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 All the knowledge any coal miners had will be the better part of 40 years out of date.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 2 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