Coal being phased out

We will all be ripping out our gas boilers in the end. No point is gas central heating when there is no gas, or gas is too expensive to burn.

Much of British Gas comes from the Norwegian North Sea because our share of North Sea Gas is almost all gone. Most of Europe's gas comes from Russia. At the moment Russian gas is very cheap - drill a hole in the right place and it pours out of the ground in such large quantities that its given away or flared off. Fantastic, except this happy state of affairs can't last. Sooner or later, all the natural gas will be gone.

I've mt a lot of chaps my age who believe that some mysterious 'they' are plotting to inconvenience society by removing systems that have done us so well for a few generations. Whether it's gas boilers, diesel or petrol, the assumption is demented greenies are out to remove innocent privileges for foolish reasons. This is wrong: pollution is a serious problem in many places, global warming is far more dangerous than Corona Virus, and running out of fossil fuels will destroy our entire economic system.

Unless something is done the outlook is grim. Back in 1970 the issues were mostly hypothetical, well over the horizon. Fifty years later, they are impossible to ignore. Anyone under 30 years of age has a great deal to worry about, because the simple solutions available to Grandad are going, going, gone.

Signalling the end of domestic gas boilers gives industry time and encouragement to develop alternatives. That's surely better than ignoring the issue. New ideas required please, not denials and blaming others.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 27/02/2020 10:40:16

<cynic>Suddenly it'll be environmentally sound to go back to coal since we have massive reserves....

The UK has identified hard coal resources of 3 910 million tonnes, although total resources could be as large as 187 billion tonnes.
link

We'll have a Trump of our own selling the latest capture technology and benefits of atmospheric sulphur to keep fungal disease at bay and the old comic book stories of going to sit in the gas works to treat your 'flu'</cynic>

Fusion, they say, is 30yrs away and always will be. Actually now that private enterprise is playing with fusion power ideas there is some hope....

The reality that no gov is prepared to accept is that we need to do with less...less imports, less travel, less making 'stuff' just to sell it and preferably fewer people...

I always assumed that the earth was slowly decaying it's orbit into the sun but apparently it's moving away at 15cm/yr so it will get colder - eventually.

Just like to throw into the mix the magnetic North Pole is moving at an alarming rate because, supposedly the balance of the earth has been altered by the extraction of huge volumes of water in the Indian region and so much concrete has been erected in China, I fear we are all doomed !
Dave W

No.

Actually it would appear to be yes - on the local news this evening was the announcement that Drax power station is to stop burning coal next year & move over entirely to "biomass". Source of this "biomass" ? It will be supplied as described above - which is where & how the current "biomass" comes from that is currently burned alongside coal. 250 redundancies as a result of the change.

We could always move from natural gas to LPG when natural supplies get difficult or too expensive to come by - the UK is apparently an exporter of LPG, which is a byproduct of oil refining. And stopping using oil for transport won't stop the use of oil - I read recently that transport uses of oil are already less that that used to produce petrochemicals & lubricants. All known oil reserves being exploited ? What about the recently announced field west of the Shetlands that is estimated as being a larger deposit than the North Sea field - just needs the price to rise to make it economic to start on. Likewise the fields around the Falklands.

While the variable horizontal scale of the temperature changes graph refered to earlier makes determining the older cyclic variation patterns with any accuracy difficult, what struck me was that the last 20,000ish years that show as being relatively stable appeared to be the exeception, rather than the norm. If the temperature variations are just returning to the previously unstable norm, it won't really matter what we do - the normal situation will reinstate itself regardless. Time for NASA to come up with a sunshade ?

Nigel B.

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Perhaps it’s time to review James Lovelock’s ideas, without all the hyperbole that was attached in the seventies.

MichaelG.

It's interesting that journeys on short haul, high-occupancy flights on turbo-prop aircraft have a much lower carbon footprint than single occupancy ICE cars (especially petrol ones) and comparable to train journeys.

Neil

Actually it would appear to be yes - on the local news this evening was the announcement that Drax power station is to stop burning coal next year & move over entirely to "biomass".

I think this particular form of ‘generation’ is simply a means of Drax taking advantage of government rules which paid subsidies for non-fossil generation. It is, in my opinion, simply a company taking advantage of a loop-hole in the regulations - blame the rule makers for the loop-hole.

At the same time, where would we be if that generation was disallowed? One to two GW that would have been fossil generated. Burning coal would generate about eight times the amount of CO2 apportioned to this fuel (only because the full emissions from the biomass are not recorded in the form the government use) and thus shows up in reports as a reduction in CO2 emissions. Nothing more than that.

It was why there was the ‘rush for gas’ three decades ago. Yes, far more efficient than simply raising steam to drive turbines but also it reduced our carbon use at a stroke - which was what was required. Back then, we used the same amount of electricity but the carbon foot-print was slashed.

Other forms of sustainable/non-carbon generation were subsidised, but most are now being installed without any support, but the historical subsidised installations were garanteed that subsidy for their lifetime. It was the only way to get them built cheaply, at the time. Think hinkley point strike price as a prime example.

Simply a scam, in my opinion. But lets remember that subsidies are paid to all manner of industries such as agriculture, coal mining (in the day), public transport and a whole lot of others. Tax payers are stumping up for all these subsidies, apparently for the overall good of the country. It is a form of spreading taxes more equitably among the population, say some.

But others might point out that they pay for the likes of public transport but do not get any benefit from it (remote rural communities with no public transport services). Subsidies are directed to resources for the main populaion, not out-lying minorities (where the returns on the investment would make it unsustainable).

Roundabouts and swings at the final analysis, I suppose.

Nice one Dave - but I fear many have missed the joke.

On the right track Dave but no cigar.

Being north of the equator the extraction of water about India is not having a big impact.

It is the export of iron ore from Australia and Brazil ( about a billion tonnes in 2017 ) that is causing the problem.

Although a lot of it is exported as iron and steel, not that much of it comes back south of the border ( equator ).

Two 'big' ones that will have had an effect on the C of G in our lifetime are the loss of the Aral Sea and the 'plus' of the Three Gorges project. Coriolus Effect etc.

Back to the plot , all is explained on the gov. website ' UK net carbon zero 2050' with further details as a link

on ' Industrial Strategy.' as to how it will be achieved.

Allow at least 5 minutes to read it all.

My little brain can stop worrying now.

Well if the green idiots get there way we will all die out anyway, but we will leave a barren lifeless planet behind. If we reduce the earth's co2 level below 300ppm most of the plants will die out!

If we had the technology to reduce CO2 levels by 50ppm, there would be no need to worry about climate change! As it is, CO2 is out of control.

Ice core records show CO2 levels wobbling just below 300ppm for the last 800,000 years. Then they show the level rising sharply since industrialisation, up to about 420ppm last year and accelerating. It's an awful big difference to make to the atmosphere in only 250 years. Carbon Dioxide being odourless and invisible doesn't help - the problem would be much easier to accept if the air turned black and car tyres dissolved in rain water!

Curious thing noted at today's family 'do': although the elders don't care about global warming, they're terrified by Coronavirus...

Dave

Funny how commercial tomato growers have to increase co2 levels to 1000ppm to achieve viable crops?

To get back to the practical effects of the legislation, I'm wondering how it will affect me. I buy unprocessed logs from a local farmer - he charges me £30 for as much as I can cram into my estate, which I reckon is 400 to 500 kg. So less than a cubic meter based on a density of 600-800 kg/m^3 for hardwood. This come from a massive pile in his yard. He reckons it take about two years for green wood to get bulldozed from the input to the output end. It is a big pile!

When I get it home the superficial moisture content (measured by one of those resistance meter things) can be as high as 35%, but after processing and storing indoors for a few weeks it's down to 20-22% and burns nicely.

How is this going to be policed? If I have to buy kiln-dried and processed with certified water content it'll be too expensive - and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Round here some folk have the space to store enough to season under cover for a year or more.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 01/03/2020 01:30:14

Around here you can go severa years between sightings of a policeman and fl-tipping and burglary are ignored so what;s the chance of getting firewood checked? Don't worry about it. If anything is ever done to police it then it'll be a few spot checks on licenced dealers and a large fine if they catch one 'pour encourager les autres'

I've got 10 or 15 tons of the stuff in a dutch barn but hardly ever burn it 'cos of the mess and dust involved and that it takes a heaped wheelbarrow a day to warm this place up. Much easier to use oil CH. It does get used in the hobby shed on cold evenings.

Nasty stuff that CO2. It killed these three people and put others in hospital. CO2 DEATHS

Albeit at about one million PPM.

All inert gases are asphyxiant gases in the right concentrations. I remember when Halon was replaced with Inergen gas which was much safer to humans as it still contained oxygen.

Helium has been used in the USA to kill people as it leaves no trace and undetectable!

Posted by Hopper on 01/03/2020 05:55:29:

Smoke signals! On a still day it can be seen for miles, and it points straight to the guilty party.

But the point of legislation is to discourage anti-social behaviour, not to guarantee it never happens. If the ban reduces the number of cheapskates burning wet-wood by half, that's an improvement. The Law doesn't prevent murder, theft, irresponsible dog owners, or parking on a double yellow-line whilst under the influence, but it certainly discourages all of them.

Dave