Another Smart Meter thread.

I stand by what I said. At first gas was more expensive, especially when it was made by roasting coal. But over time the situation changed heavily in favour of gas.

• In the UK most coal is deep underground and is considerably more expensive to extract than coal that can be stripped near the surface.
• UK coal has been heavily exploited for nearly 300 years and most of it has been mined. There's not much left, and what there is hard to get out. The best way of getting the energy is not to mine it at all; a mixture of gasifying by partially burning it underground and fracking would do the job but both are extremely unpopular on the surface. Fossil fuel fanboys become radical ranting Greens after being told their house is over one of these schemes!
• For many years natural gas was flared off during oil production because of the cost of moving it. But once pipelines and liquid gas container ships got into production, the cost of gas dropped rapidly. Today, gas energy is cheaper than coal unless the power station is built on top the coal field, or if it can be moved by in bulk by giant container ships. This is still true despite the current high price of gas.

This graph tells the story of British Coal:

Production, the red line, averaged about 250,000,000 tons per year from about 1880 to 1960, but thereafter fell rapidly. The underlying problem was exhaustion. Knowing that coal was done for, and that North Sea Gas and Oil were coming online, Mrs Thatcher took the opportunity to bash the unions. I think she also created the myth that there's still lots of British coal to be had. Another myth is that the Greens put the kybosh on it. Not so: there's some coal left, but no way will this country ever produce 250,000,000 tons a year again. Worldwide, coal is on the same sort of curve, with perhaps 250 year in reserve: at the moment Australia is exporting huge quantities of coal to China. But sooner or later, Australia will also run out of coal. Luckily for them they have a lot of it, but it's only a matter of time. The position on oil is much less rosy - 20 to 30 years before it becomes rare and costly.

The green line shows the UK starting to import coal around 1970, eventually peaking at 50,000,000 tons, but it's dropped significantly in recent years to about 3,000,000 tons.

Fortunately the UK wants energy rather than coal and there are other ways of getting it. If coal were the only answer we'd be seriously stuffed.

Dave

Thanks to SOD for the graph.. Explain to me once more how not importing tiny amounts of coal for heritage use is going to save the planet.

Martin

And what about the 'deal' the UK is negotiating with the US, for us to import LNG via fossil powered ships?

Martin.

LNG Tankers, are rather ironically, somewhat less carbon intensive than other types of tanker ship, as they run on the "boil-off" from the cryogenic storage tanks, and can even recover some kinetic energy from the expansion of that boil-off (which also serves to provide some of the cooling for the cryogenic systems) before using it as fuel.

The whole compressing and cooling methane until it's liquid bit, that's rather energy intensive compared to preparing gas for pipeline transmission, but the shipping isn't too bad all told.

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The underlying issue is that if there wasn't a market to sell the gas as LNG, all that methane would still be produced, only to be immediately flared by the primary producer out in west texas or the bakken because it's uneconomic to even bother collecting it for sale.

The economics of oil production and it's relative value to gas, mean the exploration and production activities will go on regardless of demand for natural gas, so whilst that continues we might as well be using the gas as it would reduce the overall carbon intensity of energy extraction overall, even if it's sub-optimal from a GHG standpoint.

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There's no easy gotcha's in energy policy just a series of nested "oh,well, right, that was more complicated than I thought, but I'm sure I can figure it out" moments that go on forever, like some infinite, cursed matryoshka doll.

To widen Martins question, when you're going to use coal anyway, for heritage locos or steelmaking, why can't we dig up our own rather than importing. The only other way of reducing iron ore to iron uses hydrogen, and the only way of making green hydrogen involves lots of spare electricity, which we don't have, so in the short term at least we should dig our own coal. 45

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and … as I wrote yesterday morning:

They need to be paying attention to Prof. Myles Allen

MichaelG.

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P.S. __ I really hope I will not be required to dig my own coal though

The irony is that whilst the public is being railroaded into dumping its domestic gas boilers, the UK is cutting deals to import that same fracked fossil gas as LNG, which as you point out, often powers the ships that bring it here. It's hardly 'saving the planet' is it?

What you didn't mention was the regasification, distribution and expense of all this convoluted hypocrisy. However, something we're not going to forget about in a hurry is the massive and completely unnecessary price hike we will be made to endure.

Martin.

I'd hoped everyone would notice my post focused on the economic problem with burning coal in the UK, not the Green Issues, which are another difficulty entirely.

Anyway, there's no need for me to explain how not importing coal for heritage use will save the planet, because it won't! Coal burnt for heritage reasons is insignificant. In the same way, my car isn't a pollution problem, it's the other 1.5 billion of them that need to be sorted out. Like my car, heritage coal is part of a much bigger problem and liable to get caught in the wider fix. We have to find alternatives to burning fossil fuels.

It's very difficult for a First World country to tell a poor Third World country not to improve their standard of living by building a coal power station whilst we run museum pieces for fun. Telling them to suck it up doesn't help. It would only work if world wide coal burning wasn't harming the UK too. And it is. Across the planet between 8 and 9 billion tons of coal are burnt each year. Compared with that the 3 million tons being imported by the UK heritage is trivial.

We are unfortunate to live at a time when the end of fossil fuels is in sight. By analogy life is easy when there's plenty of money in the bank, but understanding one is running out of cash brings a cold dose of horrid reality. Fossil fuels are the same; at the present rate oil has about 30 years to go before serious permanent shortages, and coal about 150. Even if climate change theory was completely wrong, my children will see major changes, and my grandchildren will have to do something completely different like it or not.

Hoping fossil fuels will last forever is doomed to fail. I say it's time to change and there are no sacred cows.

Dave

The logical conclusion is that humans end all frivolous activity: No model making for a start, no pointless internet activity, an end of consumerism, an end of capitalism, nothing, but being able to survive - for the many.

I'm not seeing any cutbacks at COP27.

Martin.

Not a logical conclusion at all - there are alternatives to fossil fuels. The provision of energy is a problem to be managed. It shouldn't require a return to the stone age unless humanity cocks up. Might happen - plenty of folk prefer unjustified beliefs to facts, and beliefs are hopeless when fixing technical problems...

Dave

Or prefer fiction to unpleasant factsthat of course

Show any alternative 'green' energy source which at no point requires a major input from either oil, coal, gas, or their derivatives.

I agree with you about those with blind faith, particularly towards those they see as 'authority figures'.

Martin.

There are too many people on this planet. Covid only managed to shrink us by 16 million but I expect lockdowns led to an increase in everyones favourite pastime probably leading to a population increase overall.

Mike

Oh, I don't know about that. At the time there were less than 400 excess deaths in the UK per week. At the moment, there are upwards of 1700 excess deaths per week in the UK, so the "too many people on this planet" might be shuffling off as we write.

Martin.

Jelly

If the LNG that is being transported in the tankers is only there instead of being flared of as waste, how come the price of gas has rocketed, why are we paying so much for what is potentially a waste product and supposedly now in short supply? Dave W

So it seems many countries have 'been in bed' with Russia, including the UK, at least with regard to oil & gas supplies.

How on earth did all these deals get made with Russia - over decades of Putin's leadership, if he is such a lunatic?

Martin.

Why should I show "an alternative 'green' energy source which at no point requires a major input from either oil, coal, gas, or their derivatives"? The question shows another logic error, which is the proposition that 'green energy is only useful if it doesn't depend on anything else'.

All progress is built on past achievements. Nothing arrives out of the blue in perfected form. It's always necessary to move forward in steps, and all technologies improve and get cheaper after an imperfect start.

19th Century Coal Mines depended completely on wood, but that didn't mean digging coal was a waste of time, In the same way using coal to make coke to make steel to make wind turbines delivers value. In time, steel can be made from green Hydrogen, but not yet.

Glad we agree about Authority figures; I say they only have authority when supported by facts and evidence. Conversely, it's a bad mistake to reject authority due to failure to understand or because they bring bad news. In the case of climate change, science is far more credible than the deniers, who prefer showers of misunderstandings favouring their unsupported belief that all is well forever.

Extremely hard to correct faulty thinking - see Brandolini's Law!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 12/11/2022 12:42:09

There are many conflicting figures on the interweb for UK coal reserves. This says 77 million tons, but this says 3910 million proven but possibly 187000 million. I'm not suggesting that we revert to coal for base load electricity, but the heritage railway sector consumes just 26000 tons/year, contributing 0.02% of our CO2 emissions. I think closing down heritage railways would be virtue signalling, and if someone in the UK can make a case for mining it, so be it. Using our own must both save on imports and the CO2 emissions in shipping. So called Ecoal appears to be a mix of coal dust, dried olive stones and molasses, I'd be interested to find out how much CO2 per kJ of heat, but the manufacturers are somewhat coy

It would aid your argument by showing a 'green' product that didn't cause at least as much pollution in its manufacture, use & disposal than it's likely to save thoughout its working life when compared to what is already available. Why are you struggling with that?

I also never said ... 'green energy is only useful if it doesn't depend on anything else'. That is a strawman argument, which you shouldn't need to resort to.

As for your link to Brandolini's Law and the implied slur that my thinking is wrong:

You'll see from your link that it states. "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."

You should read and understand that law yourself, before trying to use it against others, as it merely serves to highlight your lack of self-awareness.

Martin.