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All UK coal power stations to close by 2025?
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How so ?
Fukushima, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez ?
I'm in no way a Green activist but we are raping this planet to death and not just coal.
Of those three, only Exxon Valdez is a valid example. Chernobyl was a design that would never be allowed in the West even back in those days, never mind today. Combined with operators who were doing a "I wonder what would happen if..." exercise with an operational nuclear reactor. More people were killed by the tsunami than will ever be killed by the release of radiation due to the accident at Fukushima. And tsunami are, fortunately, fairly rare on the UK coastline.
The extraction and transportation of oil, on the other hand, has massive negative impact on the environment. They are getting better, but still not great - just look at the Niger Delta to see what the companies are capable of getting away with.
The nuclear risk is still there and it isn't just about disaster. Waste is a factor too.
You will also have to build new reactors *cough* china *cough* big Dave *cough* which will have an environmental impact. I'm ignorant about nuclear transportation and what it takes for the day to day running of the reactors but they don't just sit there. Infrastructure has an impact.
I'd agree that natural disasters kill more people but how many were due to us humans. The comment was in reply to "the planet" The wider picture is that we are destroying it slowly.
By the time we get to HS12 the country is gonna have armor plating....
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holy fork and bell !
I think I just died a little
You will also have to build new reactors *cough* china *cough* big Dave *cough* which will have an environmental impact. I'm ignorant about nuclear transportation and what it takes for the day to day running of the reactors but they don't just sit there. Infrastructure has an impact.
I'd agree that natural disasters kill more people but how many were due to us humans. The comment was in reply to "the planet" The wider picture is that we are destroying it slowly.
By the time we get to HS12 the country is gonna have armor plating....
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holy fork and bell !
I think I just died a little
coppercapped
Established Member
Well, it is certain that increasingly sensitive measurement methods with measurements being taken in more places around the world have shown that the planet's surface temperature has been increasing over the past 70 or 80 years. There is a proviso that some measurement series show deviations from the average.
However, there is still debate on the extent of the man-made contribution to this effect. Surface temperatures can be affected by the sun's activity, minor perturbations in the earth's orbit under the gravitational influence of the other planets, the earth's spin axis precesses. All these effects change the energy density of the sun's radiation on the earth's surface. In addition and cosmic and gamma rays, from sources other than the sun, are known to affect the upper atmosphere and affect cloud formation. The movement of the earth's tectonic plates is also known to have affected the temperature and the constitution of the atmosphere.
It is beyond doubt that the world's surface temperatures have changed greatly over a long period of time as measured by the use of various proxies for surface temperature. Palaeoclimatology shows that the surface temperatures of the early earth were as much as 15 deg C above current temperatures and swung wildly to as much a 4 deg C below current averages over the period from 500 million to 50 million years ago. There was then a long term decrease until about a million years ago to an average some 3 deg C below current temperatures. From then until the Ice Age, some 20,000 years ago, the temperature oscillated reaching a minimum of some 6 deg C below current temperatures. Since the Ice Age the temperature has increased again to about the current average which it reached about 10,000 years ago.
The make up of the atmosphere has also varied widely. Carbon dioxide and oxygen levels have changed dramatically - how else can one explain the vast quantity of chalk in the White Cliffs of Dover which are made from the shells of sea creatures which 'fixed' the atmospheric carbon dioxide? There was much more carbon dioxide in the air then than there is now.
And some of the bores taken during the planning for Crossrail have shown evidence of mangrove swamps where Tottenham Court Road now stands.
I am all for that people should be good stewards of the planet Earth - it's the only one we've got - but such knee-jerk reactions don't help the case.
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I agree that waste is an issue, but deep geological storage is a viable option. There are salt mines in the US and deep granite storage options in Europe that are capable of providing containment for tens of thousands of years. One of the biggest problems is figuring out how to stop humans of ten or twenty thousand years in the future digging it up - just look at how difficult it was to understand hieroglyphics and that was only four or five thousand years ago.
Day to day, nuclear plants are incredibly clean and release very little radiation. In fact, if you were to take a few boxes of bananas into a nuclear power plant, you would probably set off the radiation alarms - and they aren't going off constantly.
HSTEd
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It seems likely that Moorside nuclear power station will go ahead then.
Its projected strike price is nearly £10/MWh below EDF's monstrosity at Hinkley Point.
Its projected strike price is nearly £10/MWh below EDF's monstrosity at Hinkley Point.
It doesn't really matter how much of the impact is down to us it's more to do with how much above what the planet and the ecosystems which are currently here can cope with.
Lets for argument say that human impact produces 10 parts of CO2 per 100 in a year and "natural" elements account for the other 90 parts per 100 however we are 1 part per hundred above what the planet can cope with. What should we do, should we go looking for ways of cutting out CO2 production by over 10% or should we look at changing the natural world so its production falls by just over 1%.
Then there is the argument does the methane produced by cows count as natural or does it count as man made in that the only reason that there are so many cows is because we farm them?
Likewise, it doesn't matter how warm it was in the past in parts of what is now London, as a) the ecosystems had time (hundreds of thousands of years) to adapt and b) the area of land where London is currently is has moved around a bit since it was part of one big supper continent
Therefore it doesn't matter how much CO2 we produce relative to that produced by "natural" sources or what extremes of temperature there may have been in the past. Rather what matters is "is the amount of CO2 we are currently (directly or indirectly) producing harming the current ecosystems of the world?" If the answer is yes; then what can we do to eradicate or, at the very least, limit the harm caused.
It is a fairly easy answer, as there appears to be too much CO2 for the current ecosystems to cope with then we should look at ways of reducing our production of CO2. If you don't trust scientists on the answer for this (who may well like the vast majority of the west are alienated from the natural world they live near) then just look to the many the native tribal peoples who have been saying for some time that their natural world is changing beyond what has been seen before.
Even if you don't hold to the above; what would you rather do cut our reliance on CO2 and find out that we didn't need to after all or not cut it and find out too late that we needed to?
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Llanigraham
On Moderation
So you will be happy to have electric rationing in the future?
How are the electric trains to be powered?
What is your answer?
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Update on the announcement: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amber-rudds-speech-on-a-new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy
It's announcing a consultation, not yet a decision, and was a speech at the Institution of Civil Engineers, not to parliament:
"Unabated" apparently means burning coal without carbon capture of the emissions.
But nowhere in the strategy does it mention investment in carbon capture!
It's announcing a consultation, not yet a decision, and was a speech at the Institution of Civil Engineers, not to parliament:
"Unabated" apparently means burning coal without carbon capture of the emissions.
But nowhere in the strategy does it mention investment in carbon capture!
For anyone wanting to discuss the potential impacts on the rail freight sector and the FOCs please use the thread here which will leave this thread clear for discussing environmental and power generation issues.
Thanks
Thanks
And therein lies the crux of the issue in so many of these cases.
We can't use coal because of the gases. Same as oil, gas and waste incinerators. We can't use nuclear because every single plant will explode and we will all grow three heads and the waste. We can't have wind turbines because on land they are ugly and slice up birds and at sea they upset the dolphins. We can't use tidal because it upsets waders. We can't use hydroelectric because that causes flooding. We can't use solar because we live in Britain.
But damn it I need to charge my iPhone!
It kind of depends on how much electric rationing there is, given that in our house we use less gas than OFGEM's Low Typical domestic energy consumption figures and slightly higher than the low electricity use we are already towards the lower end of users.
These can be found here:https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/decisions/tdcv_decision_letter_final_2.pdf
We could go lower if we had solar panels fitted and sorted out the loft insulation a bit better (it's there but not great in places). Before anyone asks we live in a 1980's 3 bed semi (no attached garage) with the original boiler which had the cavity walls done, so not anything special in terms of eco friendly.
Any cap brought in at more than 50% of the current high typical usage rates would have no impact on us. Therefore I say bring it on.
Even a cap of 33% of the current high typical usage rates then our gas usage would have to fall by about 20% (some of that could be achieved by getting solar water heating) to about 6,500 kWh and our electricity useage would need to fall by about 25% (although much of that could be achieved by obtaining solar panels) to about 1,600 kWh. As such it would be tough but we could do it.
On a related matter, I think that the tax breaks for buy to let investors should be based on how energy efficient the property is In doing so it would be in their interest to fit energy saving measures.
coppercapped
Established Member
As I said in my original post, I am all for that people should be good stewards of the planet Earth - it's the only one we've got. I think you will find that we are on the same side.
But, I'm afraid you've made the same assumption as many people that (a) the ecosystem is fixed and stable and that (b) the increase in surface temperatures is solely due to the increase in the so-called 'greenhouse gases' and that this increase is largely due to man's activities. I have tried to show that there are other effects which can lead to the measured increase in surface temperature. And that, historically, there have been much larger swings in both surface temperatures and atmospheric composition than are being measured at the moment - long before Man evolved.
The point is, what will you do when we stop burning fossil fuels - but the surface temperature keeps increasing? Could it be the other way round? That the carbon dioxide levels are increasing because the surface is becoming warmer? On the basis that the world's population will not reduce in size to that when Man first made fire, how does one find a suitable source of energy that does not add to the carbon dioxide, or any other gas of choice, in the atmosphere to be able to live in the temperate and cold regions of the planet without resorting to wearing furs? One also has to assume that manufacturing and consumption will live on as I cannot see us reverting to an agrarian society.
My argument is not with trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, or methane or anything else come to that, as one should tread as lightly as possible - but with the automatic assumption that burning coal and oil are bad for the planet. The global system is far too complex to be reduced to a simple figure of merit, such as the proportion of carbon dioxide in the air - and then make policy decisions on that number.
TheNewNo2
Member
Renewables are the best answer, possibly nuclear: although it has obvious downsides, they're generally more manageable than the climate change effects of burning fossil fuels. Besides, it means a starring role for cats in communicating with our deep time descendants.
It's not that I don't think we need electricity, but of all the methods of generating it, burning coal is a really bad choice.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Sure, there's a debate about this amongst quite a few (mainly right wing) politicians, and on some less well informed parts of the Internet. But if you look at what the scientists are saying, then you'll find such a debate does not on the whole exist. Those who are work full time on looking at the evidence have long since concluded that the evidence that global warming is largely man-made is so strong that there is no longer much point debating it.
Irrelevant since none of those processes is - so far as we can tell - realistically capable in normal circumstances of causing the kind of sustained rapid temperature rise that we have seen over the past 100 years.
Oh you can do better than that! Some estimates of the early Earth are that its average surface temperature was at one point several thousand degrees C! Makes the expected 2-4C rise over the next 100 years look negligible doesn't it! But, just like the past temperature changes you have quoted, that is also irrelevant because there was no human life on Earth at the time - so the fact that the Earth was once that hot gives no evidence that the human race can survive on an Earth at that temperature.
This is also irrelevant because that involves a rate of temperature change orders of magnitude slower than we have seen over the last 100 years. You're talking about changes that take place over tens of thousands of years - which clearly gives much more time for species to adapt than if a significant temperature change happens within less than 100 years.
I completely agree with this sentence. But selectively quoting a lot of irrelevant facts in such a way as to give the misleading impression that there is some serious scientific doubt about whether burning fossil fuels has caused global warming (when in fact there isn't) is also not helpful.
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Are you aware that scientists can do isotopic analysis of the CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, and that those tests clearly indicate the source of the additional CO2 that has been added over the last 100 years or so is the fossil fuels we have been burning? So no, it's not the other way round.
I have not assumed that ecosystems are fixed and stable, I said that in the past they had time to adapt which they do not have chance to do now.
I also didn't say that the increase was solely down to man's greenhouse gases, I said that if our contribution is too high for the planet than we need to cut it to limit the impact.
If we find that we don't make any differance by producing a lot less CO2 then we'll still benefit from towns and cities freed from high levels of pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.
Industry will adapt, in the same way it moved from water power to steam power and onto electricity. Yes things may not be as efficient as today, but a sharp fall in power usage doesn't mean no more business. It wasn't that long ago that it was perceived that the more fuel that was used the better the economy was doing.
Bevan Price
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Global warming is a complex process. The temperature of atmosphere has fluctuated considerably throughout the existence of earth, but superimposed on this is a gradual rise in temperature caused by human behaviour. In practice, this means that sometimes, there will be both "warm" & "cool" periods, but the long term trend will be temperature rises.
How to lessen global warming is also a complex question. Gas produces less CO2 than coal per unit of electrical power, but gas supplies will not last forever. Known gas & oil reserves in the North Sea have probably passed peak availability. Supplies elsewhere come from several "politically uncertain" sources.
Wind power is useless on those very cold, windless days we sometimes get in winter. Also, many people do not want to see some of our most scenic areas converted into industrial landscapes, blighted by turbines & pylons. Offshore wind turbines are more expensive to build & operate, and also not universally popular.
Nuclear power is distrusted by many, expensive, and supplies of uranium fuel will not last forever - but they may be a useful short term expedient.
Nuclear fusion would be a cleaner solution, but always seems to be "50 years in the future". Whether or not fusion becomes technically & economically feasible for commercial power generation remains to be seen.
What does that leave ? Well, wave power has great potential, but so far, it does not seem to have progressed much beyond prototype stages. Tidal water power also has potential, but environmentalists are very concerned about the destruction of wildlife habitats.
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For anyone who still remembers their maths, you can get a very simple demonstration of what might happen during global warming by plotting a graph showing the sum of a sine wave plus a gently rising straight line as a function of time.
e.g. Temperature = a + [b x (elapsed time in years)] + [c x sin (years)]
where a, b, & c are numerical constants, which you can vary yourself to see what happens.
In practice, the temperature fluctuation is much more complicated than a simple sine wave, but the end result is still a long term trend for rising temperatures.
How to lessen global warming is also a complex question. Gas produces less CO2 than coal per unit of electrical power, but gas supplies will not last forever. Known gas & oil reserves in the North Sea have probably passed peak availability. Supplies elsewhere come from several "politically uncertain" sources.
Wind power is useless on those very cold, windless days we sometimes get in winter. Also, many people do not want to see some of our most scenic areas converted into industrial landscapes, blighted by turbines & pylons. Offshore wind turbines are more expensive to build & operate, and also not universally popular.
Nuclear power is distrusted by many, expensive, and supplies of uranium fuel will not last forever - but they may be a useful short term expedient.
Nuclear fusion would be a cleaner solution, but always seems to be "50 years in the future". Whether or not fusion becomes technically & economically feasible for commercial power generation remains to be seen.
What does that leave ? Well, wave power has great potential, but so far, it does not seem to have progressed much beyond prototype stages. Tidal water power also has potential, but environmentalists are very concerned about the destruction of wildlife habitats.
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For anyone who still remembers their maths, you can get a very simple demonstration of what might happen during global warming by plotting a graph showing the sum of a sine wave plus a gently rising straight line as a function of time.
e.g. Temperature = a + [b x (elapsed time in years)] + [c x sin (years)]
where a, b, & c are numerical constants, which you can vary yourself to see what happens.
In practice, the temperature fluctuation is much more complicated than a simple sine wave, but the end result is still a long term trend for rising temperatures.
JamesRowden
Established Member
A photovoltaic pointed directly at the sun will produce more power in Britain on a sunny day than in a hotter country since the heat reduces the efficiency of the photovoltaic.
Nym
Established Member
Really? You've done the calculation on that have you...?
The amount if incident solor radiation has much more of an effect, as will the air mass ratio and azimuth angle...
And one of them we can do sod all about in the UK, and another is restricted by planning...
The amount if incident solor radiation has much more of an effect, as will the air mass ratio and azimuth angle...
And one of them we can do sod all about in the UK, and another is restricted by planning...
JamesRowden
Established Member
The only two factors are the incident solar radiaton and the temperature (asuming that maximum power point tracking is being implemented). PVs work by creating a temperature difference within the PV material which creates the power. This is why the environmental temperature has a significant effect. The incident solar radiation upon a PV pointing directly at the sun in Britain relative to that upon flat land in the country will be far greater than the equivalent in a hotter country since the land in the hotter country already faces the sun more directly.
In the meantime many tradesmen will become unemployed, the lights will go out and we will carry on utilising foreign gas at an astronomical rate. (Anyone seen the sinkholes in Siberia that are occuring on a regular basis?) Oh and if a temporary interuption of the "Atlantic Conveyor" occurs we will have a real bitter cold period to come.
Coal = baseline power that will not be there next winter!!!!!!!!!!!
Heritage diesels could be one plugged in outside every substation???????
Coal = baseline power that will not be there next winter!!!!!!!!!!!
Heritage diesels could be one plugged in outside every substation???????
NSEFAN
Established Member
I thought most PVs were done by photoelectric not thermoelectric effect. The temperature would still make a difference to the cell's efficiency though, as the cell's PN junction diode's V-I relationship is dependent on temperature.JamesRowden said:
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JamesRowden
Established Member
It is not `thermoelectric', but does involve temperature difference within the material.
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Nym
Established Member
So where is the datasheet showing the affect of ambient temprature? And what about air mass ratio that you haven't acknowledged?
JamesRowden
Established Member
I have attached the data sheet. On page 2 you will see a variable in the table called `temperature coefficient of Voltage per Degrees C.' This is negative indicating that the open circuit voltage will decrease as the temperature increases. The short circuit current does increase but not enough to compensate the loss of voltage. Taking the MSX-005 as an example, the open circuit output voltage reduces by 3.48% for an increase of temperature from 25 degrees Celsius to 35 degrees Celsius, but the short circuit current increases by 0.938%. If the voltage and current of the maximum power point are directly proportional to these values (which I have seen a least one maximum power point tracker assume), then the output power would be 97.43% at 35 degrees Celsius compared to that produced at 25 degrees Celsius. A loss of 2.57%.
Can you show that air mass ratio has a significant effect on the incident solar radiation upon a PV and therefore makes PVs less efficient in the Britain?
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coppercapped
Established Member
Oh dear! I am afraid that such statements don't help. I am, or was until I retired, a physicist so I am quite capable of reading and understanding the scientific publications covering such matters. I am also aware of the limitations in the data that are published and I don't look at stuff which is published in the wilder corners of the world wide web. And it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with politics. The issue is about data, solid data, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them.
The original post to which I responded, simply blamed coal fired power stations for global warming - a knee-jerk reaction for which I have no time. I tried to show that there are other effects which can also modify the average earth surface temperature. You disagreed with some of them, but the effects do exist and in a chaotic - in the mathematical sense - system small changes can have big effects. A gentle nudge can start an avalanche.
That there has been a measurable increase in temperatures, actually that the temperature anomalies have been increasing, is fact. At question is whether phasing out coal fired plant will have any significant effect as there are so many other factors which can contribute to the reduction in loss of heat from the planet. Undoubtedly carbon dioxide is an important 'greenhouse' gas which, together with water vapour, keeps the Earth warm enough to support life as we know it. Nevertheless there are other gases, as well as substances like aerosol particles, that have roles in atmospheric warming, these include methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and the halogenated gases and some of these have been emitted into our atmosphere largely as a result of human activity.
We have to be careful what we do to the planet - it's the only one we have. But to blame ourselves as being the only cause of 'global warming' is neither accurate nor helpful.
Temperatures have changed in the past - and faster than you seem to believe possible - and Man was not responsible. Certainly coal-fired power stations played no role at all! The ice cores taken from the Greenland glaciers give a continuous record of temperatures going back 110,000 years and estimates can be made for earlier eras.
The more recent history of Britain and Ireland is instructive as these lands form the extreme peninsular of a continental land mass and have been subject to enormous climatic fluctuations. Over the last half a million years people have come in and out of Britain like a tide - along with mammoths, cave bears, hyenas and water voles. At some times Britain was an island, at others it was attached to the continent. During one of the insular phases, about 128,000 years ago, hippos wallowed near Trafalgar Square and, as I wrote in an earlier post, mangrove swamps existed where Tottenham Court Road is now. Although another poster claimed that this was due to tectonic shifts he is wrong, it is fact - in only 128,000 years that bit of England could not have drifted from the tropics. Tectonic time is longer!
In the last 800,000 years there have been nine major advances of the ice which in the coldest phases, the glacials, have covered much of Britain and Northern Europe. These glacials were separated by warm stages - the interglacials. Within these major climate stages there were also more rapid fluctuations, episodes of warming (interstadials) and cooling (stadials). The British Isles have gone from Arctic tundra and ice to conditions like today's northern Spain. We are now living in one of the longest interglacials - it is now 13,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age and temperatures have remained remarkably constant.
However in the second-to-last interglacial period, some 10,000 years long, the climate was not so stable. At one point, in just 70 years, the temperature fell from temperate to glacial and there were 10 deg C temperature shifts in just a few years.
So, one has to make some decisions. Firstly one has to decide whether global warming is (a) a good thing, (b) a bad thing or (c) just one of those things. Then one has to decide what one wants to do about it - but on the way it might be a good idea to ask oneself if there is anything one can do about it. It might just be out of our hands.
Even if we decide that it is out of our hands - we should still tread as lightly as possible. It's simply good manners!
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TheNewNo2
Member
No, my original post was "On behalf of the planet, about ****ing time." I did not say that coal power plants were the only cause of climate change, I did not even mention climate change. You simply chose to add in your own feelings to the post.
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