Why we need "Net zero"

[Beelbeebub]

1 minute ago, Crofter said:

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

They will fix the energy security issue by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will fix the potholes in the roads by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will fix the cost of living crisis by stopping the small boats

 

They will fix the NHS by stopping the small boats 

 

They will lower taxes by stopping the small boats

 

They will ensure England win the world Cup by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will get rid of the itchy burning sensation between you toes by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will fix your leaky roof by stopping the small boats. 

[Oz07]

16 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

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.

Sorry my reply wasn't aimed at you it was to the people who were telling me coal isn't secure. 

[Onoff]

28 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

They will fix the energy security issue by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will fix the potholes in the roads by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will fix the cost of living crisis by stopping the small boats

 

They will fix the NHS by stopping the small boats 

 

They will lower taxes by stopping the small boats

 

They will ensure England win the world Cup by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will get rid of the itchy burning sensation between you toes by stopping the small boats. 

 

They will fix your leaky roof by stopping the small boats. 

 

It's almost as if they're suggesting a lot of public funding issues are caused by uncontrolled immigration and the costs entailed supporting/dealing with it. Weird eh? 

[SteamyTea]

China gets a lot of coal from Australia.

About 85 million tonnes. Which, fascinatingly has increased by 50% since 2023.

Did they know something.

[Onoff]

7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

China gets a lot of coal from Australia.

About 85 million tonnes. Which, fascinatingly has increased by 50% since 2023.

Did they know something.

 

Australia has 160 billion tons of thereabouts of proven coal reserves. Reckon the Chinese will be running coal fired stations for a good while yet. 

[Beelbeebub]

11 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

It's almost as if they're suggesting a lot of public funding issues are caused by uncontrolled immigration and the costs entailed supporting/dealing with it. Weird eh? 

Like all their arguments it's simplistic in the extreme and designed to appeal to people who can't or don't understand nuance or complication. 

 

The UK deficit is over 70bn

 

The total number of illegal arrivals is less than 50k.

 

So unless each one is costing us £1.4million it's not the answer. 

 

 

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

34 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Sorry my reply wasn't aimed at you it was to the people who were telling me coal isn't secure. 

It's not that it isn't secure. It's that there isn't enough of it (besides all the other issues). Again, if we use coal to become energy independent we still have to electrify the economy (ev's heatpumps etc) and we have to rebuild lots of coal mines and coal plants. 

 

And then work out what to do 25 years later when the coal runs out

[Beelbeebub]

12 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Australia has 160 billion tons of thereabouts of proven coal reserves. Reckon the Chinese will be running coal fired stations for a good while yet. 

China is reducing imports. Their goal is energy security through independence. 

 

Being reliant on coal and imported coal at that, is counter to that aim. 

 

So they are increacing local production whilst reducing reliance on coal as a %of their mix. Given the size of China it's going to take a while but they are driving in the right direction. 

 

So is the UK to be fair.

[Tetrarch]

12 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

It's not that it isn't secure. It's that there isn't enough of it (besides all the other issues). Again, if we use coal to become energy independent we still have to electrify the economy (ev's heatpumps etc) and we have to rebuild lots of coal mines and coal plants. 

 

And then work out what to do 25 years later when the coal runs out

Now you're getting it!

We adopt a sensible policy and give ourselves some time to innovate and find an alternative.

 

Regards

 

Tet

[Tetrarch]

On 27/03/2026 at 19:35, Beelbeebub said:

There is no reason that renewables (wind, solar and battery) cannot generate and maintain frequencies and voltages. It is just that in Spain they were mostly set to follow voltages and frequencies. 

 

Unlike a rotating generator renewables can produce voltage and frequency independently.  You could have an inverter provide a rock steady 50hz regardless of current and voltage. 

 

The dropping of frequency as the grid loads up is entirely a weakness of the old, spinning grid. 

 

If we were building a renewable only grid we could hold 50hz. In fact, I bet that adding spinning ac generators to such a system would be an issue as suddenly you have a device that might start to drag the frequency down in overload.. 

 

The iberian blackout exposed some weaknesses in the way Spain was integrating renewables into the grid not intrinsic issues with renewable generators 

 

it's not the direction of travel, just the pace that I have a problem with

 

Regards

 

Tet

[jack]

On 27/03/2026 at 19:27, Beelbeebub said:

IIRC there is something in the ethernet protocol about each node waiting a random time before resending is there has been a packet clash to avoid exactly this sort of unintentional synchronisation. 

 

Random attempts to access shared resources is common across a wide range of communications protocols. It's used across all the major mobile standards in the form of a RACH channel. 

[DamonHD]

16 minutes ago, Tetrarch said:

Now you're getting it!

We adopt a sensible policy and give ourselves some time to innovate and find an alternative.

 

Regards

 

Tet

We have had decades, and we already have developed enough tech to do a reasonable job.  It's never going to be beautiful and smooth, giving up the unpaid-for externalities/damage from fossil fuels and some other bad behaviours.  Passively waiting for some miracle that cannot happen will have us all dead.

Edited 7 hours ago by DamonHD

[Beelbeebub]

13 minutes ago, Tetrarch said:

 

it's not the direction of travel, just the pace that I have a problem with

 

Regards

 

Tet

Too slow or too fast? 

[Beelbeebub]

23 minutes ago, Tetrarch said:

Now you're getting it!

We adopt a sensible policy and give ourselves some time to innovate and find an alternative.

 

Regards

 

Tet

But we have the alternative in front of us.

 

We have a road map of how to do it.  The national grid have the plans and projects to upgrade the transmission. We have the generation technologies already proven. We just need to do it. 

 

It would be madness to spend as much money rebuilding a coal based infrastructure. 

 

You saw the report that the cost of a single oil crisis, like the two we have had already this decade, is equivalent to just following the plan we have. 

Edited 7 hours ago by Beelbeebub

[ProDave]

On 26/03/2026 at 10:54, SteamyTea said:

Nuclear fusion is going to be market ready in 20 years time.

We were first told that 40 years ago.

[JohnMo]

41 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

But we have the alternative in front of us.

 

We have a road map of how to do it.  The national grid have the plans and projects to upgrade the transmission. We have the generation technologies already proven. We just need to do it. 

 

It would be madness to spend as much money rebuilding a coal based infrastructure. 

 

You saw the report that the cost of a single oil crisis, like the two we have had already this decade, is equivalent to just following the plan we have. 

Your wasting your time and effort, they have possibly just swallowed all the miss information, from social media and now that is the only thing they believe. 

 

Coal, we have about 23 million tonnes of proven reserves in 2023, adding a generation efficiency of 40% that's about 70TW/h. UK uses 300+TW/h.

 

So coal lovers get real, you would power the UK for a few months, then need imports. NOT SELF SUFFICIENT!

[Onoff]

On 26/03/2026 at 10:54, SteamyTea said:

Nuclear fusion is going to be market ready in 20 years time.

 

All it needs is Keanu Reeves and a tuning fork! 

 

We could of course mitigate a lot of this by having a state body with real teeth to force insulation upgrades of existing housing stock. Why not instigate punitive taxation for those not complying? (I'd be f***ed). Then ensure proper compliance by those doing it. Let's get away from the mass builders using one good test result for the whole estate and cowboy heat pump installers fitting them to inappropriate buildings. 

[Oz07]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

But we have the alternative in front of us.

 

We have a road map of how to do it.  The national grid have the plans and projects to upgrade the transmission. We have the generation technologies already proven. We just need to do it. 

 

It would be madness to spend as much money rebuilding a coal based infrastructure. 

 

You saw the report that the cost of a single oil crisis, like the two we have had already this decade, is equivalent to just following the plan we have. 

Tbf im not really on about re building our network based on coal or running off 100% coal. All I'm saying is its been a choice to demolish our remaining working coal power stations. Will that be a good choice time will tell. I don't think it is. A lot here seem to be doing some impressive mental gymnastics to explain why China are building lots of new coal plants but it's ok for them. 

[SteamyTea]

27 minutes ago, Onoff said:

having a state body with real teeth to force

 

27 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Keanu Reeves

He is your man, brilliant paper pusher.

I saw him kill 3 men with a (expletive deleted)ing pencil.

[BotusBuild]

On 28/03/2026 at 09:40, Beelbeebub said:

most UK oil is exported

This is the biggest thing that almost everyone seems to be missing. Even if we extract the oil, we don't now, and won't in the future, use it to do much useful stuff in the UK. Therefore drilling for UK oil is NOT going to make us energy secure. End of.

Edited 5 hours ago by BotusBuild
grammar and speeling

[JohnMo]

41 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

China are building lots of new coal plants but it's ok for them.

They also import the coal - not energy self sufficient.

 

We don't have much coal as proven reserves, so you are saying the policy is build coal powered power stations that rely on imported coal. There is zero business case for that sort of project. Why would anyone spend there money on that. A power station that has been shutdown and not had preservation maintenance completed will be good for scrap only. All the rotating equipment (turbines generators, pumps, fans) will have bowed shafts, the bearings and seals will be no use.

 

Think the l'm for coal lobby, live in a make believe world, that doesn't exist. I will bow out now.

[BotusBuild]

And there we have it.

We have in this thread,working together, but maybe not all agreeing, shown that both OIL and COAL are not the fuels that are going to make us energy secure in the UK in the long term, and maybe even not in the medium term, due to supply (local or imported), cost of extraction, labour skill availability (coal mining).

 

Generally, I think we all agree that a mix of primary fuels is required to provide our electricity. The mix will have to change over time, but the general move should be to a final position (IMHO) of:

1. Base load of Nuclear (fission to start, maybe fusion in the long term (maybe more than 20 years 😁))
2. Base load of Gas Turbines with 90 day storage
3. Hydro (as in Wales)
4. Tidal
5. Solar
6. Wind

3. through 6. is where the focus needs to be, both planning, investment and implementation. Planning rules need to be applied to minimize local and irrelevant objections. (e.g. noise, "they're ugly")

1., in my opinion, needs planning and regulation changed to make planning and implementation quicker, and therefore, costs lower.

 

As they say on LInkedIn I'm "Open to Work". Just get out of my way 🙂.

 

[Beelbeebub]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

We were first told that 40 years ago.

My bet is commercial fusion before green hydrogen boilers and clean coal..... 

[-rick-]

2 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

My bet is commercial fusion before green hydrogen boilers and clean coal..... 

 

Possible, there is so much private capital / startups persuing fusion right now, feels like we are on the edge of major progress. (A lot of the hard bits have been done already, still plenty left though)

 

But I think this bet is more that green hydrogen boilers, etc, are unlikely to happen at any scale at all. Other technologies are a better option.

[Beelbeebub]

21 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

Possible, there is so much private capital / startups persuing fusion right now, feels like we are on the edge of major progress. (A lot of the hard bits have been done already, still plenty left though)

 

But I think this bet is more that green hydrogen boilers, etc, are unlikely to happen at any scale at all. Other technologies are a better option.

The carbon capture brigade neglect to mention that capturing the carbon from a combustion process intrinsically requires energy.  You burn about 25% more fuel per Mwh running a carbon capture plant as you do a "normal" plant. 

 

Of course this is a win/win for the fossil fuel providers, not only do they get to keep selling their product, but demand actually goes up....