them at all. What are we doing here? It's all insanity.
diogenescynic 6y ago
They are likely just burning biomass (trees) instead. Is it really a win if we go from burning coal to burning trees?
egao1980 6y ago
Winter is coming...
anonymousiam 6y ago
Good luck next winter.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  They currently tend to mothball the small number of remaining coal plants in the summer, and use them in winter, but even that is being forced out of the market over time. Over the course of last year coal was only something like 3%.
ascotan 6y ago
"He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year" How is this helping? Are we seriously chopping down forests in the US to feed UK power plants just so people can feel good about not burning coal? Honestly I think most of 'environmentally friendly' options are just scams to make people feel better about themselves, but the costs of the 'green' option is just as bad or worse than the alternatives. Bio fuels with ethanol sourced from corn comes to mind. It puts land under cultivation to produce the corn which is never taken into the discussion. https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_for_environment https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_...
- theptip 6y ago
  Trees are a renewable resource, if managed properly. Is there a particular concern about using forestry land to produce fuel?
  - ascotan 6y ago
    I think having potentially foreign-owned interests coming into the US to buy up land for commercial logging in order to feed non-coal burning plants is not a net positive.
    - theptip 6y ago
      Why? On the face of it, the US has lots of land to spare, and if the trees are being harvested sustainably, then why does it matter where they are sold? Sure, all else being equal I'd rather use solar than coal or wood, but if it's more economically viable in the short run to switch a coal plant to wood, thus getting to carbon-neutral, that seems like progress to me. At some point solar will be cheap enough that the CapEx of replacing the coal/wood plant will be less than the OpEx of running the old plant, and it'll get torn down. (Indeed that crossover point has been hit in some markets, c.f. https://www.vivintsolar.com/blog/solar-energy-is-now-cheaper-than-coal. https://www.vivintsolar.com/blog/solar-energy-is-now-cheaper...) I prefer not to make perfect the enemy of the good; I'll take some compromises if that's what it takes to get our CO2 emissions down.

443 points by willvarfar 6y ago

The 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?

TheUndead96 6y ago
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 about us.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Do you have any source for that? I find shipping wood half way around the world for power troubling but I've never heard anyone claim that the wood is not sourced from sustainable forestry. For the most part the Amazon is being burned to provide farm and grazing land.
  - DFHippie 6y ago
    I would be surprised if the pellets weren't sourced from Canada, where it's probably white pine, not tropical hardwoods.
- yaacov 6y ago
  > He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year
- Avicebron 6y ago
  I worry about us as well, it seems sustainable to burn wood, but no one ever talks about the rate of burning vs. growth. It's deceptive.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  > cleaner nuclear If we (USA) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had merely continued building it at the same pace, our grid would be (approximately) carbon-free today. Not twenty years from now, not fifty years from now, today. But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe, and we made the grown-up responsible decision to pump our atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Facepalm.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > But no, we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe This is such bullshit. We have reactors that are 40 years old still operating safely. And in the 40 years since, safety systems have improved considerably. A modern reactor could probably have a 100 year service life and no accidents. But such is the world we live in: people are scared of stuff they shouldn't be, and ignorant of all that should scare them.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      As far as I'm aware, the US Navy has operated hundreds of nuclear reactors for more than 60 years without any major incidents. That's several thousand reactor-years of positive experience. (They did lose two nuclear powered submarines, the Thresher and Scorpion, but in neither case is a problem with the reactors believed to be the cause. Though the Thresher's reactor is thought to have SCRAMed in response to it's control circuitry being shorted out, causing a loss of propulsion.)
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    The reason we stopped building nuclear power palnts is that growth in energy demand suddenly slowed or stopped, nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted, and because of a 1978 law called PURPA that opened up the grid to non-utility generators.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      > nuclear power plants turned out to be more expensive than promoted We didn't suddenly forget how to economically build nuclear power plants. What changed was that > we collectively decided that no amount of engineering could possibly make nuclear acceptably safe and prices rose without bound to reflect that decision.
Anon4Now 6y ago
I'm not sure that would scale. According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ 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.
- dmurray 6y ago
  > According to their website (https://www.draxbiomass.com/ https://www.draxbiomass.com/), each plant produces about 1/2 metric tonne of wood pellets / year This is off by a factor of a million, though I think you reached the right conclusion.
  - Anon4Now 6y ago
    Oops, yeah, each production plant lists capacity at about 1/2 _million_ metric tonnes / yr.
rapnie 6y ago
I saw a documentary a while back related to the Netherlands, where they traced lots of these wood imports as coming from the US, mostly bought from private land owners cutting down pristine forest.
- catalogia 6y ago
  The margins on that must be awful. A simple tax on imported wood would probably resolve the matter by rendering it commercially infeasible to import wood as fuel.
  - rapnie 6y ago
    There is also a bad influence of this within the country. As nature reserve organizations saw their budgets cut for many years, there is now a commercial incentive to cut some extra wood here and there. Even the government's own 'Staatsbosbeheer' is suspected (note: not proven) to be doing this.
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- rapnie 6y ago
  Coincidentally on TV today (program Beau). About wood pellets coming from North Carolina where large areas of forest are completely cut down. Enviva Biomass is one of the big producers driving things in NL. There's lotsa subsidies involved, and local governments like it, as it constitutes a transition from gas to an 'intermediary' fuel.

evolve2k 6y ago

> 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.

Jerry2 6y ago
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 https://vimeo.com/423114384 [1] https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/ https://planetofthehumans.com/fact-check-bible/
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- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  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.
  - Jerry2 6y ago
    They did censor it. https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-youtube-michael-moore-jeff-gibbs-censorship-1202942938/ https://deadline.com/2020/05/planet-of-the-humans-pulled-you...
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      That isn't censorship.
- 6y ago

leonardaustin 6y ago

Hummm, not sure wood pellets are carbon neutral. I think the UK has just offshored its CO2 emissions to the US. Great video below explaining in more detail. https://youtu.be/6RP-jYDgiMg?t=100 https://youtu.be/6RP-jYDgiMg?t=100

renegading 6y ago
The carbon is captured when the tree grows and then released when the wood is burned. This is different from fossil fuels where it is underground.
- azinman2 6y ago
  And how does it get from the forest into compressed form, and then to the UK?
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- rowanG077 6y ago
  How is that different? Fossil fuels were also captured many years ago. The only difference is the number of years.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    The time it takes to renew.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    Main difference is releasing co2 from fossil fuels introduces carbon that wood pellets don’t. Imagine we burn 100% of fossil fuels and then start burning wood pellets, versus going straight to wood pellets. The former releases a lot more carbon than the latter.
  - woodandsteel 6y ago
    The difference is ff's were captured over many millions of years, and natural forces controlled the total amount of co2 in the atmosphere. What is happening today is the ff's captured co2 is being released a thousand times faster than it was captured, and that is overwhelming natural forces and causing co2 levels to skyrocket. Wood pellets are one of the ways to counter this. I could be wrong, but my guess is that you already knew all this and were only pretending to be ill-informed because you are a member of the fossil fuels forever club. If I wrong, then please let us know your views on global climate change.

wazoox 6y ago

And 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).

toomuchtodo 6y ago
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] Hydro imports from Scandinavia over an underwater HVDC transmission cable would also be a possibility. [1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/GB?wind=false&solar=false https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/GB?wind=false&solar=fals... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/16/planning-applications-for-uk-clean-energy-projects-hit-new-high https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/16/planning-ap... Note: Edits were made to this comment to the multiplier and the total nuclear generator capacity based on blibble's comment below.
- blibble 6y ago
  there's a lot more than 4GW of nuclear in the UK more like 10GW https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/604271/Nuclear_Capacity_in_the_UK.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
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  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Here's a more friendly reference: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/united-kingdom.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... Something to note: > The UK has 15 reactors generating about 21% of its electricity but almost half of this capacity is to be retired by 2025.

fersho311 6y ago

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?

spacegod 6y ago
Yeah I can help. It's called not listening to that hack Michael Moore.
kitotik 6y ago
I just watched this and was left feeling rather disillusioned. I’ve not yet found any credible counter arguments to the case the documentary presents against biofuels. For those that haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth a watch[0]. The side story of YouTube taking it down because it contained 4 seconds worth of supposed copyright infringement is silly. It had roughly 8,000,000 views before this take down happened. [0] https://youtu.be/MrOcBdnC3kw https://youtu.be/MrOcBdnC3kw
gpanders 6y ago
The Wikipedia page[1] has some information on the scientific inaccuracies in the film. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientific_accuracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans#Scientifi...
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aksss 6y ago
I think the only decent criticisms had to do with incremental technological process, i.e. solar panels are marginally more efficient than they were when the film was made. On the balance though, I don't think this negates the points the film made - the amount of mining, manufacturing and transportation balanced against the in-service life and the energy actually produced make for a very bad story. Burning biomass is also not good for the planet for the reasons outlined in that film and in this comment thread. I'm a Vaclav Smil fanboy, so I get repetitive, but he has criticized the renewables industry pretty consistently and long before Michael Moore's film, so his material may be worth a look for those that want a stronger critique that doesn't have Moore's name in the sentence. "Energy and Civilization: A History" is a great book of his, and was relatively recently updated.

praveen9920 6y ago

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

rsynnott 6y ago
France has been effectively off coal now, for a while.
noir_lord 6y ago
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 energy intensive processes (aluminium and steel production) have moved offshore...to places like India. However per capita we use 4,795kWh per year, India - 1,181kWh and the mix of sources definitely matters For reference: United States 12,000, Iceland: 55,000, France: 6648 You can't however compare it like for like even amongst developed economies, Iceland uses a lot per capita but they are a cold (tiny population) country and heavy on renewables, France uses nearly 50% more than the UK but they built and operate a huge number of nuclear plants so electricity has been cheap enough for long enough that it's much more prevalent for heating. If the western world wants to try and influence the energy usage in India and China et al then we need to get our consumption down while advancing the state of the art in renewables because can afford to do so exactly because saying "You need to not have the same living standards as us to save the planet while we use as much energy as we want" isn't a reasonable argument in the slightest. The UK has done somewhat well there, it was within the last decade that our usage was >6000 so we've dropped 25% per capita so total energy usage has dropped while we've increased usage of renewables, we are almost uniquely suited for wind energy and in fact 7 of the 10 largest wind farms in the world are in the UK and the single largest is currently been off the coast of a town not 25 miles from where I am now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm The UK has committed to 50GW of Wind capacity by 2030 which is greater than our current energy consumption (though iiirc that's 50GW if every turbine is running optimally so we'll still need base-load/grid level storage for when they aren't) - It's a hell of a thing.

billpg 6y ago

I'm old enough to remember strikes and protests for coal mines being closed down. Now we're celebrating it.

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FreeBricklayer 6y ago

Britain 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.

bengale 6y ago
We've got huge nuclear issues in the pipeline though. The latest reactor is going to cost us a fortune and almost all of our existing infrastructure is at the end of its life.
- regularfry 6y ago
  Well past the original design life, in some cases. Last I heard (and this was a few years ago, so I'm well out of the loop) we were going to commission a bunch of gas plants around the M25 to plug the gap.
pgeorgi 6y ago
> facing incredible challenges in attempting to use renewables. Most of these challenges are going by 3 letters and pretend to be political parties
regularfry 6y ago
In short, yeah, wind has seen a huge growth, but we've also dropped our peak a bit. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-... shows what's going on.

jonnypotty 6y ago

Burning wood pellets puts out co2. claiming zero carbon output for this means people could literally burn forests and claim they're being carbon neutral. It's scandalous. The only option would be forests that are managed and burnt for fuel. I'd be interested to know what area of forest you'd need to bring under this sort of management in order to produce say, enough power for a medium sized city. But ultimately this is hopeless as a solution, you're basically planning to burn wood to produce power producing massive amounts of co2. It doesn't solve anything. Downvotes edit. Pls correct my math. Copypasta Google. A standard 500 megawatt coal power plant produces 3.5 billion kWh per year That's 3.5 million MWh. From https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomass-energy-resources/reference-biomass/facts-figures/potential-yields-of-biofuels-per-ha-pa/ https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/biomas... Best case here biofuel is 63per hectare. Which means you need around 55,000 hectares of forest to replace one coal fired power station. Seriously, I hope I'm wrong.

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eloff 6y ago
The CO2 in wood comes from the atmosphere recently, while the CO2 in coal came from the prehistoric atmosphere. That's an improvement. That's also how biofuels work. Wood is a renewable resource when managed sustainably, and carbon neutral. How practical it is, is another matter entirely.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Wood can even be carbon negative if you bury a portion of the biochar. Obviously, there's some challenges in scaling a biochar industry in terms of space, efficiency, etc., but it is possible.
  - kristianp 6y ago
    You're not going to get any significant biochar from burning the wood pellets efficiently, are you?

iguy 6y ago

This is a good discussion of the accounting of biofuels, with a guy called Tim Searchinger (there is a transcript if you don't want to listen): https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/11/manifold-podcast-23-tim-searchinger.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/11/manifold-podcast-23-ti... One takeaway is that you should think of farming trees as fuel as a competitor for land use. If it displaces growing food crops, then they will be grown elsewhere, possibly in newly cleared rainforest. Even if none of your wood comes from there. Edit -- I may have mis-remembered slightly... the food competition story would more obviously apply to corn ethanol, which could otherwise be turned into beef.

VBprogrammer 6y ago
That doesn't pass a smell test to me. Land which is used for forestry is usually not suitable for growing crops. Usually because it's on too great a slope and on poor quality soils.
- fred_is_fred 6y ago
  This is especially true in the US where the article says they are sourcing from. US forest cover has been increasing for years as marginal farm land is reclaimed by trees - intentionally or otherwise - http://www.fao.org/3/x4995e/x4995e.htm http://www.fao.org/3/x4995e/x4995e.htm
- deleted 6y ago
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- neilwilson 6y ago
  Nut trees can grow there. And so can sheep and goats. Quite a lot of pine is grown in areas that would support broad lead if you gave it time.
tomp 6y ago
> If it displaces growing food crops But does it? Not all food is suitable for growing crops; even less industrial farming crops, which requires tons of (fossil-fueled) fertilizer, so almost no soil is appropriate. But still, I imagine you need certain flatness to even begin thinking about machine farming. Forests on the other hand can grow on all kinds of land, same with free range animals, and presumably doesn't require so much fertilizer. Therefore, why not both?

99_00 6y ago

Good for Britain for going coal free by using hydro and nuclear power.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Great, now we just need to do it for the other 364 days a year,m and when we're not half closed for a pandemic. Then remove gas from the breakdown. Then we'll have solved about 25% of the problem and only have to fix transport and home heat and industry, all much harder.

philipkglass 6y ago

Wind and solar supply much more electricity than wood pellets. This link in another comment by regularfry shows charts and tables: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-... In 2019, wind and solar generated a total of 76.55 terawatt hours. Bioenergy (which includes wood pellets) generated 31.12 TWh. Coal generated 6.53 TWh and gas generated 129.99 TWh. In 2009, wind and solar generated 9.30 TWh. Bioenergy generated 9.61 TWh. Coal generated 97.80 TWh and gas generated 163.46 TWh.

renaudg 6y ago

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 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 (373). But it's far from the best in class : Nordic countries (around 20-30, thanks to hydro) or for a more comparable country, France (around 60, thanks to nuclear) Germany is interesting because it consistently has one of the worst carbon intensity figures of all developed countries, in spite of a record-setting share of renewables that its green activists like to boast about, and hundreds of billions of € in subsidies poured into them in the past 20 years. That's of course the consequence of its decision to phase out nuclear power in the early 2000s. Wind/solar are intermittent and there's no way around that (battery storage isn't nearly mature enough). That leaves 4 options for handling the base load : nuclear, hydro, gas or coal. Only 2 of those are low-carbon. And if you don't have the geography for hydro (like the Nordics do) but still decide to go nuclear-free for political reasons, guess what you're left with ? IIRC, German coal power plants have 7 spots in the top 10 worst air pollution emitters across the EU. Coal-related air pollution causes an estimated 10.000 extra deaths each year across the continent. Radiation caused one direct death in Fukushima. Thanks, Die Grüne.

jasoncartwright 6y ago
>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://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y https://electricityproduction.uk/carbon-intensity/?t=8y Also, I don't believe that (whilst I love their visualisation) the Electricity Map UK gCO2/kWh measurement is very accurate. For starters, they don't appear to separate out different types of gas plants. The CO2 intensity of OCGT is 3x that of CCGT.
- deleted 6y ago

basicplus2 6y ago

But how much, and what is the generation breakdown of power Britain gets from Europe?

tpmx 6y ago

Well, duh, it's June. Get back to us when they do the same "feat" in wintertime.

macspoofing 6y ago

Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it. I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are never a significant contributor. If coal is replaced it is ONLY ever replaced with one or more of hydro, nuclear, natural gas. Are wind and solar just vanity projects?

jwilliamson 6y ago
A big driver is that wind and solar have only recently become economical. The price of solar power has fallen by 80% since 2010, so large scale plants are all very new. Capacity factors for wind are also improving rapidly, from 25% in 2000 to over 40% today. Basically we've had 150 years to build out hydro, 70 to build out nuclear, and only a few for wind and solar.
Brakenshire 6y ago
> Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) That’s not even remotely true.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  You're correct. I misread the caption in the artcle. Those are world numbers. The overall point holds. Britain uses a tremendous amount of wind but it forces it to rely on natural gas for base-load... why not just build out hydro and nuclear? These are live numbers for my province: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html At the time of the posting, hydro and nuclear account for 75% (though I've seen it at levels of 90%+). And of course wind/natural gas are 9% and 13% respectively .. because they go hand in hand. Ontario could just buy hydro from Quebec and not even bother with solar and wind (and natural gas) and we could hit 100% renewable by this year instead of 2060 like Germany is planning. We're only building windmills because the population feels that they will a difference when we don't need them at all. What are we doing here? It's all insanity.

diogenescynic 6y ago

They are likely just burning biomass (trees) instead. Is it really a win if we go from burning coal to burning trees?

egao1980 6y ago

Winter is coming...

anonymousiam 6y ago

Good luck next winter.

Brakenshire 6y ago
They currently tend to mothball the small number of remaining coal plants in the summer, and use them in winter, but even that is being forced out of the market over time. Over the course of last year coal was only something like 3%.

ascotan 6y ago

"He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year" How is this helping? Are we seriously chopping down forests in the US to feed UK power plants just so people can feel good about not burning coal? Honestly I think most of 'environmentally friendly' options are just scams to make people feel better about themselves, but the costs of the 'green' option is just as bad or worse than the alternatives. Bio fuels with ethanol sourced from corn comes to mind. It puts land under cultivation to produce the corn which is never taken into the discussion. https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_for_environment https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_...

theptip 6y ago
Trees are a renewable resource, if managed properly. Is there a particular concern about using forestry land to produce fuel?
- ascotan 6y ago
  I think having potentially foreign-owned interests coming into the US to buy up land for commercial logging in order to feed non-coal burning plants is not a net positive.
  - theptip 6y ago
    Why? On the face of it, the US has lots of land to spare, and if the trees are being harvested sustainably, then why does it matter where they are sold? Sure, all else being equal I'd rather use solar than coal or wood, but if it's more economically viable in the short run to switch a coal plant to wood, thus getting to carbon-neutral, that seems like progress to me. At some point solar will be cheap enough that the CapEx of replacing the coal/wood plant will be less than the OpEx of running the old plant, and it'll get torn down. (Indeed that crossover point has been hit in some markets, c.f. https://www.vivintsolar.com/blog/solar-energy-is-now-cheaper-than-coal. https://www.vivintsolar.com/blog/solar-energy-is-now-cheaper...) I prefer not to make perfect the enemy of the good; I'll take some compromises if that's what it takes to get our CO2 emissions down.