Why we need "Net zero"

[Beelbeebub]

12 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

There is a rail line into ratcliffe iirc

And the lines to the mines?... 

[Beelbeebub]

I really don't understand thus quest to find any other source than that we are successfully installing at pace at the moment. 

[Roger440]

53 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

And the idea that we "still have coal in the UK" is not the whole picture. 

 

We have coal deposits in the UK, but we don't really have the skills, infrastructure or political will to extract it.

 

Who has recent expertise in coal mining in the UK? All the knowledge any coal miners had will be the better part of 40 years out of date. Who makes the equipment? How much does it cost? 

 

Which communities will welcome the return of coal mining with all the negatives it brings (subsidince, ground water contamination, spoil heaps, heavy machinery). 

 

Who are you going to get to work down the mines? I know modern mining is a lot less labour intensive but you still need some young people who want to do it. 

 

How do you get the coal from the mines to the power stations, rail is your only viable option so we'd have to build at least some some new rail lines. How long and how much will that be? 

 

And don't forget, once you have done alm that, trained up a work force, built a supply chain and logistics route, refurbished or built new power stations. It all comes to halt in 25 years when we run out of coal... 

 

 

 

You do talk absolute bollocks dont you.

 

We were still mining coal up to 2024. Thats manifestly NOT 40 years ago.

 

If someone said, we need to mine some coal, some companies will mine the coal.

 

Most of the railway infrastructure is still there. Fortunately the railway isnt quite so keen to bin of useful infrastructure, because, you know, might come in handy at some point.

 

Edited to add, the last coal mine actually had to be forced to close by government. The company was quite happy to carry on. As a viable business.

Edited 8 hours ago by Roger440

[Oz07]

8 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

You do talk absolute bollocks dont you.

 

We were still mining coal up to 2024. Thats manifestly NOT 40 years ago.

 

If someone said, we need to mine some coal, some companies will mine the coal.

 

Most of the railway infrastructure is still there. Fortunately the railway isnt quite so keen to bin of useful infrastructure, because, you know, might come in handy at some point.

 

Edited to add, the last coal mine actually had to be forced to close by government. The company was quite happy to carry on. As a viable business.

The comment its not working when they blow it up gets me. Obviously they're not blowing it up while burning coal. The point is it was shut down due to poor decisions. It was economically viable. Its like saying the landfill tax on the ash effects the viability. Just get rid of that tax for this byproduct. Job done.

[SteamyTea]

28 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

If someone said, we need to mine some coal, some companies will mine the coal

Just like all the companies mining tin in Cornwall.

 

[Beelbeebub]

22 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

You do talk absolute bollocks dont you.

 

We were still mining coal up to 2024. Thats manifestly NOT 40 years ago.

 

If someone said, we need to mine some coal, some companies will mine the coal.

 

Most of the railway infrastructure is still there. Fortunately the railway isnt quite so keen to bin of useful infrastructure, because, you know, might come in handy at some point.

 

Edited to add, the last coal mine actually had to be forced to close by government. The company was quite happy to carry on. As a viable business.

And which mine was that?how many employees.? What capacity? 

 

As far as I can see the last major Mine (kelkingly) closed around 2015. It produce around 2m tonnes a year and emolued around 700.

 

If you include mines closed in the last 15 years (where you plausibly be able to rehire some staff) there are less than 2,500 employees and they priced about 5m tons of coal, less than 25% of what we burnt back then. 

 

Currently there appear to be less than 500 miners making less than 100k tons a year. 

 

I'd we assume the rail isnin place, which it will only be for past coal mines and plants, *and* we manage to restart coal mining on a scale not seen for generations *and* we refurbish old coal plants and build new ones *in the next decade*. 

 

Then we still have to work out what to do by 2050.

 

Or we could just keep doing what we have been doing for the last few years here and around the world (just 3 Chinese Co. installed more capacity than the entire UK grid last year alone) and add more and more renewables, update our grid and local storage. 

 

Then our demand for fossil fuels will have fallen so that waht little we do produce in 2035 will be a reasonable proportion of our consumption. 

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

30 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

The comment its not working when they blow it up gets me. Obviously they're not blowing it up while burning coal. The point is it was shut down due to poor decisions. It was economically viable. Its like saying the landfill tax on the ash effects the viability. Just get rid of that tax for this byproduct. Job done.

The point you are missing is that right now, all the still standing coal plants will require significant investment to get back to producing power. They aren't just sitting there waiting for someone to turn the key. 

 

The time to reverse the decision was before they stopped working. That ship has sailed. 

 

The argument that it was a bad decision to shut them down in the first place is a hindsight one and if we are playing that game we can argue that we should have started our nuclear replacement earlier and for more plants. You can argue we shouldn't have banned onshore wind for the last decade. You can argue we should have been pushing for more efficient homes and heatpumps years ago. 

 

But "if wishes were horses we would all ride."

 

 

[SteamyTea]

I wonder what generation technology would come out on top, if we passed legislation that said anything can be built anywhere.

I doubt it would be thermal or nuclear.

[-rick-]

To summarise:

 

We should want to reduce dependence on imported fuels. Given our current situation and available resources by far the quickest, cheapest and easiest way to do this is to build more solar, wind and battery storage. Everything else is more expensive and slower.

[Beelbeebub]

35 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I wonder what generation technology would come out on top, if we passed legislation that said anything can be built anywhere.

I doubt it would be thermal or nuclear.

IIRC the bare lifetime £/Mwh was around £60 for a CCGT plant. 

 

I imagine a coal plant would probably be more expensive to build and run. 

 

It was around £40 for an offshore wind project. 

 

Onshore and PV were a little bit cheaper again

 

For the gas plant £40-50 of that £60 was fuel. 

 

Which has now near doubled 

[JohnMo]

3 hours ago, Roger440 said:

were still mining coal up to 2024

But what sort of coal was that? There are different grades for different purposes. The mine closed in 2024 produced high-grade anthracite coal, which is primarily used for industrial purposes, such as manufacturing steel and water filtration - no use for power stations.

 

The last coal powered power stations imported the coal - so no point having them for self sufficient reasons.

 

The way this thread is going, we will be dragging back the steam trains, and steam cars. Back in the good old days, when everything was rosy, we had pea soupers due to all the sulphur we were burning via coal. We can always bring coal gas back while we are at.

 

And send the kids up the chimney to clean them.

 

Sorry this thread is going daft. Who the f*ck wants coal anything - even the Chinese are installing more renewables than coal, and what coal power stations are there, are only used 50% of the time.

[Beelbeebub]

32 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

But what sort of coal was that? There are different grades for different purposes. The mine closed in 2024 produced high-grade anthracite coal, which is primarily used for industrial purposes, such as manufacturing steel and water filtration - no use for power stations.

 

The last coal powered power stations imported the coal - so no point having them for self sufficient reasons.

 

The way this thread is going, we will be dragging back the steam trains, and steam cars. Back in the good old days, when everything was rosy, we had pea soupers due to all the sulphur we were burning via coal. We can always bring coal gas back while we are at.

 

And send the kids up the chimney to clean them.

 

Sorry this thread is going daft. Who the f*ck wants coal anything - even the Chinese are installing more renewables than coal, and what coal power stations are there, are only used 50% of the time.

This is only a theory but certain segments of the population have become so entrenched against renewables because of their opposition to "green stuff", which seems to be very culture war based, that they are unable to accept that renewables can make sense for other reasons. 

 

 

[JohnMo]

All the talk is about banning social media for under 16, just ban it all together. So much miss information told as a truth, and then the algorithm just points you at similar rubbish. People that don't have science background just lap it up.

 

Sat next to guy on the train he was telling me that people are daft having solar especially in Scotland, I told him how much I had exported so far in March, he was was quite shocked. Also told him what I paid for it as a self install, he expected tens of thousands, not the couple I actually paid.

[Crofter]

13 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

All the talk is about banning social media for under 16, just ban it all together. So much miss information told as a truth, and then the algorithm just points you at similar rubbish. People that don't have science background just lap it up.

 

Sat next to guy on the train he was telling me that people are daft having solar especially in Scotland, I told him how much I had exported so far in March, he was was quite shocked. Also told him what I paid for it as a self install, he expected tens of thousands, not the couple I actually paid.

It's not just social media. We have people in positions of authority coming out with obviously and easily proven lies.

 

It's no wonder the general public have a poor grasp of facts around these contentious issues. There is no price to pay for lying. There's is no longer even any shame if you are called out on it. 

 

And it's only going to get worse as AI fakes proliferate.

[Oz07]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

But what sort of coal was that? There are different grades for different purposes. The mine closed in 2024 produced high-grade anthracite coal, which is primarily used for industrial purposes, such as manufacturing steel and water filtration - no use for power stations.

 

The last coal powered power stations imported the coal - so no point having them for self sufficient reasons.

 

The way this thread is going, we will be dragging back the steam trains, and steam cars. Back in the good old days, when everything was rosy, we had pea soupers due to all the sulphur we were burning via coal. We can always bring coal gas back while we are at.

 

And send the kids up the chimney to clean them.

 

Sorry this thread is going daft. Who the f*ck wants coal anything - even the Chinese are installing more renewables than coal, and what coal power stations are there, are only used 50% of the time.

How many coal power stations do the Chinese commission each year?

[-rick-]

6 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

How many coal power stations do the Chinese commission each year?

 

Not sure but am pretty sure that they are just replacing older less efficient ones with fewer more efficient and cleaner ones + a unfathomable quantity of solar, wind, nuclear, etc (to our eyes).

Edited 3 hours ago by -rick-

[Crofter]

11 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

How many coal power stations do the Chinese commission each year?

They are installing a lot of coal power stations, yet their emissions are falling. 

 

The power stations don't do much harm if you're not actually running them.

[Oz07]

The competition is who has the most energy not who has the cleanest. Look up how much coal China built in 2024 and 25. They ain't picky about where it comes from solar, nuclear, coal whatever works

Edited 2 hours ago by Oz07

[Beelbeebub]

1 hour ago, Crofter said:

It's not just social media. We have people in positions of authority coming out with obviously and easily proven lies

Farage

 

"Given that our critical reserve of natural gas is down to two days and how vulnerable we are, and with talk potentially of energy rationing coming later this year, isn't it time we change course, get rid of excessive taxation on the exploration companies, open up the licences, and become self-sufficient in natural gas."

 

Of course, given his propensity for lying he will outright deny that he ever meant that granting gas licences ever meant that we could become self sufficient in gas.  

 

And Badenoch

 

" Drilling in the North Sea and expanding other sources of generation … is the only way we can protect families from rising bills.”

 

And countless others going on TV and social media giving tge impression that there are vast reserves in thrnorrh sea and the only thing stopping the UK from becoming Saudi-on-sea is woke lefties. 

 

 

[DamonHD]

1 hour ago, -rick- said:

 

Not sure but am pretty sure that they are just replacing older less efficient ones with fewer more efficient and cleaner ones + a unfathomable quantity of solar, wind, nuclear, etc (to our eyes).

New coal *is* being built, nominally for reasons of energy security, but running at lower and lower capacity factor.

 

Eg see here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/

Edited 2 hours ago by DamonHD

[Oz07]

1 minute ago, DamonHD said:

New coal *is* being built, nominally for reasons of energy security, but running at lower and lower capacity factor.

 

Eg see here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/

So coal has a place to help secure energy. Are we all paying attention now

[Beelbeebub]

China is building new coal, but not much and as some is replacing old coal the total growth in thermal capacity is very modest. About 60Gw (out of nearly 3,500 Gw total) against 90Gw of wind and +300Gw of solar. 

 

As you can see even though energy production is rising the share by fossil fuels is falling. 

 

For all the people who say "why shoukd the UK do anything, China is the important one" - China is doing something. They installed more wind capacity in one year that the entire UK grid (some 45Gw is, depending) and more than 4x in solar. 

 

LNG imports were falling (luckily for them) and oil was falling though it did rise slightly last year, mostly due to refilling stockpiles (wouldn't that have been a good idea). I believe actual use of liquid fuels fell. 

[DamonHD]

10 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

So coal has a place to help secure energy. Are we all paying attention now

There is no need to be patronising - have I spoken to you that way?

 

I and a few others may just possibly have thought ahout this issue once or twice.

 

Soon all the fossil fuels have to go, or we wipe outselves out.  There's a famous quote similar to "Humans would be the first species to choose to make itself extinct because it wasn't cost effective to bother doing the right thing."

 

The sooner we stop dragging heels and at most use fossils ONLY as an emergency backstop the better.

 

Carping and delaying makes everything worse for everyone.

[Crofter]

This is a good example of why we need a bit of nuance in the debate. 

 

You can quite truthfully say that China are building a large number of new coal power stations every year. And if it suits your agenda, that's the end of the sentence. 

 

The bigger picture is that these plants are in part replacing older, less efficient ones, and are acting as backup to an increasingly renewables dependent grid. So that China's emissions are actually falling. 

 

Good luck finding that level of analysis in the Daily Mail or GB News.

[Beelbeebub]

9 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

So coal has a place to help secure energy. Are we all paying attention now

China still has a big infrastructure for coal as it was a huge operator and coal is still used. There is a huge amount of inertia in the planning and commissioning system.