UK goes a whole week without using coal-fired electricity

[Karlston]

The cradle of the Industrial Revolution is turning a corner away from pollution.

Enlarge / The cooling towers of Willington Coal-Fired Power Station, first commissioned in 1957, contains four 104MW generating units. Each unit, when on full load, burns approximately 1,000 tons of coal per day, which produces 200 tons of ash. Willington, Derbyshire, United Kingdom.

Andrew Aitchison / In pictures via Getty Images

On April 21 in 2017, the UK had its first coal-free day since the Industrial Revolution. Now, just two years later, the UK's National Grid confirmed that it had gone 168 hours, or seven days, without using any coal-fired power. The electricity system operator said that it expected coal-free stretches to become more frequent in the coming years.

 

In 2015, the UK pledged to remove coal from its grid by 2025. In a statement to the Financial Times on Thursday, the National Grid's director, Fintan Slye, said he expected the grid to be able to not only hit that target but to run with zero carbon emissions.

 

"As more and more renewables come on to our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to be a regular occurrence," the director said. "We believe that by 2025 we will be able to fully operate Great Britain’s electricity system with zero carbon."

 

The UK is a leader in offshore wind, and it also has nuclear plants and natural gas-fired plants to feed power demand. Natural gas, of course, is still a fossil fuel, but it releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when it's burned, compared to coal. Grids around the world tend to hit zero-carbon milestones in spring and autumn, when winds are high and daylight is still plentiful, and customers aren't demanding a lot of electricity to light and heat (or cool) their homes.

 

The BBC notes that currently only 10 percent of the country's electricity comes from coal-fired generators, and in 2019 the National Grid has logged more than 1,000 hours of coal-free electricity. In 2018, an application to proceed with a new UK coal mine was rejected on climate change grounds.

 

While other industrialized nations still struggle to leave coal completely, the UK's progress is also symbolic. As the BBC notes, coal-fired power originated in the UK, with the first such power station opened in London in 1882.

 

Source: UK goes a whole week without using coal-fired electricity (Ars Technica)

[steven36]

They really dont have that many people  to supply power too  and are a very highly  taxed country , the money to switch over to renewable energy like the UK is doing has to come from somewhere and most of the time they pay for it  by charging more taxes and more for power.  The UK only has like 67 million people and  nowadays  is the highest  population growth they had since the baby boom back in the 1960s .

 

The USA have 327.2 million  people  and many of them were decedents of the UK  they came to the USA to get away from taxes  and other problems like lack of food  before ,  they have all different kinds of power plants it just depends were you live at  on what kind you have.  While using less coal is good for the environment it  is not good for the economy. Like  in the USA when they shut down the coal mines it caused some states to become full of ghost towns were people had to leave to find work.  Both of the top  2 economies in the world use lots of fossil fuels  the USA and China  .

 

[Karlston]

Indeed. The UK is lucky in a sense that they have nuclear as a reliable base-load power alternative to coal.

[DKT27]

The rich countries need to lead the way if we want to help the humankind and this world. Good to see Britain being one of them.

 

Some countries have natural resources for some of the mankind's greatest blessings. But they - or from what I know even the whole world for that matter, lack the technology to use it.

[steven36]

Coal Mining in the UK is  not much different than in the USA  it been in decline since the 1980s . But coal in the UK  was a big part of  there  economy . in the 1920s  coal provided  one million jobs  by  2015 they only  had 2,000 workers left. So it hurt them way worse  than it did the USA when they close down most of the Mines  but it ruined many small towns because they all left and found jobs in other states but the UK is not so big  so you can't go very far  unless you leave the country  .

 

While  the Royal Family have always been very rich most people in the UK are not,  the  richest person in the world lives in the USA  so do many other very rich  people and most of them got rich off the internet so they not even been rich very long . The only Tech Company that been rich very long is IBM they have that old money they made back  in the early  part of the 20th century .

[DKT27]

7 minutes ago, steven36 said:

Coal Mining in the UK is  not much different than in the USA  it been in decline since the 1980s . But coal in the UK  was a big part of  there  economy . in the 1920s  coal provided  one million jobs  by  2015 they only  had 2,000 workers left. So it hurt them way worse  than it did the USA when they close down most of the Mines  but it ruined many small towns because they all left and found jobs in other states but the UK is not so big  so you can't go very far  unless you leave the country  .

 

While  the Royal Family have always been very rich most people in the UK are not,  the  richest person in the world lives in the USA  so do many other very rich  people and most of them got rich off the internet so they not even been rich very long . The only Tech Company that been rich very long is IBM they have that old money they made back  in the early  part of the 20th century .

 

This tells me it's relatively rich.

 

It's also in top 50 on this but has improved a lot from the looks of it. Notice the countries with largest population are not in the very top of it.

[steven36]

5 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

 

This tells me it's relatively rich.

 

It's also in top 50 on this but has improved a lot from the looks of it. Notice the countries with largest population are not in the very top of it.

Your  comparing  with  other countries  that don't tell you how many poor people they have  here are  the facts

 

Despite being a developed country, those who are living at the lower end of the income distribution in the United Kingdom have a relatively low standard of living. Data based on incomes published in 2016 by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that, after housing costs have been taken into consideration, the number of people living in the UK in relative poverty to be 13.44m (21% of the population).^[1] In 2015, a report by Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that 21.6% of Britons were now in relative poverty. The report showed that there had been a fall in poverty in the first few years of the twenty-first century, but the rate of poverty had remained broadly flat since 2004/5.

 

Full Fact found that the UK poverty rate is "almost exactly the same level as the EU average (17%)", much lower than the DWP figures due to differences in calculation methods between countries.

It has been found by the Poverty and Social Exclusion project at Bristol University in 2014,  that the proportion of households lacking three items or activities deemed necessary for life in the UK at that time (as defined by a survey of the wider population) has increased from 14% in 1983 to 33% in 2012.

 

In 2018, Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that UK Government policies and cuts to social support "are entrenching high levels of poverty and inflicting unnecessary misery", "driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity"^] However, his report was rejected by the UK Government, pointing to rising household incomes, declining income inequality and one million people fewer in absolute poverty since 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

Its so bad the government is trying to cover it up after they cut the programs for the poor.

 

[DKT27]

@steven36: Thanks for the detailed information. I understand. But I am talking about relative poverty - do not underestimate the level of individual poverty worldwide. Also, the standards of poverty in Britain would be different than other poor country. Another thing is, coming back to the topic, even if you count out the poor people, the non-poor people are quite good in contributing to the worldwide problem of climate change, as it's shown in my link above here.

 

All I am saying is, no matter how you look at it, this is a good step by Britain there.

[steven36]

2 hours ago, DKT27 said:

Another thing is, coming back to the topic, even if you count out the poor people, the non-poor people are quite good in contributing to the worldwide problem of climate change, as it's shown in my link above here.

That's because poor people just want a job so they can have some food and a place to sleep  .  Many people  don't care about the climate change  because  when we die nothing on earth matters no more , by the time that happens we will be dead and gone . If they want to do some real good with there money help out the people who don't have no money that need help now . Most environmentalist do nothing but cause a bad economy and they don't care because they well off and have money.

 

Poor People want jobs , environmentalist destroy them. We have states in the USA  that pass laws to  clean up the environment and it does no good they  just cause people to lose there jobs and they just move the jobs to some sate or some country that  don't  have such laws.Just the sate  doing it stopped doing it,  but it just causes more of it  somewhere else ..

 

China produce like  3.7 billion tons of coal a year  in 2nd  place was the USA with  922 Million tons of coal a year but they got the worlds biggest stock pile so they no need  to mine like China do . China has no environment laws , Cars they use over there are illegal in the USA even .  It's good I guess that places try to stop climate change,  the places with the most people  going have to stop too to make any difference.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-top-10-coal-producers-worldwide.html

 

 

 

[dhjohns]

All the jobs are in green energy.  The environmentalists are creating jobs not destroying them.  Plus, it is so much cheaper than coal to produce green energy these days.  Economics dictates much of what is happening, not any environmentalists.

[steven36]

2 hours ago, dhjohns said:

All the jobs are in green energy.  The environmentalists are creating jobs not destroying them.  Plus, it is so much cheaper than coal to produce green energy these days.  Economics dictates much of what is happening, not any environmentalists.

Not in  my state they don't  they just caused  some plants to close here  with anti dumping laws and it done no good they just move the plants to next state over were still allows them to dump . We never used coal in my area ever just   Electricity Generated from Water  Hydropower (Dams).

https://www.wisegeek.com/how-is-electricity-generated-from-water.htm#didyouknowout

 

Areas that have Nukes around use Nuclear  it just depends on were you live at we have all these plants in the USA

 

Non-Renewable Fuel Types:

• Coal
• Natural Gas
• Nuclear

Renewable Fuel Types:

• Hydropower (Dams)
• Wind
• Biomass (wood, animal waste, etc.)
• Solar
• Geothermal (heat from the earth)

 

 

Electricity Generation (Sources and Capacity) in the United States

https://www.electricchoice.com/blog/electricity-generation/

 

For awhile  solar energy created jobs but for the last 2 years they lost  20,000 jobs in the USA  and were i live Hydropower (Dams) never created  many jobs and  it hard to get a job like that around here  and the power truck  guys here are just sub contractors from a smaller company .  Our power company stop having there own employees in our area years ago . They just pay other companies  to do it . And those type jobs have been around for as long as i can remember

 

 

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Why Renewable Energy Is Not as Clean as You Think

 

 

OK, so the fight against climate change isn’t going flawlessly. But there is some cause for optimism, right? Money is plowing into cheap solar energy, China is leading the world in green investment and Tesla has released a nice new electric car. Already, over a fifth of the world’s electricity comes from renewables, set to rise to 29 percent by 2040, according to current trends. We’re starting to head in a good direction, one that maybe might hopefully possibly save all the world just in time? RIGHT?!

 

 

Well, hate to break it to you, but those stats of rising renewable energy production aren’t all that they seem. In fact:

Quote

Solar and wind combined account for barely a fifth of electricity generation defined as renewable. More than 70 percent of it comes from hydropower.

 

That’s according to International Energy Agency numbers for 2015, the latest figures available. Hydro isn’t the only surprising energy source dominating renewable energy stats: In the U.S., Canada, the EU and China, as well as the global average, more power is generated from biofuels (such as the combustion of wood pellets in power plants or burning off landfill gas) than from solar panels.

 

So when talking about renewable power, the media might need to change their stock images from turbines and panels to hydroelectric dams and burning logs. So what? Renewable is renewable, right?

 

Quote

These trade-offs may be improvements relative to burning coal, but investment in hydro or biomass might be happening at the expense of solar and wind.

 

Well, maybe not. Both in the case of hydropower and bioelectricity, the scientific community is far from settled that these power sources are always completely clean. Thanks to the anaerobic decomposition of algae and other plant materials in reservoirs, hydroelectric dams can be major emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas several times more potent than CO2, says Amy Townsend-Small, director of the Environmental Studies Program at McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, who studies methane emissions from lakes. There’s a surprising lack of knowledge about just how much greenhouse gases reservoirs might emit: “We don’t have any long-term monitoring,” Townsend-Small says, and scientists instead rely on global models extrapolated from a small number of reservoirs. Still, hydroelectric dams “are better on a greenhouse-gas level than using fossil fuels,” she says, though environmental campaigner Gary Wockner, who describes hydro as “dirty energy,” asserts that some dams, including the Hoover Dam, emit more greenhouse gases than coal-fired plants.

 

And in the case of burning biomass, with the huge variability between types of fuels and how they are sourced, it’s impossible to make blanket statements about its efficacy, says Kevin Fingerman, a professor in energy and climate at Humboldt State University who studies the impact of biofuels. Burning gas from agricultural waste could generate power while also transforming methane into less-potent CO2, creating a net negative carbon footprint (even better than wind or solar); however, chopping down a forest without regrowing it to fuel a power plant could be even more polluting than burning coal.

 

 

Crucially, these trade-offs depend on what we’re actually trading off — they may be improvements relative to burning coal, but in locations with strict renewables quotas, investment in hydro or biomass might happen at the expense of sources such as solar and wind, which are more assuredly as close to carbon-neutral as possible. That said, unlike other renewable sources, we can control when hydro and biomass plants generate power, so perhaps the better comparison is against a baseload source such as natural gas or nuclear. These different comparisons mean that “anybody who has a bone to pick on either side of this [debate] can tell whatever story they want to tell” while still using valid scientific analysis, Fingerman says.

 

The key takeaway: “Renewable” is not necessarily synonymous with “carbon-neutral.” (Carrie Annand, executive director of the trade body Biomass Power Association, asserts that biomass is both — so long as forests are consistently growing, as they are in the U.S. The National Hydropower Association did not respond to OZY’s requests for comment.) So let’s get our facts straight before celebrating the impending renewables revolution.

 

Source

 

[steven36]

Here is the latest data on Coal  mining  now India  mines more coal than the USA even. But still china is pushing out over 3 billion tons a year.

 

Coal production accelerated (+3.2%), in line with China’s output rebound (+3.3%)

China, the world largest producer of coal and lignite (45%), relaxed production restrictions in 2017 and raised its domestic production after three years of decline, contributing to half of the global increase in coal production.

Relaxed coal import restrictions in China stimulated global coal production, especially in Indonesia and the United States, whereas bad weather and industrial problems reduced Australian production.
Coal production also grew in India, in line with the government’s willingness to lower its import dependency, and in Russia.

 

https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-lignite/coal-production-data.html

 

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Latest data on Renewable Energy

 

 

Types of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy comes from sources that can be regenerated or naturally replenished. The main sources are:

• Water (hydropower and hydrokinetic)
• Wind
• Solar (power and hot water)
• Biomass (biofuel and biopower)
• Geothermal (power and heating)

 

All sources of renewable energy are used to generate electric power. In addition, geothermal steam is used directly for heating and cooking. Biomass and solar sources are also used for space and water heating. Ethanol and biodiesel (and to a lesser extent, gaseous biomethane) are used for transportation.

 

Renewable energy sources are considered to be zero (wind, solar, and water), low (geothermal) or neutral (biomass) with regard to greenhouse gas emissions during their operation. A neutral source has emissions that are balanced by the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during the growing process. However, each source’s overall environmental impact depends on its overall lifecycle emissions, including manufacturing of equipment and materials, installation as well as land-use impacts.

 

Water

Large conventional hydropower projects currently provide the majority of renewable electric power generation. With nearly 1,100 gigawatts (GW) of global capacity, hydropower produced an estimated 4,100 terawatt hours (TWh) of the 24,659 TWh total global electricity in 2016

 

The United States is the third-largest producer of hydropower after China and Brazil. In 2011, a much wetter than average year in the U.S. Northwest, the United States generated 7.9 percent of its total electricity from hydropower. The Department of Energy has found that the untapped generation potential at existing U.S. dams designed for purposes other than power production (i.e., water supply and inland navigation) represents 12 GW, roughly 15 percent of current hydropower capacity.

 

Hydropower operational costs are relatively low, and hydropower generates little to no greenhouse gas emissions. The main environmental impact is that a dam to create a reservoir or divert water to a hydropower plant changes the ecosystem and physical characteristic of the river.

 

Water power captures the energy of flowing water in rivers, streams, and waves to generate electricity. Conventional hydropower plants can be built in rivers with no water storage (known as “run-of-the-river” units) or in conjunction with reservoirs that store water, which can be used on an as-needed basis. As water travels downstream, it is channeled down through a pipe or other intake structure in a dam (penstock). The flowing water turns the blades of a turbine, generating electricity in the powerhouse, located at the base of the dam.

Hydroelectric Power Generation

Small hydropower projects, generally less than 10 megawatts (MW), and micro-hydropower (less than 1 MW) are less costly to develop and have a lower environmental impact than large conventional hydropower projects. In 2016, the total amount of small hydro installed worldwide was 78 GW. China had the largest share at 51 percent. China, Italy, Japan, Norway and the United States are the top five small hydro countries by installed capacity. Many countries have renewable energy targets that include the development of small hydro projects.

 

Hydrokinetic electric power, including wave and tidal power, is a form of unconventional hydropower that captures energy from waves or currents and does not require dam construction. These technologies are in various stages of research, development, and deployment. In 2011, a 254 MW tidal power plant in South Korea began operation, doubling the global capacity to 527 MW. By the end of 2016, global capacity was about 536 MW.

 

Low-head hydro is a commercially available source of hydrokinetic electric power that has been used in farming areas for more than 100 years. Generally, the capacity of these devices is small, ranging from 1kW to 250kW.

 

Pumped storage hydropower plants use inexpensive electricity (typically overnight during periods of low demand) to pump water from a lower-lying storage reservoir to a storage reservoir located above the power house for later use during periods of peak electricity demand. Although economically viable, this strategy is not considered renewable since it uses more electricity than it generates.

 

https://www.c2es.org/content/renewable-energy/

 

As my post above states it's debatable that that even using water is good for the ozone  it lets off green house gases they playing God and changing the environment , Most  renewable energy was never put in place to save the environment  no way  , it was because of storms  and floods .

 

No, Puerto Rico’s New Climate-Change Law Is Not a ‘Green New Deal’

https://www.citylab.com/environment/2019/04/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-renewable-energy-green-new-deal/587311/

 

Puerto Rico is getting  solar because of hurricanes  just like most Dams in the USA with hydropower were built to stop floods and since it was there they may as well use it to make cheap power.