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UK to finish with coal power after 142 years
- mavhc 2y agoMostly replaced with gas, which is probably just as bad for climate change https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/natural-gas-use-may-affect-climate-as-much-as-coal-does-if-methane-leaks-persist-68096816 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
- ianvisits 2y agoProbably not. https://group.met.com/en/mind-the-fyouture/mindthefyouture/natural-gas-vs-coal https://group.met.com/en/mind-the-fyouture/mindthefyouture/n...
- peterpost2 2y agoThat one looks only at carbon emissions, which is not the main issue with Natural gas. The problem is that since it's a gas it leaks and natural gas in the atmosphere is a very very potent greenhouse gas.Though ofcourse over time in will break down to simple co2
- cpressland 2y agoAt least it’s still lower on average than renewables at the moment [1]. I’m not sure what the current state of Nuclear Reactor construction is like, but hopefully we get some come online soon. [1] https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/
- killingtime74 2y agoIf no one has started any (other than mainly China? theres one in France) https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu..., why would they suddenly come online.
- Mistletoe 2y agoI feel like the internet hype machine for nuclear is like some dead hand machine gone wrong that doesn’t know nuclear is already dead.
- melling 2y agoIt’s stories like these that tell us the United States wants to triple nuclear energy: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/27/americas-coal-communities-could-help-the-us-triple-nuclear-power.html?&qsearchterm=nuclear https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/27/americas-coal-communities-co... And restarting closed plants is becoming a thing https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/30/michigan-nuclear-plant-finalizes-federal-loan-to-support-first-reactor-restart-in-us-history.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/30/michigan-nuclear-plant-final...
- blitzar 2y agoI have read these same stories about "doubling" or "trippling" nuclear for more than 20 years. In that 20 years there has been ~0 increase in US nuclear power generation, and in the UK it has halved.
- melling 2y agoYeah, people wanted to greatly reduce CO2 emissions. The renewable crowd said we didn’t need it. Now we’re way behind in reducing emissions. All these stories about AI needing electricity. Where’s the renewable solution?
- blitzar 2y agoHaving worked in the industry, "the renewable crowd" were heavily pro nuclear. Clean coal, clean gas, carbon capture, and the "nothing bad happens when you burn coal I would happily live next to a coal power plant" crowd are the real issue. That's the grift that keeps on grifting.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
- klelatti 2y ago'Mostly' isn't true over the last decade which is the period of the most recent big shift from Coal. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix-uk https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix-uk
- mavhc 2y agoThat graph shows gas is the most used fuel in the UK for all years since coal was the most
- klelatti 2y agoMostly replaced implies >50% which is not the case. Gas is the most used fuel but has not 'mostly replaced' coal.
- mavhc 2y agoIt's approx 50%, and it's more than any other. 1991 Coal 62% Gas 1.72% 2023 Coal 1.28% Gas 31.71% So Coal dropped 60.72, Gas rose 30, oh no, it's slightly less than 50%, my point is invalid
- mhandley 2y agoThe graph in the article makes clear that isn't really true. Around half of coal use was replaced by natural gas in the 1990s, as you say. That's still a win - same energy, but half the CO2 emmisions. But since 2010 or so, the remainder of coal use was largely replaced by renewables. Now we just need to get rid of the remaining natural gas use. For electricity production, the trend here is pretty good. Natural gas won't disappear anytime soon, but there will be longer and longer periods where none is burned. But for home heating, I don't think gas will be phased out as fast as really needs to be done.
- dflock 2y ago> In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK’s power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50%
- gandalfian 2y ago<In 2010, renewables generated just 7% of the UK’s power. By the first half of 2024, this had grown to more than 50%> Electricity not power just to be pedantic. Most power is still from directly burning gas and oil.
- thepuppet33r 2y agoWe've had several power outages in our area recently, most of them JUST long enough that the food in our fridge was deemed unsafe and we had to toss some of it out. This sort of thing really makes me think about the large scale deployment of rooftop solar and batteries. If we had a battery system in our house, we could have used it to intermittently cool the fridge/freezer and potentially save the food and avoid the waste. It seems to make more sense to have everyone have their own power generation capabilities than for all of us to rely solely on a broad network stretched thin. I know very little about this subject, but the primary reason we haven't done it is that there aren't many subsidies around where we are. In addition, I often wonder about the future proofing on these systems. Our old house had coax run to every room because they just assumed you would be using cable tv instead of wireless streaming.
- beejiu 2y agoThe reliability of the UK grid was 99.999998% in the past year.
- Neil44 2y agoExactly, the reliability of home brew battery systems is likely to be quite a bit less.
- arethuza 2y agoThe last time I can recall any long electricity cuts was during the 3 day week in the early 1970s... Which perhaps explains some of the reasons why coal power (or at least the people who produced the coal) were seen as a political threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week NB I wasn't very old at the time and rather enjoyed the experience!
- cameronh90 2y agoI'm in London, and I've only experienced two power outages in the last decade, each lasting less than a minute. We have our problems, but electrical grid reliability is definitely not one of them.
- gjvc 2y agoSuch generator facilities need to be retained, and not demolished, for contingency purposes.
- mattlondon 2y agoWe don't need to keep coal for that. There is relatively clean by comparison gas stations for that. Or pumped hydro. Or just build more wind and over provision
- Symbiote 2y agoThis is the plant that was retained. It was kept a little longer due to the problems with gas supply after Russia invaded Ukraine. It's no longer needed for contingency.
- alex_duf 2y agoThe actual electricity production and consumption of the UK is declining [0] The UK is also rapidly deploying renewables, and adding more and more interconnection to mainland Europe. So as the capacity goes up the consumption goes down (for now). It's completely fair to decommission all coal plants. I assume the energy consumption will go up at some point, as there's only so much you can save with energy efficiency, an delocalisation, and as we shift primary energy usage onto electricity (what's currently being imported in the form of gas and petrol). But hopefully by this point the continued growth of production means will cover the increase 0: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&country=~GBR&Total+or+Breakdown=Total&Energy+or+Electricity=Electricity+only&Metric=Annual+demand https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&countr...
- happymellon 2y agoI had understood that one of the reasons for the reduction in consumption was related to having one of the highest priced electricity in the world. With more being deployed it should bring prices down too to allow increased consumption. Hopefully. It really does make things uneconomic here, and painful for the poorer folks in society.
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- baq 2y agoWhat's interesting about 140 years is that there's probably quite a few people who are ~70 and their grandparents have seen the first coal power plant start up. It isn't really that long ago.
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- alecmg 2y agoCould it be quantified how much UK is using coal power of other countries? Since industry is moved outside, the products we consume use power of producer country, mostly China. Is there a correlation in reduction of local coal power and amount of energy intensive products imported?
- jillesvangurp 2y agoIt's all connected of course. It's much easier to just look at the global consumption of coal. Peak coal usage was in 2022 (a brief spike caused by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine). With the exception of China and India, coal usage has declined pretty much everywhere. And in many western countries, like the UK and US it is being phased out rapidly; mostly for economical reasons. It's just no longer cost competitive. China is still building coal plants but their usage seems to have peaked as well or be close to that as they have aggressively accelerated deployment of wind and solar there and are of course responsible for producing most of the growth of that. Also, there's a sense of urgency there because coal related pollution was making their cities unlivable. This is similar to what happened in the UK mid last century. Also, they are pursuing some aggressive short term goals to reduce dependence on coal.
- WeylandYutani 2y agoThat is a good point. Europe has since the 1970s actually cleaned up the continent pretty well by kicking out a lot of polluting industry. (The latest target of environmentalists in the Netherlands was data centers. They used too much power, water whatever. So they went to the deserts of Spain. Epic win).
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoCO2 is about 20% higher when accounting for imports: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom#consumption-based-accounting-how-do-emissions-compare-when-we-adjust-for-trade https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom#consum... But both are still trending down.
- TheBruceHimself 2y agoOn the flip side is really fair for a nation to claim their emissions aren't their responsibility because it was due to the production of exported goods? Would we accept that line from Germany if they decided to keep a coal plant open. "Oh, that's not our CO2, it's all going to make cars for China. It's their CO2". A little ubsurd when Germany gets rich off the sale. All the profit, none of the responsbility. If china wants to make our stuff I only think it's fair that they are responsible for the pollution caused by the production. If anything else this narrative "exported CO2" muddies the water and makes it harder to hold nations to account. A basic "emissions in your borders are your responsibility to handle and reduce" is easy to understand, hard to game, and avoids this all devolving into CO2 accounting tricks.
- gandalfian 2y agoThen there is Drax a vast coal plant now burning wood chips cut from foreign forests, dried and shipped across the ocean in bunker oil fueled cargo ships. That counts as renewables. 7% of our electricity today, more than solar. I am actually very optimistic about the future in ten years of so. I think we oversell the present a bit though.
- mhandley 2y agoI'm not a fan of Drax (is anyone?), but I guess the alternative is worse, at least for now. In the short term, the marginal alternative is LNG, also shipped in oil-fueled cargo ships. So as we continue to build out wind and solar and reduce the amount of natural gas we burn, it's probably good to keep Drax on biomass. But it shouldn't be a long term solution.
- newpavlov 2y ago>the marginal alternative is LNG, also shipped in oil-fueled cargo ships LNG ships are usually fueled by natural gas evaporated from its liquefied payload, which is much cleaner than burning diesel.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoThe energy used to chill the LNG and methane leaks are the big question marks as to whether LNG is better or worse than coal. So it's far from a slam dunk that it'll be better than biomass.
- blitzar 2y agoLooking around at how much garbage people dump in the streets I am sure we could chuck some of that in Drax and close the loop a bit.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoDrax is less than 4% of electricity now, it's been steadily dropping: https://ember-climate.org/insights/in-brief/the-largest-emitters-in-the-uk-annual-review/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/in-brief/the-largest-emit... So lower than solar now (which has been growing).