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United Kingdom

UK Will Stop Using Coal Power In Just Three Years (scientificamerican.com) 90

Posted by BeauHD from the ahead-of-schedule dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: The United Kingdom will end its use of coal-fired power by October 2024, a year earlier than scheduled, as it pushes other countries toward greater climate ambition ahead of a global warming summit it's hosting in November. "Coal powered the industrial revolution 200 years ago, but now is the time for radical action to completely eliminate this dirty fuel from our energy system," Energy and Climate Change Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said in a statement yesterday. It won't have far to go. Coal accounted for just 1.8% of the U.K.'s electricity mix last year, with roughly 43% coming from renewable sources such as wind and solar, according to the U.K. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The government plans to introduce legislation on the coal phaseout "at the earliest opportunity," it said. It will only apply to coal used in electricity generation, not other sectors such as the steel industry.
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UK Will Stop Using Coal Power In Just Three Years More

UK Will Stop Using Coal Power In Just Three Years

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  • R.i.P. Newcastle...

  • GB Grid status (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Friday July 02, 2021 @09:48AM (#61543664) Homepage
    See real time electricity generation [templar.co.uk]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chrisq ( 894406 )
      That is quite revealing in that a lot of our power comes from burning natural gas. we also import a fair amount of electricity too. It shows that this is not a complete switch to green sources.

      • About 13% of that "renewable" figure includes biomass (wood) burning as well, which is part of how the UK is maintaining grid stability and still pumping the numbers for "renewable" penetration. I'm not convinced burning wood is all that much better than coal on the net, at least the way pulpwood is being produced now explicitly for burning, but opinions vary.

        One thing to keep in mind is statistics for the amount of renewables on any given grid are... squirrely. Usually when you see a number like 43% rene

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          If you're cutting down trees without replanting to produce biomass for burning, then it's a problem. If it's being replaced as it's cut down in a sustainable way then it's carbon neutral, so better than coal. Like any other managed forestry, it's something of a compromise as far as ecological concerns go since you have the standard concerns with cyclical habitat destruction, monoculture, etc. Done right though, it's certainly better than some alternatives.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amorsen ( 7485 )

          The nifty thing is that wind tends to blow more in winter in colder climates, where it is useful for heating. Solar tends to provide most of its output in summer and in warmer climates, where it is useful for cooling.

          Right now the UK does not have a huge difference between summer and winter electricity consumption, because houses are generally heated with natural gas. Once houses switch to heat pumps, this will change a lot, and offshore wind will be a goldmine in winter. Conveniently, houses lose more heat

        • where say Germany imports Scottish wind and counts those imports in their renewable share.
          Why do idiots claim such bullshit?

          Imported energy is not "in any share". It is imported ...

        • frankly it's not super impressive or useful if wind farms on a system generate 200% of needed power for a couple months a year and 10% the rest of the time. That might average out to 30% wind production on paper but it's leaning pretty hard on existing non-renewable grid resources to fill the gaps.
          That is not how it works.
          Energy is only counted when it is consumed inland

          Those of us modeling and managing these power grids are more interested

          You are not only an idiot but a lier. You never worked in anything

  • UK has cleaner oil, nukes, solar, and wind.
  • So, they're going to get rid of one use of coal, but retain other uses? Yes, making steel burns coal. Quite a lot of it. Realistically, we're not going to dispense with burning coal until we dispense with steel (aluminum doesn't need coal, just electricity, so maybe go to aluminum as our primary metal)....
    • You don't NEED coal to make steel, it's just the easiest way to get a bunch of elemental carbon. You could use solar to extract CO2 from the air and convert it to carbon. Any excess can just be put back into coal mines.

      • Yes you do, no industrial scale coal-less steel making has ever been done. Cute little experiments don't count.

        If that Swedish company ever gets their hydrogen thing working it will make steel at 30% more cost. Right now, they can't do at scale anyway so file under investor hype for now.

      • How much of the carbon binds with the iron vs being lost into the atmosphere? Could the latter be prevented or captured?

      • Sure, then show us such a process and you farm in a Nobel Prize. As long as you have not done that: we need coal to make steel from raw ore.
        However most steal is recycled steel.

    • Re:Only electrical use, not all uses.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @10:20AM (#61543812) Homepage
      Coal-free steel is in progress [forbes.com].

      And yes incremental improvements, such as banning in one area where it's possible to do so but retaining in others where it's currently impossible to do, are massively preferable to just sitting and doing nothing because perfection has not yet been achieved.

    • hahaha, aluminum takes over nine times the energy per ton to make than steel, and 84 percent of our global energy comes from fossil fuel. For the love of God, no let's not go to aluminum as primary metal.

      • 84 percent of our global energy comes from fossil fuel

        Why would it matter what the global energy sources are? The article is about Britain and "roughly 43% coming from renewable sources". And I don't see any indications that this percentage is going to fall anytime soon.

        aluminum takes over nine times the energy per ton to make than steel

        And steel is around three times denser. I would assume other material properties matter too.

        • The topic of this thread wasn't Britain, pay attention. The topic was using aluminum as primary metal rather than steel, and I give two reasons that's a dumb idea. The fearsome energy requirements compared to steel means more pollution if it were done now or anytime in next few decades.

        • And steel is around three times denser. I would assume other material properties matter too.
          Yes, but "denseness" certainly does not.

      • Why do you think that a large number of AL smelting is done at locations close to large hydro systems?

        Then... a lot more AL is recycled than steels. Some of the carmakers who use AL Alloy try to use material that contains a large percentage of recycled material.

        • Not relevant to this topic, since going to aluminum as a "primary metal" tosses recycling right out the windows, we'd need immense amount new production which is a massive energy sink compared to steel. Not happening.

        • Basically all steel is recycled.
          Same for Aluminium.

    • Yes, making steel burns coal. Quite a lot of it.

      Yes, but the long term cost of any coal is massively less than energy production. Steel still retains it's properties of usefulness lot after the "burn" is over, once we use that kilowatt of power, that's it, there's no more usefulness.

      Realistically, we're not going to dispense with burning coal until we dispense with steel (aluminum doesn't need coal, just electricity, so maybe go to aluminum as our primary metal)

      Zero people who actually matter in the conversation are looking for zero coal, they are looking for zero coal in domestic energy production. We will always use coal for steel production and that's fine because the long term cost is incredibly minimal. The vast majority of

      • steel making is eight percent of carbon released, so making big dent in that (by some process that doesn't exist at present, no the swedes with their hydrogen process can't do at scale) would be huge win.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      You can refine iron the same way you refine aluminum. It's just easier to do it thermally, and extremely difficult to do so for aluminum. You can get that heat anywhere you want though, it doesn't have to be coal.

      Aluminum also uses quite a bit of carbon in conventional plants, for sacrificial electrodes. It also doesn't have to, and plants are being built now that don't.

      If you mean the little bit of steel that is carbon, that's sequestering the carbon, and again, you could get it from wherever.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • You can extract iron using the same process as aluminum*, it's just that process is absurdly energy inefficient.
        No you can't.
        As Aluminium ore is conducting current and can be reduced by simple electricity and basically every Iron ore: does not conduct current.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by catprog ( 849688 )

      So get rid of the easy thing to get rid of.

      This will buy time to get rid of the hard things?

  • Piecemeal aproach is not going to work. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @10:17AM (#61543794) Journal
    Most of the heaviest-pollution industry has already been moved to developing countries where energy is cheap due to lack of regulation. Seems to me Politicians in developed countries just want to say "we did our part" without making the really difficult choices.

    • Correct. The right choice now is to bomb those "developing" countries back to the stone age so they don't cause all that pollution. Also China. Problem solved.

  • UK contributes approximately 0% to global CO_2. (Ok, 1%, BFD.)

    • The UK? Why not reduce that to your village, your house, or even yourself? That would make you only 0.0000001% of global emissions. Surely, it doesn't matter how much you emit, isn't it?

    • so What indeed.

      It shows what can be done even with a right of centre government in charge since 2010. The thing is that all the main political parties are generally behind this move. The only difference seems to be the timescales.
      Our almost totally incompetent Prime Minister has got very little in the plus column but bringing forward the end of ICE sales and the rapid phasing out of Coal (which is imported) fired electricity generation are there along with getting on with offshore wind power otherwise, he i

  • Right now (02 June 2021 @ 16:35) coal is providing 2.8% of electricity*. This may sound good but gas is providing 42.8%. Apparently we are building wind turbines enthusiastically so that missing 2.8% will not be filled by something only a bit less bad.

    * Yes. There's an app for that...

    • That 2.8% comes from just three power stations, all of which are already in the process of being decommissioned, so not really a major announcement, more "we're doing what we said we would do in the already declared timeline".

      This is in no way as big a story as Scientific American seems to think it is.

  • The UK Department on Energy and Climate Change hired Dr. David J.C. MacKay to study a solution on lowering CO2 emissions. In his last interview before his death he was quite clear on what the UK, and the world, would have to do to lower CO2 emissions. He said the UK would need nuclear fission and carbon capture and sequestration. He wrote many articles, made many speeches (including a TED Talk), and sat for many interviews on this topic. His book is available for free online here: http://www.withouthota [withouthotair.com]

  • Good for them and more for the rest of us.

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