Unfortunately it’s very much legacy technology, at least on land. Those that built them up to the mid 20th century are sitting pretty and will continue to profit probably for centuries (he says, glancing down on a storage basin here in Norway). Building new ones is more difficult, because it is a bit of an ecological disaster to dam a river.
Yes but the rabbits where digging in to childhood harts to fill them with dread…
Some of the capacity in the Other section is coal that has been converted to burning wood pellets which we’re now discovering aren’t necessarily from the renewable forest but old growth which replaces bad with bad.
And since you’ve mentioned pumped storage, I have to post this video again. It’s practically the law.
Overall, this is a great milestone, but this is just the start of the difficult part of decarbonisation.
The groundwork for the coal switch off was laid in the 1990s, with the Dash for Gas- Replacing coal with gas took a slice off of carbon emissions, and left the UK with a fleet of power plants that can ramp their production up and down very quickly. This is very suitable for the current situation, where renewables can just be added to the grid, and the energy balance is made up by turning the gas plants up or down.
The real challenge is now how to get rid of gas, because renewables are inherently variable. We need more investment to get loads of new generation onto the grid, but even with loads of new windfarms, there will be times when this doesn’t meet demand. I think longer term the solution will be to use renewables to generate fuel (either by electrolysing water to produce hydrogen or green ammonia ), which can be stored and used in the remaining gas plants to generate power when needed.
Oh, and the other link I have to give is this:
That was the previous guy! New government has aim of reaching net zero power by 2030. So if there is gas involved, and we’ll have to wait to see what NESO recommends, it will need to have CCS. Or DAC maybe?
Glen Earrach, based around Loch Ness, could be up and running by 2032.
Well, I did only have leftovers for dinner, if that counts?
Talking of Welsh Miners - This is a wonderful/heartbreaking album following the rise and fall of Welsh Mining.
I saw it performed in The Blackwood Miners institute with James Dean Bradfield guesting.
Then again at the Royal Albert Hall a week later.
Hmmm. They are playing soon and I’m not busy that night….
Yes! I’m a big fan of Public Service Broadcasting and saw them supporting the Manics once. I particularly like the track James sang on which uses the Idris Davies poem Gwalia Deserta as its lyrics.
The slopes of slag and cinder
Are sulking in the rain,
And in derelict valleys
The hope of youth is slain.
An interesting work covering the fate of Durham coalfield mining communities is “The Miner’s Hymns” - I was so fortunate to watch a live performance of the score by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson some ten years ago.
It’s a tragedy, isn’t? So many stories of these communities (which only existed in the first place because of coal mining) getting fucked over by the Tories selling off the industry. Don’t get me wrong, it was filthy, dangerous work and just ask those wives who had to deal with coal dust over everything whether they miss them, but some of these communities have never fully recovered after what the Tories did.
That telephone concert is such a wonderful thing; both technologically and as an act of resistance.
“Wednesday Left-overs” were my favourite meal growing up.
Australia still mines a lot of coal (world’s biggest exporter), and I get very upset when I hear conservative politicians talking up the benefits of coal, how coal will be around for a long time, etc. What they are doing is keeping business-as-usual running until the day the mines close and the owners walk away from the suddenly-derelict town. There is no orderly transition planned, because they are doing everything they can to not mention a transition.
Compare and contrast with the Ruhr valley in Germany, where the coal industry wound down and the region didn’t suffer; market forces didn’t achieve that.
That corresponds to the first notable drop in coal usage in the graph. They banned smoky fuels in cities afterwards but glad to see the debacle triggered a reduction in usage for power generation.
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