UK's Electricity Was Cleanest Ever in 2024 59
Britain recorded its cleanest electricity generation in 2024, with carbon dioxide emissions falling to 124g per kilowatt hour, down from 419g in 2014, according to analysis by Carbon Brief released Thursday.
Renewables, including wind, solar and biomass, provided 45% of the country's power, while total low-carbon sources reached 58%. Gas remained the largest single source at 28% of generation, slightly ahead of wind at 26%.
Renewables, including wind, solar and biomass, provided 45% of the country's power, while total low-carbon sources reached 58%. Gas remained the largest single source at 28% of generation, slightly ahead of wind at 26%.
biomass isn't clean (Score:3)
even if it is so called renewable
Re:biomass isn't clean (Score:5, Informative)
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Depends on the biomass.
Wood pellets? Pretty awful. But "biomass" also includes resources like captured methane from anaerobic digestion processes in landfills and wastewater treatment, which would normally be either directly vented to atmosphere or flared off. Either way, using that to generate power is a huge benefit since you're making that gas anyway, and you're releasing those emissions anyway, so might as well put it to good use.
The article says the emissions from biomass were calculated to include the
Re:biomass isn't clean (Score:4, Informative)
The article also says that the UK's biomass generation includes anaerobic digestion of organic waste, as well as landfill gas and sewage gas. Drax's wood pellets are a problem, but make up a third of UK biomass power, so are significant but not dominant.
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Indeed. The data here is also about electricity generation, while the methane from anaerobic digestion of sewage will often be used by the sewage plant -- this will drop the requirements for electricity from outside, but not otherwise change the percentage of renewables. So as an energy source rather than an electricity source, it is more significant still.
Biomass IS very Clean (Score:2)
>> UK's biomass generation includes anaerobic digestion of organic waste, as well as landfill gas and sewage gas.
The burning of that methane is extremely good for the environment, as methane is 25x more problematic to the climate than CO2, and this gas was previously released.
This carbon also mostly does not come from oil, so it is also renewable.
Burning Biomass actually is very very Clean, and good for the climate.
Counterpoint analysys requested (Score:2)
Better metric ... (Score:2)
Re:Better metric ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't start as many dumb arguments on Slashdot, so I guess it depends on what you want to use it for...
I'm with you, I think it's a helpfully clear indicator that decarbonisation is a doable thing, is a volume control, not an on-off switch, etc
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The two metrics are telling you different things. "We ran on 100% renewables for X days" tells you that a grid can run stably without the requirement for fossil fuel stations forming and stablizing that grid. That is an important thing, because early renewable power sources could not have done this. While the CO2 output or annual percentage of renewables, show that you can power a major grid at scale.
We really need to do both things; and to work out how to do that with as little excess capacity as needed (o
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tells you that a grid can run stably without the requirement for fossil fuel stations forming and stablizing that grid
But we don't know that thermal stations were not running on 'hot standby' in the event a cloud drifted over the PV farm. Grams of CO2 per kWh captures that information (in a way).
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Well, that is why you need both measures.
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Cheap, easy electricity! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also, refining oil consumes quite a huge lot of electricity.
When this is gone, the grid will be better off.
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Texas is almost as good as the UK now as far as renewables, and grid scale batteries
Texas has 2x the land area and 1/20 of the electricity consumption, and Texas's winter insolation is better than the UK's average. Texas is has lots of space for wind (and the wind for it) without the expense of offshore wind.
It looks from the numbers like Texas could on the whole power itself many times over with renewables pretty easily.
Re:plastering farmland with solar panels isn't cle (Score:5, Insightful)
1. This is the UK. Solar is only 4% of our mix
2. Lots of that is rooftop solar
3. Far more arable land is used for golf courses and housing in the UK than for solar. Like orders of magnitude more. I am willing to bet that you have never ever not once posted about your concern on the impact of golf courses on arable land availability
4. Even a massive expansion in solar to be a material fraction of the UK power mix would have no material impact on total arable land
5. On the other hand, climate change is making arable land unusable really fast and at scale. Again, I bet you have never ever not once posted about your concern on the impact of climate change on arable land availability
6. Agrivoltaics has been a thing for years at this point, giving the lie to your core assertion
I do miss the days when Slashdot was mostly filled with posters who *liked* new tech and were happy to see old tech replaced.
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I do miss the days when Slashdot was mostly filled with posters who *liked* new tech and were happy to see old tech replaced.
Those posters from back then grew older and turned into "gerrof my lawn". When you've experience a few decades of enshittification of technology sold as progress as everyone tries to re-invent the wheel to milk more profit from it you'll end up the same way.
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Given that I said “I do miss the days”, I am *by definition* one of “those posters from back then”. So telling me how I’ll turn out in the future based on the assumption that I wasn’t there in the past, and that I’ll become disenchanted with tech progress, when I haven’t been, is silly
Re:plastering farmland with solar panels isn't cle (Score:5, Informative)
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And, yet, the grass does grow underneath solar panels. So, even without agrivoltaics, you get an area of wild grass and flowers that might otherwise be used for arable. This makes a fantastic place for insect life to grow, birds to nest, all of which increases the richness of the local ecosystem. Which is good for the surrounding farmed environment: the birds help to keep down a variety of pests, and the insect life will act as pollinators.
Of course, you could achieve something similar by just leaving the
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Overheating? In the UK?
Re:plastering farmland with solar panels isn't cle (Score:4, Informative)
>> it turns arable land useless
Nope, it does not.
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it turns arable land useless
I mostly hear this argument from people who are just repeating what someone else told them. The truth is this is why you don't use premium grade 1 arable land for solar arrays. It wouldn't make financial sense for a farmer to do this, nor are you likely to get planning consent, believe it or not people have thought about this. In the UK we use the ALC system [arcgis.com] to grade land. Most solar arrays will be built on subgrade 3b (Moderate) or worse land and you can still graze sheep under it.
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It doesn't make sense to put solar panels over farmland until after 100% of parking lots are covered in solar panels. Covering parking lots with solar panels keeps parked cars cooler in hot weather, keeps people walking to/from cars drying in rainy weather, and keeps snow from accumulating on cars in snowy weather. Every parking lot should be 100% covered in solar panels purely for the benefit to the people who park there. Any power generation is an entirely incidental side benefit.
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This is gong to accelerate over the next 5 years (Score:3)
Not only is this good to see, but it's exciting to bear in mind that the 124g number is going to fall faster still in the next few years:
1. The CfD auctions are back on track, with the Tories' fuckup of Round 5 in the rear view mirror. Round 6 will add nearly 10GW more of capacity, largely offshore wind and solar
2. Onshore wind is now back, with the idiot Tory planning rule reversed
3. Solar farms have started to be built, with the idiot Tory planning blocks on three farms reversed
4. Idiot Tory planning rules that impede all sorts of growth are now being reversed
The Tories really fucked over everything. I truly hope they're done for a decade or more
Respect to mighty GB ! (Score:2)
>> falling to 124g per kilowatt hour, down from 419g in 2014
That is an amazing yearly average.
Eliminating coal, while even reducing transitional gas and expensive nuclear is a real feat!
Soon to be near zero.... Respect to mighty GB !
Germany has been overtaken, they only halved.
(while on the other hand nicely eliminating nuclear power, so that's nice)
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Instead we outsource production of energy to manipulate our globally insignificant CO2 figures at the expense of ever increasing energy costs, (yet another election pledge that the liars in the Labour Party have already broken).
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We have lots of coast for offshore wind.
The issue with energy costs is that it's still legally tied to the cost of gas. Suppliers with mostly wind farms can undercut this but aren't allowed to abd then had profits subject to a windfall tax, reduci
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Solar works fine in the UK. Not as well as if we were further south, but plenty well enough to deliver a material fraction of energy (almost certainly underestimated in the figures from Carbon Briefing because it’s behind-the-meter). Pronouncements like “ Installing Chinese-made solar panels in the UK is a joke” just looks ridiculous to any of the hundreds of thousands of people who have residential solar, and is even more absurd when taken at face value as a dismissal of the three big sol
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As for the next election, the Conservatives and Reform will split the opposition so my money would be on a hung parliament. Labour might form a m
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Why would I be pleasant to you? You want to set up an idiotic energy economy that will fuck things up in the same way that the Tories fucked it up for the last 14 years, just like they fucked up absolutely everything else from driving tests to criminal justice to primary care to GCSEs during the pandemic. I have no time for this kind of idiocy.
And oh look, you respond to the political commentary, but have absolutely nothing to say in relation to the substantive points on strike prices, land area use, etc. W
And yet... (Score:2)
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For household consumers in the EU (defined for the purpose of this article as medium-sized consumers with an annual consumption between 2 500 Kilowatt hours (KWh) and 5 000 KWh), electricity prices in the first half of 2024 were highest in Germany (€0.3951 per KWh), Ireland (€0.3736 per KWh), Denmark (€0.37078 per KWh) and Czechia (€0.3381 per KWh) - see Figure 1.
it's also crazy expensive (Score:1)
3x the EU
4x the US
All to impact global warming probably less than a single year of new Chinese coal plants.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/bu... [telegraph.co.uk]
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What's three times the EU? UK electricity cost is £0.25 per kWh, EU average is €0.22, or about £0.18. Is three times 0.18 more or less than 0.25?
His source is the Tele... Its pretty much guaranteed to be bullshit.
Our electricity is more expensive (just not 3 times more expensive) compared to the continent because the conservatives had the brilliant idea that privatising the whole thing would lower bills... It didn't.
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because the conservatives had the brilliant idea that privatising the whole thing would lower bills
I think some of them are genuinly stupid enough to believe that sort of shit (Truss...) for many of the rest, it was a bald faced lie: they knew it wouldn't work, but they were instigating a huge giveaway of publicly owned stuff to their cronies in order to enrich themselves.
One of the key strategies of the Tories is to yell about how the other guys are doing all the bad things that the Tories are doing to ser
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What's three times the EU? UK electricity cost is £0.25 per kWh, EU average is €0.22, or about £0.18. Is three times 0.18 more or less than 0.25?
Not even 25p per kWh if you shop around. I'm on a fixed tariff paying 22p.
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If you can cite any plausible plan for splitting China into 100 separate nations,
Not relevant to the discussion.
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Sustainable energy - without the hot air (Score:1)
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It is worth reading, but worth remembering how out of date it is. His three top options for energy (wind, nuclear and concentrated solar power) are rather wrong now. We have achieved many of wind power values that he mentions without, for example, covering 10% of the UK with Wind Farms, although indeed our wind farms are now "country sized". Just that many are out at sea, and those on land do not stop us using the land for other things.
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