Coal

[Stinsy]

FF seems to be making a comeback:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58469238

[spread-tee]

From the article,

Both the government and National Grid ESO have committed to phasing out coal power completely by 2024 to cut carbon emissions. However, coal is currently still used when it is better value than gas.

So there you have it, profit is more important than saving the Planet or lives

epds

[Paul_F]

From the article,

Both the government and National Grid ESO have committed to phasing out coal power completely by 2024 to cut carbon emissions. However, coal is currently still used when it is better value than gas.

So there you have it, profit is more important than saving the Planet or lives

epds

I wouldn't get too worried about it - electricity prices are extraordinarily high at the moment, and the reality is that we do have limited resources one of which is money. On a cost to avoided CO₂ ratio metric, we're almost certainly better off in the long run by firing up West Burton for a few days and spend the money saved on some more offshore wind.

[nowty]

I suspect we wont be getting rid of coal until "Hinkley Point C" nuke is operational, circa 2026.

[spread-tee]

From the article,

Both the government and National Grid ESO have committed to phasing out coal power completely by 2024 to cut carbon emissions. However, coal is currently still used when it is better value than gas.

So there you have it, profit is more important than saving the Planet or lives

epds

I wouldn't get too worried about it - electricity prices are extraordinarily high at the moment, and the reality is that we do have limited resources one of which is money. On a cost to avoided CO₂ ratio metric, we're almost certainly better off in the long run by firing up West Burton for a few days and spend the money saved on some more offshore wind.

In terms of total CO2 it isn't a biggy, but it doesn't send out a great message when we are trying to persuade others to decarbonise at COP out 26 , mind you I suspect our credibility is almost gone anyway. It is grist to the FF mill too banging on about how we can't do without........any savings are more likely to end up in shareholders pockets than on a wind farm I suspect.

Desp

[Mart]

Yep, burning some FF's to fill in the gaps at the moment, has to be the best economic solution (for now). I'm like a big kid getting excited about all the storage ideas (intraday, medium, and longer term), but until we have lots of excess generation, and on a regular basis, the simplest solution remains spill/waste/curtailment.

The great news though, is that over the last decade, the growth in RE generation has displaced roughly half of the FF generation off the grid. So if we can do the same again for another 10yrs (around 3.5% pa), plus perhaps an extra 1% for the nuclear that will be ending, then that's leccy 'sorted'. And that level of rollout, which could go faster now, since costs have fallen massively since the late 2000's, would probably also outstrip the growing demand from FF transport and space heating moving over to electricity too.

And during this decade, ideally the first half, we should get a good grip on the viability and costs of all the upcoming forms of medium and longer term storage too, especially with some of the newcomers such as gravitricity, hot rock storage, compressed CO2, etc etc..

I know I'm very negative about addressing the problem of AGW, because it's now too late, but I'm actually very positive about us moving to a low carbon (ideally net zero) economy, quite quickly.