The power switch: tracking Britain's record coal-free run - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/may/25/the-power-switch-tracking-britains-record-coal-free-run?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard Check out this cool chart of coal's fucking death since 2012 https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/165/10783466-879e-492e-924f-b16152116249/D7cPDhuXkAI4YG9.jpeg

We're doing so well - amazing numbers and I really didn't realise how quickly it changed. Thought the dependency had shrunk slowly over the last 20 years but not so. It's a shame Germany totally fucked it by panicking their way out of nuclear base load, and Poland doesn't appear to give a single smoky fuck. But there's a long way to go - we need to maintain the nuclear base load (which means actually having a project approved that isn't ludicrously expensive) and push for tidal barrage projects to actually go ahead. If we ever get a 'climate emergency' maybe we'll finally be able to bypass the ridiculous levels of bureaucracy that have prevented anything significant until now, then we can start to get Denmark numbers.

Coal is dying despite the industry's attempt to keep it on life support via lobbying. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner and can be run in existing boilers with minimal changes. In the US there are a lot of coal plants switching to NG recently. It's going to take a lot longer due to resistance from advocacy groups and the larger scale and number of plants, but it's eventually going to happen. NG is at least a step in the right direction towards reduced emissions and more renewables. Eventually the old fucks who are trying to keep fossil fuels alive will either die off or get replaced with people a little more sensible. Maybe that's optimistic but at least financially NG is so much better than coal. Money talks. nuclear or bust tho

KEEP IT GOING BOIS

Have been keeping an eye on this for awhile and it's great. Not only have we not used coal but we have seen gas usage dip quite low on some days. The last 24 hours have been great with solar, nuclear, and wind all individually above gas. Probably only a few years out from having our first day without gas. Maybe less if the Tories would stop killing renewable and nuclear incentives to pass time.

Renewable incentives for solar are better spent building things like offshore wind farms, you get the benefit of scale and solar isn't ideal for the UK even with the latest gen panels.

Still really annoyed that the tories shot down the tidal lagoon power plant Wales had planned. And cutting the planned electrification of the great western railway in half.

Less than 30 jobs, 1.3bn and at a price of 150/gbp MWh I can completely understand why it was rejected. Even the disaster of the Hinkley point nuclear plant is 92.5/gbp MWh. It's easy to get rosy eyed when you see things like tidal power, but literally anything else would make more sense.

Yes but tidal is really crap way to generate electricity and they aren't particularly good for the environment either http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/wave_tidal_energy_plants_green_technologies_473na2_en.pdf

It was a crap project even if it sounded cool.

Well, in spite of current events, at least this is something to be somewhat proud of.

They don't have a great LCA, but then, nor do electric cars or NPPs. Sometimes I think it's necessary with an LCA to take into account the movement of pollution/consumption from one place to another, so in the case of electric cars the pollution goes from city-centre and highway diesel smog to the polluting of the Lithium harvesting process, which is less impactful on a grand scale and easier to control. The same with tidal barrages, the specific type I'm talking about being the ones proposed on the South Wales/Southwest England coast. They do quite a bit of local ecosystem damage as far as marine life is concerned, and their life cycle is initially quite bad as they consume a lot of concrete and metals, but that's offset by replacing CCGT power station emissions (which include damage to marine life at the outflows anyway) and, in some cases, the still-present winter coal peaks. We may not be able to achieve our goals without accepting some less-dirty, but still dirty, forms of power, and I think tidal matches up with nuclear on that. As far as 'really crap' I'm not sure what you mean by that as the projected generation capacities of Swansea Bay and the Severn Barrage were nothing too shabby. Equivalent, at least, to a wind farm in the same location. I'm sure we can all agree, though, that my point regarding people putting obstacles in the way of development stands. Local opposition damages renewable projects, and Government procurement incompetence is killing off base load cleanup projects in the form of new NPPs. At some point this is going to have to lead to increased coal/CCGT load where NPPs are forced to go into end of life, or dangerous life extension programs on old reactors.

Meanwhile in Australia: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/654/de4dc68c-f358-4002-abc8-fb2353b93b7f/image.png

That'd be great if they didn't ban new onshore wind projects. Solar works fine in the UK, not really sure why people say it doesn't. Got a 6 kW east west facing system and it's great even with the minimal incentives I got at the end of the FiT program.

I still believe the price TLP were asking was based entirely on 'Well if it's good enough for Hinkley it's good enough for everyone else' therefore the inflated p/kwh was a direct result of the Government rolling over and showing their bellies to the Hinkley developers.

Also solar is pretty crap in terms of CO2 emissions compared to the rest.

https://twitter.com/UK_Coal/status/1133025589739368448 Still going..

Don't we have a huge amount of (massive) off-shore wind farms already being planned/developed? Plus they're far more efficient as I understand it.

Usually onshore wind projects are banned because people petition not to build them, everybody is all for wind until they try and build it in your backyard. So much misinformation, when they built the turbines on the hill behind my house we had idiots parading the streets claiming we wouldn’t get any sleep and it would shadow the entire valley. Complete lies but people are generally the reason we don’t see more investment in onshore and instead mostly offshore. Construction estimates for jobs are always heavily overblown but once it’s finished those jobs go away, and unless we’re building an infinite number of tidal plants those jobs are sustainable. Kind of like claiming zero hour contracts is real employment. I think privatisation would be a good way to go, it won’t get built unless it will actually make a profit that way. So it will need to offer competitive prices, especially vs other renewable methods. If it’s a failure it doesn’t cost us any money, but it succeeds we’ll all benefit. Investors tend to scrutinise projects more than the government

While NIMBY is a factor, the Tories (Amber Rudd) changed the planning rules to stop onshore wind from competing for any government subsidies.

A quick look at the Round 3 bids looks like a solid ~15GW of the 25GW Round 3 consortia (2012-2015 tendering, with the first wind farms starting producing in 2015) is due to begin construction in 20/21.

The question will be what happens after that if no further tenders go out in the year?

I would assume they'll do a round 4 tender at some point in future, all the previous ones have been done in waves too.

Hopefully whoever replaces May gives more of a shit. Tories have been awful since the end of the coalition. Coal power plant near me is still burning coal even though we still aren't using any on the grid. They have a contract to provide backup power, so boilers are always burning coal. How long until hot standby is done away with??

Still going, come on two weeks. https://twitter.com/UK_Coal/status/1134248648198561792?s=19

We did it https://twitter.com/UK_Coal/status/1134475139817639937?s=19

And it's over.... https://twitter.com/UK_Coal/status/1136008160567877633?s=19

The Tories fucking hate it when us Welsh try to spend our tax money on projects that actually benefit us, who would have guessed? If it cheers you up at all, we're still fighting to make it happen. A lot of interesting ideas are being tossed around right now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48360442