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Great to see, hopefully they can end turf burning too. (For those unaware it's basically where you take a wetland habitat that's also an amazing carbon store, c
by CalRobert 7mo ago
Great to see, hopefully they can end turf burning too. (For those unaware it's basically where you take a wetland habitat that's also an amazing carbon store, cut it in to chunks, dry it out, and burn it for a very dirty heat source)
- rithdmc 7mo agoI don't think turf (peat) has been burned for energy generation since 2023.
- CalRobert 7mo agoTrue, I was referring to domestic heat in rural areas.
- redfloatplane 7mo agoUnfortunately I think that's going to be very, very hard to sell to many people here in rural Ireland (Roscommon in my case). I would really love to see people stop burning turf but it's such a strong cultural thing that in some parts you'd be ostracised for even thinking the thought. I've personally spoken to people (who are otherwise quite environmentally aware) who suggest they'd never vote for the Green Party because they'd take their turf away. It's a tough sell.
- jahnu 7mo agoI think they should be allowed for cultural reasons but only if cut by hand like we did when I was a kid :)
- disgruntledphd2 7mo ago> I think they should be allowed for cultural reasons but only if cut by hand like we did when I was a kid :) Me too! That was a lot of work, and surprisingly hard to stack.
- jahnu 7mo agoAnd turning it would cut your fingers to shreds! But it was great if the weather was fine.
- disgruntledphd2 7mo agoWhich it almost never was :/
- detritus 7mo agoThank you both for the imagery here - quite beautiful, in its way. This has made me remember having to go out to the coal shed and fill up a brass bucket and then come back in all covered in coal dust. I've not thought about That Smell in years!
- jahnu 7mo agoDid you have one of those ubiquitous brass boxes beside the hearth?
- detritus 7mo agoNo, we had some antique brass bucket thing that I'd invariably have to drag in, accompanied by complaints that I was doing so, because obviously I'd put way too much in, so I didn't have to go out later to get more...
- invalidusernam3 7mo agoHow much impact does it realistically have on climate change? I would expect it to be relatively small compared to things like owning a car? In a perfect world we would want to reduce emissions as much as possible in every facet of life, but in the real world I think we should pick battles that have the biggest impact.
- asdff 7mo agoMight be one of those situations where globally it is irrelevant but heavily fouls up local air due to geography or prevailing airflow patterns.
- mrspuratic 7mo agoSmoke yes, but you're also turning a carbon sink into a carbon source. At ~16% of the island's surface area, peatland stores an estimated 53% of soil based carbon. (source: Irish Peatland Conservation Council)
- asdff 7mo agoIt grows back right?
- rithdmc 7mo agoI think the domestic heating use is a drop in the bucket compared to commercial extraction of peat for export, or historical use for electricity generation. I've only so many shits to give, and people heating their homes doesn't rank.
- DamonHD 7mo agoPeople heating their homes can be very sigificant. In the UK ~15% of all its territorial GHGs come from heating with gas: actual CO2 from the home boiler flues. CO2 from small amounts of rural home heating is probably not the big thing to be worried about, especially if local recent biomass, eg wood from forest management. But there are still nasties (PMs, biodiversity losses, etc) to be considered and that should be dealt with in due course.
- cogman10 7mo agoAt least in 2004 (not sure if it's still the case) there are some homes which still burned coal for heat. That is the nastiest smell out there.
- DamonHD 7mo agoIn England it is no longer legal to sell "traditional house" coal for domestic heating: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/selling-coal-for-domestic-use-in-england https://www.gov.uk/guidance/selling-coal-for-domestic-use-in...
- rithdmc 7mo agoThe actual quantity of people burning turf for home heat is tiny, though.
- Zigurd 7mo agoOn cold mornings you can see the wood smoke hanging over the town of Taos New Mexico. It's easy to see even a little bit of haze in the otherwise crystal clear air. Taos is in general a very environmentally conscious place. The KTAO radio station has been solar powered since the early 1990s. It also has a significant population of low wage tourism industry workers.
- redfloatplane 7mo agoYour username made me chuckle!
- rithdmc 7mo ago;) thanks.
- mohatmogeansai 7mo agovery funny
- secondcoming 7mo agoCan't beat a good turf fire though!
- piokoch 7mo agoIf you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun. So you need some auxiliary source of energy. If you want it at hand, this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear. You need to burn either gas or "biomass", that is wood/turf, etc. Those power plants have about 1h cold start. Hence, in order to have RES you need to emit CO2. Deal with this. The other option, and UK goes that way, is to purchase electricity when it is lacking, paying spot prices, that's why they have such a big electricity bills, economy is down, people get mad and vote psychos. The solution is dead simple, as France example shows. Simply use nuclear power plants and does not bother with RES, as it does not make any sense now. Maybe, when we have technology to store efficiently electricity at scale, we can start using RES. But we just do not have that. The end result now is that electricity in Europe is the most expensive on the World, so all manufacturing is moved to Asia, who does not bother with climate that much, that's why, despite all Europe efforts, overall CO2 emission keeps growing.
- troupo 7mo ago> this must be something with fast cold start. So black/brown coal power plan will not help you, similarly nuclear. Nuclear plants provide base load and they are extremely fast at ramping up/lowering production. All modern nuclear plants are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... You don't shut down power plants. None of the power plants ever do a "fast cold start" > The end result now is that electricity in Europe is the most expensive on the World, so all manufacturing is moved to Asia The production moved to Asia due to extremely cheap labor, not due to electricity costs.
- Scoundreller 7mo agoFor the foreseeable future, building enough nuclear for peak capacity is exceedingly expensive. > None of the power plants ever do a "fast cold start" Somewhere in each grid you will have “black start” capacity contracts, dunno if nuclear can fills this role (or if grids exclude nukes for one reason or another). Plenty of peaker plants built with the intention of running double digit hours per year and therefore the tradeoff supports being largely “off” in between those calls. Batteries might fill that gap.
- projektfu 7mo agoIt will virtually end when it is no longer economically advantageous. In my mother's hometown in Mayo, most home heat was solid fuel, and it's gradually turning to electric heat pumps. The other alternative, heating oil, is very expensive and not renewable, but also used a lot. I think the turf is starting to run out because the use of it has gone way down. Either that or fewer homes have a legacy parcel of bog.
- interludead 7mo agoPeat is probably the worst fuel from a carbon perspective
- quotemstr 7mo agoAnd Germany of all places mines huge amounts of brown coal, which is only barely not peat.
- liveoneggs 7mo agothey should use that turf for insulation instead