UK government spells out plan to shut down coal plants - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE]One of the UK’s eight remaining coal power stations is expected to cease generating electricity this year, the government has said as it laid out new rules that will force all the plants to close by 2025. The coal phase-out is one of the Conservative party’s flagship green policies, and the long-awaited implementation plan comes ahead of a speech by Theresa May on the environment next week. While three plants shut in 2016, and most are expected to halt operations by 2022, the last ones standing will be forced to close in October 2025 because of new pollution standards. However, the plan reveals the sector will continue to be propped up by hundreds of millions of pounds in backup power subsidies for several years, paid through consumer energy bills. Experts said allowing coal operators to continue receiving capacity market subsidies had thrown the sector an unnecessary lifeline. Dr Jonathan Marshall, energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a UK-based thinktank, said: “While delivering on the top line of a 2025 closure, the government’s decision to allow coal plants to compete in the capacity market on equal footing until then looks like something of a missed opportunity.” Ministers will also retain emergency powers to suspend the phase-out in the case of an emergency shortfall in electricity supplies. ... As a result, it foresees one major plant will close this year, with the loss of up to 250 jobs, followed by a further closure next year. The government predicts coal’s capacity of 13.8GW last year will have plummeted to 1.5GW by 2025 because of unfavourable economics. ... The closure of the last coal plant in seven years’ time will be mandated through the use of a new emissions performance standard, which ministers will need to legislate for. The standard sets a limit on the amount of carbon the plants can emit – 450g CO2 per kW hour – which coal operators could meet only by retrofitting costly carbon capture equipment. ... Labour said while it backed the coal phase-out, more support was needed for clean power. Alan Whitehead, shadow energy minister, said: “The government’s lacklustre support for renewables and scrappage of a number of green schemes has left it on course to miss its own climate targets.” [/QUOTE] [url]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/05/uk-coal-fired-power-plants-close-2025[/url]

ok but do we have anything in place to replace the energy generation?

[QUOTE=lintz;53033728]ok but do we have anything in place to replace the energy generation?[/QUOTE] Yeah, we'll just buy it from France. Wish the article actually had a hint at what they planned to replace it with but its damn vague, wouldn't be surprised at all if they're expecting to just rely upon external power, which is going to be a problem because we already rely upon it a lot.

Probably already have enough capacity spare on existing gas plants, we never use coal generstion to it's full capacity.

Weird how your conservative party wants to shut down coal when ours is gasping to keep it alive for some reason. Coal just isn't economically feasible in the future with solar and wind plummeting in prices. The fact that green energy dosen't give your kids autism or slowly kill you is a bonus.

Germany should learn from this, too bad they want to maintain coal generation

[QUOTE=Morgen;53033766]Probably already have enough capacity spare on existing gas plants, we never use coal generstion to it's full capacity.[/QUOTE] I can tell you now, the answer to that is no. The UK grid is strained and we buy in a lot of external power to keep it stable. We were meant to have a series of new nuclear plants to help with this but its all flopped thanks to poor planning on the companies sides and political meddling. The coal plants however contributed essentially nothing to the grid overall due to the taxes pushed on them within the recent years, so seeing them go poof wont hurt it much, but its still not good when theres nothing really considered to replace them. It just means what little they did contribute is going to be pushed onto the gas plants even more or its going to be imported from like France.

[QUOTE=Reagy;53035726]I can tell you now, the answer to that is no. The UK grid is strained and we buy in a lot of external power to keep it stable. We were meant to have a series of new nuclear plants to help with this but its all flopped thanks to poor planning on the companies sides and political meddling. The coal plants however contributed essentially nothing to the grid overall due to the taxes pushed on them within the recent years, so seeing them go poof wont hurt it much, but its still not good when theres nothing really considered to replace them. It just means what little they did contribute is going to be pushed onto the gas plants even more or its going to be imported from like France.[/QUOTE] We really would benefit from a nuclear plant or six, plus they'd pay for themselves with the excess energy we could export, instead of relying on France all the time.

[QUOTE=Reagy;53035726]I can tell you now, the answer to that is no. The UK grid is strained and we buy in a lot of external power to keep it stable. We were meant to have a series of new nuclear plants to help with this but its all flopped thanks to poor planning on the companies sides and political meddling. The coal plants however contributed essentially nothing to the grid overall due to the taxes pushed on them within the recent years, so seeing them go poof wont hurt it much, but its still not good when theres nothing really considered to replace them. It just means what little they did contribute is going to be pushed onto the gas plants even more or its going to be imported from like France.[/QUOTE] Well we are building Hinkley point C which will be available in late 2020s (well maybe). Lots of new off shore wind sites as well. The French interconnector is only 2GW, and in winter we export a decent amount as well.