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United Kingdom

Closure of Coal Power Station Set To Be Delayed To Prevent UK Blackouts (theguardian.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
The effort to prevent electricity blackouts this winter is expected to delay the closure of part of a coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire, with the plant's German owner nearing agreement with the UK authorities. From a report: In the third in a series of deals to have more coal power on standby if needed, National Grid's electricity system operator (NGESO) is working towards finalising an agreement with Uniper to keep all of the operations at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar site open through the winter. In May, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, wrote to NGESO asking executives to work with Uniper and fellow owners of coal-power stations Drax and EDF to slow their closure plans after Russia's invasion of Ukraine shook the energy markets.

Uniper had been due to decommission one of its 500-megawatt units at the Nottinghamshire plant at the end of September, two years before closing the remaining three units at the site. Under the deal, NGESO is expected to pay the company a fee to delay the decommissioning so all three units can be called on if needed. Uniper will also be compensated for costs incurred, including coal purchases, with any additional charges eventually being fed through to consumers' energy bills.
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Closure of Coal Power Station Set To Be Delayed To Prevent UK Blackouts More

Closure of Coal Power Station Set To Be Delayed To Prevent UK Blackouts

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  • 43% of the UK's coal is imported from... wait for it... Russia!

    • "43% of the UK's coal is imported from... wait for it... Russia!"

      Yes, that figure is correct.
      What is amazing, is that if UK did not import anymore coal, or dig anymore coal, starting today.

      The UK has stockpiled enough coal to last till 2025.

      • That stockpile number was calculated under the assumption that the closed plants would stay closed and use of coal would continue to decline going forward. The opposite is about to happen. The UK will have to reopen their own coal mines that have been closed for a generation.

      • They don't need heating anyway, there are no seasons on Airstrip One, at least excluding Scotchland. Be it summer or midwinter, the temperature is always fit for a light jacket. Because of global warming, they recently started getting summers though.

        And Brexit voters won't buy an electric car, keeping residential electricity needs low.

      • Re:UK imports coal (Score:5, Informative)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @03:39PM (#62834037)
        According to whom? The The House of Commons says otherwise [parliament.uk]:

        In 2021 imports from Russia made up 4% of gas used in the UK, 9% of oil and 27% of coal.

      • "43% of the UK's coal is imported from... wait for it... Russia!" Yes, that figure is correct. What is amazing, is that if UK did not import anymore coal, or dig anymore coal, starting today. The UK has stockpiled enough coal to last till 2025.

        And then what do you do when that runs out? Start burning the game jerseys of teams relegated out of the Premier & English Championship Leagues?

        • Hopefully by then, longer-term solutions will be found! Pretty much the entire world is transitioning away from coal. Then Russia invaded Ukraine for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than to seize territory. And now many countries have to rejigger their long-term energy plans to ideally include neither coal nor anything that comes from Russia. Three years is a much more manageable timeline than three months!
    • Citation needed

      • "Coal imports into the U.K. rose 1.8% last year to 4.6 million tons, with 43% coming from Russia, 24% from the U.S. and 11% from Australia, according to government data. Permits to burn the fuel set emission limits for nitrogen oxides and sulfur, and if thresholds can’t be adhered to, a new license may be required, said the people. "

        April, 2022

        https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

        • What you have cited: 43% of UK imported coal came from Russia. What you claimed: 43% of UK coal came from Russia. See the difference? You are missing the part where the UK produces coal domestically.
    • Compared to things like natural gas, logistics behind changing coal suppliers is probably not the epic gotcha that Pro Russia stooges would make it out to be.
      • I'm pretty sure you can load it on barges and there are plenty of coal mines in the US that would be happy to restart operations and export whatever they can excavate.

        • I'm pretty sure those currently holding office in Congress and as President in the USA are quite opposed to allowing more mining of coal. Maybe after the election we could see those in elected federal office to be more open to the idea of mining coal for our NATO allies.

          Right now we see "wood chips" being shipped out of the USA to be burned in various nations in Europe for "green" energy. What is often left out is that the "wood chips" are entire trees being chopped to bits and shipped over, which is then

          • It's "green" simply because they consider the carbon released from burning the wood to be equal to that captured by the tree when grown. And these trees are supposed to be traceable to prove that you aren't burning old growth. However the importation of wood chips from overseas has proven to break the traceability and as such the "green" badge is being tentatively taken away.

    • That's fine, but the phrase "wait for it" has become rather cringy these days.

    • 43% of the UK's coal is imported from... wait for it... Russia!

      Coal is available from many countries and not a resource that is constrained in the world. Your numbers are from the past and do not reflect the present. The UK-Australia trade agreement that is close to agreed only last month had all climate clauses / green energy clauses / restrictions on coal trade removed precisely so they can end Russian imports and switch to Australian coal,... something which angered the greens in both the UK and Australia.

  • Just as long term outsource to China is not viable, long term outsourcing of energy production is a big mistake for these countries. Putin and his ilk will get your wealth or freedom one way or another if you depend on them - there is no free ride. EU will learn from this and adapt - just as the US learned from the oil embargoes of the 1970s and Carter established the DOE and developed the oil and gas fracking technology which made the US an oil and gas independent country.
    • The US is currently oil independent, but our companies are exporting so much that our own prices have skyrocketed and supply is shrinking to worrying levels with heating season not far away, it is just dumb. But the dumbest move so far was releasing some of the strategic emergency reserves that just wound up in other countries, how dumb do you have to be to release emergency reserves when it isn't an emergency? There were no shortages. Just the same dumb thinking that keeps kicking the debt down the road, d

      • Re:Europeans can't outsource dirty fuel any longer (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @04:19PM (#62834195)

        release emergency reserves when it isn't an emergency?

        This is an unfortunate effect of public opinion. When you have news channels 24/7 and a large portion of the country angry about gas prices opening up the reserves is one of the only moves the president can take really at all. Some of it was political grandstanding from the opposition but a frightengly large amount of people really do think the President has an outsized effect on fuel prices when the entire petroleum global market is a wildly complex system. That's the honest answer and even if it's the absolutely correct one it's a pretty unsatisfying answer.

        We can certainly say doing that was the wrong move politically but politican's job is at the end day get votes and that sometimes means doing "something" for better or worse. Certainly doesn't help that the USA is highly car dependant and a spike in gas prices affects an outsized portion of the populace.

      • The US is currently oil independent, but our companies are exporting so much that our own prices have skyrocketed and supply is shrinking to worrying levels with heating season not far away, it is just dumb. But the dumbest move so far was releasing some of the strategic emergency reserves that just wound up in other countries, how dumb do you have to be to release emergency reserves when it isn't an emergency? There were no shortages. Just the same dumb thinking that keeps kicking the debt down the road, debt can be cancelled but if you need that oil and it isn't there... frozen citizens.

        Fossil fuels are a global market. A barrel of oil of the same type will cost the same everywhere.

        The strategic reserve is just idiotic, it is based on a mistaken notion of scarcity. We have plenty of oil we could pump out of the ground, but no, instead we buy it and pump it into the ground.

        • The strategic reserve is there in case of future scarcity. And having it seems like a heck of a good idea. In times of scarcity and war, it will be an important military asset.

      • Re:Europeans can't outsource dirty fuel any longer (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @04:40PM (#62834259)

        The energy independence of the United States is true on paper, but not in practice. The concentration of refineries, the connectivity of pipelines, and the geography mean that the US needs material coming from Canada and from the Gulf Coast in order to serve all markets. If these sources (and export destinations) vanished there would very quickly be a massive glut of crude sitting in places like Cushing, and markets absolutely being starved in pockets all over the country.

        Yes, it is a net exporter on paper... but the devil is in the details.

      • Yes, so incredibly dumb. The US gov't sold a small portion of the oil in the strategic reserve for $5/gal and will now have to go out and pay $3/gal to replace it. I mean how stupid could you get. Could I interest you in some Bitcoin?

  • Push Has Come To Shove (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @03:33PM (#62834019)

    Everybody with even a tiny understanding of the energy needs of the world knew intuitively that the bridge wasn't going to be short. Even if you suddenly had a disruptive technology that provided a one-for-one green replacement for fossil fuels in terms of energy density, transportability, and usability, it would still be decades before the last ICEs, foundries, and power generation plants would be gone.

    Delaying closure of coal plants is something to be expected. It's only slowing forward progress. Turning them back on after they've been decommissioned, on the other hand, that's different.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's about cost. The UK was using gas to cover times when renewables couldn't make up the gap, because gas was cheap. Now gas isn't cheap, so on to the next cheapest thing which is coal.

  • Diversity of supply is critical to meeting a nations energy needs.

    That includes all energy sources, solar, wind, oil, coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, whatever.

  • Just as the nuclear fuel.

  • I mean, good, three years should be enough time to install 500MW of reliable baseload wind turbines, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      Probably. The 1GW Seagreen off shore wind farm is due to come online in the first half of 2023, with the first turbine already feeding power into the grid. Then a bit further down the line there is Inch Cape in the works

      https://www.inchcapewind.com/ [inchcapewind.com]

      They have just booked the Port of Dundee for assembly in 2025-26

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]

      Those two schemes are enough to power all of Scotlands homes with a lot left over, based on average power generation and average power consumption. We just need to bu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        The UK wind farm estate has this month never got above capacity and has in fact spent much of the month at well under ¼ capacity. Hydro across the whole country is minuscule and pumped-hydro is not a great solution for the amount of effort and landscape needed.

        We are a very long way from being free of fossil fuels in the UK at the moment, despite all the progress made.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jabuzz ( 182671 )

          You talked about the UK I talked about Scotland. Fun fact they are not the same. Here in Scotland, 96% of the electrons I use are free of fossil fuels. The ~4% that does not come from a power station at Peterhead that burns gas that used to be flared off on the North Sea oil rigs. For as long as they pump oil out of the North Sea it will produce electricity. Noting that North Sea oil is one of the finer grades of crude oil and is extensively used for things other than burning as fuel so will be pumped for a

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nagora ( 177841 )

            You talked about the UK I talked about Scotland. Fun fact they are not the same.

            Well, then my house is currently fed by 1000000% of the green energy it needs because the UK and my house are not the same thing. Scotland is a small fraction of the country's overall population.

  • Seems like this wasn't much of a surprise. I hope their fix to their energy problems isn't too little and too late.
    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/0... [cnbc.com]
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en... [bbc.com]

    The UK has been in desperate need for electrical generating capacity for a very long time. It's only now with Russia threatening global energy supplies that the government is taking this seriously. The UK government commissioned a study years ago and were warned that without nuclear power as pa

  • Blackouts? It's fine ... (Score:3)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @11:38PM (#62835165)

    ... we've been told by our wonderfully clever ministers over here that we won't have any blackouts this winter.

    These are the same people who told us leaving the EU would bring wonderful opportunities.

    Everything is just fine. /s

    • ... we've been told by our wonderfully clever ministers over here that we won't have any blackouts this winter.

      These are the same people who told us leaving the EU would bring wonderful opportunities.

      Everything is just fine. /s

      It will actually be fine - there won't be blackouts, because most people won't be able to afford to heat their homes or eat hot food.

      See? - Our government has a plan! - genius!
      Rather than subsidise energy prices to get us through this winter with some dignity, just keep those prices high.

      Not only will millions be unable to heat their homes, but thousands of small businesses will go under, unable to survive with energy prices triple or even quadruple what they were a year ago.
      If those businesses close = win,

  • A fact many people and journalists are missing: the energy prices began to rise in September 2021. The Ukraine invasion was on February 24th 2022. The Ukraine war has minimal effect on the gas- and energy-prices. Energy prices are traded at the futures market.

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