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Britain's reliance on coal-fired power set to end after 140 years
- jonatron 2y agohttps://archive.is/7lqDi https://archive.is/7lqDi
- Oarch 2y agoSticking around to dismantle your old workplace sounds like a lot of fun. Cathartic even.
- LeonM 2y agoI'm not sure why, but reading the article I got an urge to just apply for a job to help clean up the site. The coal plant served us (humanity), and now it's time to clean up after ourselves and return the land for other use. It seems like a fitting final chapter of the coal era
- pjc50 2y agoThere was a plan to convert the Cockenzie site into an assembly site for offshore wind turbines. I don't think that quite got there, but it now looks like there are plans to use it for landing offshore generation cables and for battery storage. Which is very fitting. https://www.eastlothian.gov.uk/info/210547/planning_and_building_standards/12312/former_cockenzie_power_station https://www.eastlothian.gov.uk/info/210547/planning_and_buil...
- goodcanadian 2y agoMakes sense . . . the grid infrastructure is already in place at that site.
- pfdietz 2y agoDismantling fossil fuel infrastructure will free up enormous amounts of steel for recycling. I wonder what they did or will do with all the ash, though.
- goodcanadian 2y agoI wonder what they did or will do with all the ash, though. If I am not mistaken, I believe they landfill it.
- pjc50 2y agoMuch of it is reused as a cement additive. https://www.cemex.co.uk/fly-ash https://www.cemex.co.uk/fly-ash
- pfdietz 2y agoA report on this: https://www.ukqaa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/UKQAA-Ash-Availability-Report-Jan-2016.pdf https://www.ukqaa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/UKQAA-As... The fraction is larger than I would have guessed. I imagine they will now be working through stockpiles.
- zeristor 2y agoRye House power station dumped the ash in the nearby gravel pits of Lea Valley, which is quite good for orchids. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/23/plantwatch-simons-industrial-poor-soil-tips-orchids-farming-fertilisers https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/23/plantwatch-s...
- pfdietz 2y agoHow interesting!
- roenxi 2y agoReally needs a chart to put it in context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coal_production_in_the_UK.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coal_production_in_the_UK... or maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_Coal_Production.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_Coal_Production.png From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_King...
- Svip 2y ago"Power" technically means more than mere electricity (or electric power). In the UK, the modern steam engine can trace its origins back to either 1764 or 1712 (depending on how you count). Even in the one in 1712 served to help lift coal out of a mine, a form of reliance. But even if we limit ourselves to steam trains and regular service, the Liverpool-Manchester railway from 1830 is also a form of reliance. In any case, Britain has been reliant on coal-fired power (in the broadest sense) for a lot longer than 140 years. And in the narrower sense, it took decades for electricity to be a bare necessity.
- reedf1 2y agoI took a course in my undergrad in physics on energy systems. It was basically a holistic look at the UKs primary energy sources, the grid, future sources of energy and some policy. We briefly covered the elimination of coal. A graph showed a huge void in domestic energy at coal-plant closures, with other domestic sources planned in the future (renewables) to fill the void. These renewables sources have been much slower to come online and have been under resourced. The issue is now that we are enormous net-importers of energy, some of our demand is likely fulfilled by foreign coal burning. So none of this reporting is really that honest about how horrific it is to be a net energy importer, it would be another thing if we were at greater than 100% domestic energy generation and that these can now be taken offline (which many will take as the implication.)
- GaggiX 2y agoThe vast majority of imported energy comes from France and Norway, much cleaner energy than the UK.
- CalRobert 2y agoThe UK seems to import around 10% of its electrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom """ Demand for electricity in 2023 was 29.6 GW on average (259 TWh over the year), supplied through 235 TWh of UK-based generation and 24 TWh of energy imports.[4] """ Hopefully this is paired with reduced coal burning in the places Britain relies on for power, and improvements in efficiency. The wastefulness of British houses is something to behold... Of course, there's also the energy used to build things that Britain imports that used to be made domestically, not accounted for here. Britain seems to be doing reasonably well w.r.t. energy imports though - https://www.statista.com/statistics/550304/electricity-imports-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/550304/electricity-impor... From https://www.statista.com/topics/4938/energy-imports-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/4938/energy-imports-in-the-u... """ Although historically relatively self-sufficient in covering domestic energy demand, the United Kingdom’s dependency on imports has increased in the past few decades. With oil and gas fields on the continental shelf depleting and the government phasing out coal, the country has grown increasingly reliant on supplies from other countries. Energy dependency reached its peak in 2013, at nearly 48 percent. Thanks in large part to growing capacity additions of wind power and a decline in primary energy consumption, the dependency rate had fallen to some 35 percent since. This is notably lower than the European Union average. """
- Incipient 2y agohttps://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04046 https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04... >The UK’s dependence on imported energy looks set to continue to increase in the future. This, alongside higher fuel prices and increased concern over the security of energy supply has increased the attention on energy imports and exports over the past decade. I get the achievement here. But it sounds like a very significant net negative for the UK.
- zarzavat 2y agoIt’s not all bad. UK has a lot of onshore wind energy potential that was banned from development to placate the shires. That ban is no more. UK is also a good place for nuclear power with an almost complete absence of risk factors, though with the price of renewables it’s too late to exploit it to the level France has done.
- radicalbyte 2y agoIt's a crying shame that we didn't build out nuclear in the 1980s as we would have been in an excellent position had we done that. Instead we have the Chinese taking 30 years to build our new reactor.
- pjc50 2y agoThe French buildout was very definitely a reaction to the oil crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Ki... describes a similar process of thinking in the UK, which was abandoned in favor of privatizing the industry, and the PWRs were never built apart from Sizewell B. I suspect the arrival of North Sea oil and gas eased the energy concerns in the 1980s. > Instead we have the Chinese taking 30 years to build our new reactor. It's still owned by the same company that operates all the French nuclear reactors, EDF, and I suspect that most of the people doing the actual work on site are British. China can certainly build new reactors in China. I wonder if it's same the general disease of Western project management which causes high speed rail to get more and more expensive and less feasible.
- Angostura 2y agoIf you ever want to see what the grid is up to in real time, I highly recommend the venerable https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk - its a labour of love
- crubier 2y agoVenerable is the word! Let me recommend https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GB https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/GB which has a much easier visualization to my eyes
- Thecattlesuck 2y ago[dead]
- jillesvangurp 2y agoI listen to a few podcasts on clean energy. Two of them are by Brits (Michael Liebreich's Cleaning up and Robert LLewellyn's Fully Charged podcast). So, the UK's energy market gets discussed a lot. It's pretty interesting. Like many energy markets, the key challenges are actually legislation and policy related. The new government just removed a ban on new on-shore wind turbines. Which given that they are so cheap now is a sensible thing to do. The ban was madness to begin with of course. Offshore wind is of course also huge. And the UK has a lot of former offshore oil industry that is now adapting to doing offshore wind (a lot of overlap in tools and skills). And while they are shutting down coal, they still have a huge former coal plant that is now burning biomass in London. That's a single plant that powers most of London. Basically the way that works is that the Canadians and the British both subsidize this "green" and not so renewable power. The Canadians basically chop down what little proper ancient forests they still have on the west coast, which from an ecological point of view is criminally insane. The wood then gets shipped half way across the planet to the UK where it is burned. Shipping it of course involves burning a large amounts of nasty bunker fuel. There's nothing cheap, sustainable, clean, renewable, or green about this business. It's only economical because of the subsidies. And those subsidies exist because of fossil fuel industry lobbying and very willing politicians. That would be the same jerks that banned on shore wind in the UK. Another key policy challenge in the UK is that energy prices are the same throughout the UK. Most of the cheap wind power is up north. Much of the demand is in the south. So they are firing up gas plants in the south at the same time they actually have a surplus in Scotland. And then prices in Scotland are high because the gas they use in the south is expensive. Even when they have more wind power than they can use and they rarely have a need for any gas power in Scotland. They are a net energy exporter most days of the year. And they are connected to the Norwegian grid which enables them to import hydro power from there. Part of the solution is cables but installing those is expensive and challenging because it involves a lot of haggling with local councils and planning commissions. But the real solution is actually changing how this market works. This kind of change is much more challenging. Why move the power south when you can move the demand north? Variable pricing would cause that to happen.
- walthamstow 2y agoWhich is the power station burning biomass in London? If it's SELCHP in Bermondsey, I thought that was mostly burning rubbish?
- thebruce87m 2y agoMy favourite site for monitoring production: https://electricityproduction.uk https://electricityproduction.uk
- _joel 2y agoMy fave https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]