Britain Passes One Week Without Coal Power For First Time Since 1882 (theguardian.com) 149
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Britain has gone a week without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since Queen Victoria was on the throne, in a landmark moment in the transition away from the heavily polluting fuel. The last coal generator came off the system at 1.24pm on 1 May, meaning the UK reached a week without coal at 1.24pm on Wednesday, according to the National Grid Electricity System Operator, which runs the network in England, Scotland and Wales. The latest achievement – the first coal-free week since 1882, when a plant opened at Holborn in London – comes only two years after Britain's first coal-free day since the Industrial Revolution. Burning coal to generate electricity is thought to be incompatible with avoiding catastrophic climate change, and the UK government has committed to phasing out coal-fired power by 2025.
Misleading (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Actually. Most comes from Gas. 0 from Oil and Nuclear and Wind are about the same over a 24 hour period. Other renewables and imports from EU make the rest
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
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I was just talking to my work colleague regarding this article and said i wondered were they got all their power from.
Whining, principally.
Re: Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, careful now. You don't want to confuse power and electricity. They're two very different things.
It's true that the UK uses no oil for electricity production. However, electricity is a teeeny tiny percentage of total power production/consumption. If we look at total energy consumption rather than just electrical consumption, we see that gas and petroleum products are about evenly split and together make up over 80% of all energy sources. Biofuels are maybe another 10%. Wind and solar together are basically a rounding error in comparison.
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
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A more useful dataset is the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses produced by each energy source: https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
Looking at the table on page 17, the biggest sector for emissions is transport, which is almost entirely oil. After that comes energy supply, i.e. electricity. Electricity is 28.6% of the total.
So when you say it's a "teeny tiny percentage", it's really not.
Re: Misleading (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice to see you continuing to be silly, as usual. Instead of just assuming that "energy supply" and "electrical production" are the same thing, maybe try checking page 8, instead, which breaks down your "energy supply" into two sub categories.
Perhaps "teeny tiny" was a slight exaggeration on my part, but electricity makes up something like 10-15% of total energy consumption. And none of that changes the fact that oil and gas make up 80% of energy production, while wind and solar combined are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1%.
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Ah, careful now. You don't want to confuse power and electricity. They're two very different things.
In most discussions I've seen, for better or worse, power was a metonymy for electrical power.
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A good distinction but since we haven't run on coal fired cars or heated houses with coal for many years then all you have done is added something completely off topic to the discussion.
Everyone here is talking about electricity generation, and no one confused it with primary energy consumption, even the one claiming the UK was powered by oil.
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So, were the goalposts blocking your view or something?
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You have to be very careful when comparing very different energy sources. Electrical energy is a low entropy (highly ordered) form of energy that can be easily converted into other forms of energy very efficiently. For example, electrical heating can, by some measures, achieve more than 400% efficiency (if you use heat pumps), you can get several kilowatts of heat for every kilowatt you put in. So the fact that ~80% of energy is not currently electric means a lot less than you'd think.
For example, replacing
Re: Misleading (Score:2)
Re: Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
> Is there a single pump of natural gas that also doesn't pump out black tar?
Yes!
Sediments buried at 1-6km at relatively low temperatures generate oil. Deeper than that and at higher temperatures generates natural gas. The North Sea generates oil in some areas and natural gas in others.
In the UK we don't dig out much coal any more, even though it's still there. It's cheaper to extract oil and gas from the North Sea on rigs. It also burns cleaner.
There had been cases in recent years when ships carrying coal to the UK changed course enroute as we got outbid elsewhere. But we have large natural gas reserves so by using gas instead of coal our energy sources become more reliable.
> Also, is there ANY power generation from burning oil?
Yep.
The UK still has a few. A lot have been decommissioned though, or are used as standby. Or can burn coal/gas/biofuel instead of oil. The vast majority of UK stations don't use oil.
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Would love to see the same kind of dashboard for the USA grids.
actual sources, actual data (Score:5, Informative)
rather than claim one thing or another here is some actual verifiable data :
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb [ofgem.gov.uk]
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So coal has mostly been replaced by gaseous dinosaur and a bit of offshore wind. Gotcha. Still, while not ideal from a COÂ standpoint, it is better.
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You're getting ahead of yourself there, bucko.
Re:actual sources, actual data (Score:5, Informative)
Scotland generates about 20% of it's power from hydro. There is limited potential for hydro expansion in Scotland, because all the best locations where built before WWII.
There is however enormous potential for more pumped storage, like many GWh of capacity. There is also huge potential for tidal in the Pentland Firth, along with plenty of wind.
Re:actual sources, actual data (Score:5, Informative)
The UK as a whole has vast, vast wind resources. Much of it offshore. The UK could meet all its electricity and ground based transport needs from offshore wind alone, and then export 10x that much to the rest of Europe.
Of course it would mean building a lot of offshore wind. Perfecting floating turbines would really help. But it's entirely do-able.
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The main issue with tidal is that the ocean is a really harsh environment, especially for devices with moving parts that need to work for decades. That makes it more expensive than offshore wind.
As ever it comes down to cost.
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There has been a significant push towards energy efficiency in europe, appliances are generally advertised based on their efficiency and low power lighting has been heavily promoted for a long time. The cost of energy is high for consumers, so more efficient appliances sell better.
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Scotland needs money and sets an export price for its power from its dam.
England has to "pay" full price for 24/7 energy from a dam outside England.
Hydro may not be so wonderful long term given changes to UK politics AC?
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The linked graphic doesn't separate out offshore vs onshore wind and doesn't separate out wind from solar.
Re:actual sources, actual data (Score:5, Interesting)
The linked graphic doesn't separate out offshore vs onshore wind and doesn't separate out wind from solar.
It also doesn't explain that "bioenergy", which exceeds solar and wind combined, is mostly from wood chips imported from America in an inefficient and subsidized process that is so stupid that it makes corn ethanol look intelligent.
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Why would it? It's just a graph of the power mix, not a judgement of whether the components are good or bad.
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the sun is there for approx half the time
you wot mate? this is the UK. the sun is here for about three days in july then fucks off south again.
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Not quite. If you look at the trends and take out the seasonal variation, you'll see that wind (and some bio) has actually replaced coal, with gas and nuclear staying mostly constant: https://i.imgur.com/fkeAk8G.pn... [imgur.com]
The picture is even clearer when you plot fossil vs renewable vs other: https://i.imgur.com/9WZZ0hJ.pn... [imgur.com]
Source: https://gist.github.com/vanatt... [github.com]
Re:actual sources, actual data (Score:5, Interesting)
Real time data: http://electricitymap.org/ [electricitymap.org] click on the map to get a detailed view of source, power generation and emissions.
There is a switch on the upper right hand side to change from consumption to production.
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rather than claim one thing or another here is some actual verifiable data :
I'm pretty sure all data is verifiable.
Not that misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Combined Cycle Gas Turbine generators seem to be the main way of matching the input to the output, but coal generators come in during the daytime peak in the middle of each day. This is also exactly when solar produces its greatest power. Visually, while solar generation varies, it looks like it's smoothing a 15 GW daily peak by about 4 GW on a bad day and about 10 GW on a good day.
Reducing the need for load-following power generation by about 30% because of renewables, does justify the guardian's claim that:
Coal-fired power stations still play a major part in the UK’s energy system as a backup during high demand but the increasing use of renewable energy sources such as wind power means it is required less.
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What we need more of to handle spikes are more pumped hydro stations like Dinorwig [wikipedia.org] in north Wales - can produce 1.7GW in seconds from zero, and can even recycle its reservoir head from other power sources when not in use.
More of those mean less reliance on the natural gas stations, which can only be a good thing.
Re:Not that misleading (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed there are some schemes to build more pumped storage in Scotland. There was a scheme for 600MW capacity at Coire Glas, north-west of Loch Lochy, but that is delayed because they want to increase the power generation to 1500MW and I think more storage so it's back to submitting updated planning applications. When this was first been considered there was another site in the Great Glen been considered as well.
There is also talk of increasing the power and storage capacity at Ben Cruachan.
Finally there was a plan back in the 1960's for a pumped storage scheme in Exmoor. Originally for smoothing out demand in relation to nuclear. It would work well with a tidal barrage on the Seven now.
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Why limit yourself to pumped hydro which can take immense amounts of space. Any type of energy storage is valuable, we haven't used it up to this point because it was cheaper to just burn more coal but the changing energy markets worldwide make storage viable and the costs of energy storage are falling almost as fast as wind power prices.
Storage, even in batteries is now cheaper than peaking plants using gas. But the main point is that rather than saying you need more pumped hydro you should be saying you n
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This is alarming, it could be the end of pea soup fog. What I am saying is simply this: what price national identity?
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The vast majority of electricity in the UK is derived from Oil and Nuclear. Coal has been shrinking for a long time. The article implies that the absence of coal is due to a sudden large growth in renewable energy sources and that is simply not the case.
Oil?
Fossil fuels supply 80% of UK's energy (Score:1)
Oil and gas are sitting on around 40% each. Keep congratulating yourselves about how virtuous and tolerant and progressive you are though, while you fill your empty lives with trash made in China, which is now producing more than twice the greenhouse gasses of the US or EU.
Re: Fossil fuels supply 80% of UK's energy (Score:3)
He said energy, not electricity. And he's exactly right.
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The right-wing obsession with coal (Score:3)
I never understood the obsession that American right wing voters and politicians have with coal. I can understand the people from coal-producing regions, but what about the rest of country? The share of coal in the electricity generation is only 25%, while the electricity consumption has been flat or even going down in the recent years. This means that with time we can gradually wean ourselves off coal for the sake of environment.
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Its own energy that did not add to complex international energy import problems.
Now the UK is beholden to solar, wind and gas energy price changes
Costs change and 24/7 production can't afford the energy.
Re:The right-wing obsession with coal (Score:4, Interesting)
I never understood the obsession that American right wing voters and politicians have with coal.
I'm not an expert on US politics, but I remember reading somewhere (maybe economist) that this has been a result of the growth of middle class democrats. The right was losing support from the middle class so were forced to align themselves with the working class, who felt increasingly excluded from the traditional 'worker's party' by the rise of champagne socialism (or less sensationally, middle class indifference in general).
Hence you get these weird alliances, such as the desperately poor post-industrial unemployed voting along with billionaire capitalist. It's hard to argue with people wanting rubbish coal digging jobs in exchange for their vote, so this convoluted result is kinda logical.
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I"ve never seen any sign that the Right Wing is obsessed by coal. Though a lot of them are obsessed with having electricity.
Right now, coal represents about 30% of our baseload electricity, so stopping using coal is a non-trivial exercise, and will be for some time to come. Especially absent nuclear, which hasn't been politically practical since the '60s, when a Soviet anti-nuclear-weapon campaign in the West
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I"ve never seen any sign that the Right Wing is obsessed by coal
So....were you in a coma in 2016? Missed all of Trump's promises about bringing back coal jobs? Missed the Trump administration's proposal in 2017 to subsidize coal power plants?
Especially absent nuclear, which hasn't been politically practical since the '60s
Nuclear costs 2-3x what coal costs. If coal is not economically viable, neither is nuclear.
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That was part of a very specific campaign push to lure voters in states where the economy is driven by coal. So it's kind of important to them.
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That was part of a very specific campaign push to lure voters in states where the economy is driven by coal. So it's kind of important to them.
So you didn't notice that 2017 was after the election?
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He had the same coal agenda before and after the election. Now he's pushing it to maintain those voters for 2020.
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Baseload and demand based generation are dead concepts in the modern energy grid and system.
Demand can now follow supply just as easily as the reverse. This new dynamic energy market is nothing like the 20th century and Slashdot posters like yourself who don't realize that are just spreading FUD. Baseload doesn't exist in the US energy market anymore. Those large power consumers can and are paid to reduce or eliminate demand, and this demand management even works down into the residential market with the po
Tribalism and ideology (Score:5, Informative)
I never understood the obsession that American right wing voters and politicians have with coal. I can understand the people from coal-producing regions, but what about the rest of country?
It's basically tribalism combined with a bit of poor reasoning about economics and some ideology. People that care strongly about the environment in the US generally tend to be on the political left and so because the left is for it people on the right think they must be against it - aka tribalism. Just reflexive distrust of anything the other team is for. Also the political right tends to reflexively regard any regulations as axiomatically bad regardless of the evidence and since dealing with environmental problems tends to require government regulations they conclude it is bad without further thought. This also feeds into the political right's distrust of government in general, taxes in particular, and their affection for corporate profits. The coal lobby and certain politicians have spun a narrative that much of the political right has taken as gospel that fossil fuels (including coal) are good for the economy and that environmental hippies are trying to kill their jobs. It makes no sense at all but this false narrative has political appeal and has taken off.
Ironically a lot of the important environmental legislation historically came under republican administrations even as far back as Teddy Roosevelt. The EPA was formed under the Nixon administration. The republicans used to have a pretty good record on protecting the environment. It's only in the last 20-30 years that they've sold out to the fossil fuel industries and found opportunities to gain political power by selling a false story that a clean environment must somehow be bad for the economy.
The share of coal in the electricity generation is only 25%, while the electricity consumption has been flat or even going down in the recent years.
What you don't seem to understand is that the US has the biggest coal reserves in the world [wikipedia.org] by a wide margin. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. About 30% of our power [nih.gov] comes from coal presently and there is no reasonable likelihood of that number going to zero any time soon for a variety of reasons even if it should.
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This is all perfectly correct and insightful, but the way I like to explain it, more succinctly:
Here in America, sides are more important than facts.
Somebody think of the miners! (Score:2)
I work with a few right-wing voters. As far as I've been able to understand it, the obsession with coal is a means to keep coal miners employed. And they don't believe in climate change so there's nothing to fear from pollution. They also think that coal miners are either uninterested in or incapable of learning new jobs. They seem to thrive on the backfire effect, it seems to be the only thing that keeps them going some days.
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And which is a bit odd since as of 2016, there were only 50,000 coal miners in the U.S. I also think the right-wingers' arguments that miners are uninterested or incapable of learning new jobs is a bit off. Coal miner states are generally poor, and so lack the funds for retraining and spawning nascent other industries. There are sporadic efforts, but the states involved either do not know how to do it or would require the Fed. Gov. help in various ways. There's the rub. The right wingers want to claim the F
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How do they respond when you point out more people are employed by Arby's than the the coal industry? [washingtonpost.com]
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Well, I haven't told them that. They would probably point out that Arby's is a company, not an industry, and that Arby's employees are widely distributed instead of fairly localized like the coal miners. But overall they're not really motivated by the facts I introduce to the discussion as they conflict with their viewpoints and preconceptions. We do have some fun conversations...
Its more the left-wing obsession with unicorns (Score:1)
Re:Its more the left-wing obsession with unicorns (Score:4, Interesting)
Right leaning people have a knack for making stuff actually happen and preserving the fruits that things like rule of law, technology, and farming have brought us.
[Citation Required]
Also: please explain the US Congress from 2017 to 2019 in this context. 'Cause y'all got nothing done besides a giant tax cut. Couldn't even repeal the ACA with all three branches of government.
The left wing default solution is to create a hashtag and feel good because they said the right things
No, the left wing solution is prosecution and lawsuits, and used various media strategies to build pressure for officials to actually do those. Including hashtags.
Right wing people think we should have strict moral codes and guidelines that restrict base human impulses so that these things are limited.
Did you forget who you elected president? How 'bout the name Roy Moore? That ring any bells? Perhaps you missed the whole thing among right wing people encouraging each other to drive over protesters they disagree with, including introducing legislation and the time a guy actually did that in VA?
The problem is power generation is a real thing. If you do it wrong, the lights go out and bad things tend to happen.
Only if you actually dismantle all the old plants without seeing if the new plants can not handle the load. This doesn't actually happen, but it's fantastic for scaring uniformed voters into opposing renewable energy.
Old plants are put into various stages of standby/mothball as they become economically non-viable, and are dismantled one-at-a-time by the operator once they figure out they will never be able to make money from that plant. Ya know, that free market thing you folks are supposed to believe in.
The other power solutions tend not to provide enough energy or are very expensive.
Nope. Coal costs more per kWh than wind and solar. The "not provide energy" aspect is only because it takes time to build that many turbines and solar plants, and again nobody is demanding an instantaneous switch to renewables.
A poster later in this thread gives several examples. Please read
He gave one example, not several. (So surprising that you would "overstate" something. :eyeroll:)
He also demonstrated he doesn't understand the concept of a renewable power plant - what matters is where the carbon came from in the CO2, not that it produce less/no CO2. Burning wood means you're releasing CO2 that was in the atmosphere 1-2 years ago. Net, you've done nothing to the atmosphere (ignoring transportation here, which is a pretty small CO2 release compared to burning coal at the power plant).
Like many right wingers, I simply argue that instead of chasing pretend power unicorns, lets make the transitions when the technology is actually there, not because we wish it was.
The technology is there. The advertising budget of your favorite media sources significantly relies on you not learning that.
Haven't you noticed the goalposts moving? It used to be renewables could never be as cheap as coal. Now it's renewables can't power the entire grid at this moment. Wee bit of a change, no?
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How Does It Work? (Score:1)
Can anyone delve a little deeper into how things work for the benefit of us lazy people?
So we're told that we had a week without using any coal for our mains power supply (or at least that's how I understand things). But does that mean our power grid network burned no coal? e.g. is it possible to completely shut down all of the coal-powered plants, and then re-start them when they are needed, or do they have to be supplied with a *small* amount of coal to keep the fires burning ready for when we need to ram
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is it possible to completely shut down all of the coal-powered plants, and then re-start them when they are needed, or do they have to be supplied with a *small* amount of coal to keep the fires burning ready for when we need to ramp the power back up
It depends on how quickly you want to ramp the power back up. A typical coal plant takes several hours to 3 days to go from completely cold to full power generation, depending on the design of the plant.
Basically does "no coal" mean "no coal at all" or "some coal, but used indirectly so we can ignore it for the purposes of PR"
It's not clear from the article how many plants were kept "warm", if any. Only that none of the electricity that actually reached the grid came from burning coal. Also keeping the temperature in the furnace up takes way, way less coal than making steam for electricity, so even if it was for "PR", it's not
Creative EU power accounting (Score:5, Informative)
The largest power station in Britain, at Drax in Yorkshire, was originally built to burn local coal, generating 4MWe, about for 6% of the country's total power. When EU energy policy shifted to emphasize renewables, Drax was converted to burn wood, which is classed as a renewable source. With a wave of the accounting wand, a dirty plant that still belches the same amount of smoke as it did in the time of coal suddenly looks like an impressive addition to the wind-and-solar column.
There's just one catch: because Yorkshire was logged off centuries ago, the firewood has to be imported from the southern US in a fleet of diesel freighters. Just as it takes French nuclear plants to make German energy policy look good, American forests are making British policy look good.
Re:Creative EU power accounting (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Creative EU power accounting (Score:4, Interesting)
Burning biomass that would have decomposed into the atmosphere anyways is not the same as burning coal that would have stayed underground - it's a legit reduction in net CO2 emissions. Particulates are another matter.
Yeah, and the coal contains significant thorium and even fissile uranium, and the trees don't. So the particles coming from the trees are less dangerous, soot aside. It would be better if they could deliver the wood in sailing ships, though, instead of container ships. Making bunker fuel doesn't take so much energy as making gasoline, but it still takes energy, and burning it is both highly polluting and a source of CO2 emissions (but I repeat myself.)
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Except that you're burning trees that would have created oxygen. And left the landscape barren in places.
Burning imported wood as "biofuel" to make one's emissions statistics look good is a shell game.
Re:Creative EU power accounting (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that you're burning trees that would have created oxygen. And left the landscape barren in places.
Trees being burned for firewood are generally renewable. Either they're the slash from a tree farming operation, or they are based on falls. It's the old growth trees that are most valuable for carbon sequestration/oxygen production, and those aren't being turned into firewood. They're being turned into lumber for construction, or other wood products.
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Except that you're burning trees that would have created oxygen
So what? We're concerned about the CO2 release. We don't have a shortage of oxygen in the atmosphere.
And left the landscape barren in places.
Typically such wood comes from tree plantations, so they will have planted another crop after cutting down these trees.
Burning imported wood as "biofuel" to make one's emissions statistics look good is a shell game.
And yet it still reduces CO2 emissions.
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Headlines that ingore the actual truth... (Score:3)
The headline belies that the UK uses mostly natural gas and is in no way reducing their carbon footprint. Something, something lies, damned lies and statistics...
https://www.electricitymap.org... [electricitymap.org]
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the UK uses mostly natural gas and is in no way reducing their carbon footprint
Natural gas yields more energy per pound of CO2 produced [eia.gov] than coal.
Re:And as soon as they failbrexit.. (Score:5, Funny)
Most of that power is extracted from the hot air generated by Brexit speeches.
It's not sustainable in the long term.
Re: And as soon as they failbrexit.. (Score:2)
What makes you think hot air from brexit is unsustainable?...
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Belgium.
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No need to be rude, man. You'll start intergalactic wars by saying things like that.
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- Burma!
- Why'd you say "Burma"?
- I panicked.
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Oh no, that hot air has been powering most of the British media for a few decades now, and as energy requirements have risen the hot air output has only increased. Right now there's an excess of thermal energy coming from the area around parliament and the engineering challenge is how to capture that this for sale overseas to countries that have a deficit in hot air generation.
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Russia wants high oil prices. Duh. They have more money and the US is weakened. It's a two-fold reason to want higher prices.
Russia does not want us to frack.
Russia does not want us to use coal.
So, pray tell me - how does your post make any sense?
(I'm not for coal generation, simply responding to the post.)
The Russians want... [Re:Take THAT, TRUMP!] (Score:4, Informative)
And why would Russia want us to use coal?
The Russians, of course, want us to use oil and natural gas. Particularly natural gas, which they have lots of. Even if we don't use their natural gas, our use will draw off supply, increasing prices for them.
More significantly to this discussion, they want England to use more gas (and less coal), drawing off supply to increase the price they can charge Europe, which is dependent on Russian gas.
...
So, pray tell me - how does your post make any sense?
It doesn't. That was a troll.