Sunday 27 January 2008

"Britain facing energy shortfall"

More total and utter bollocks, of course, in particular this bit:

"More importantly, a number of older coal-fired stations may also have closed. Under the European Large Combustion Plants Directive (LCPD), aimed at curbing pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, power units built before 1987 must either be modified with modern emissions control equipment, or operate only for a total of 20,000 hours between 2008 and 2015, when they must come out of service completely.".

20,000 hours mean about one-quarter of the time, sure electricity demand is much higher at certain times of the day, but this is still a pretty stiff restriction. And what's this about "coming out of service completely"? We're facing an "energy shortfall" and the EU is forcing us to shut down perfectly good power stations?

In that case, the whole matter can be solved by leaving the EU and building more coal-fired power stations (we have plenty of coal left, as it happens).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I live near a coal-fired power station that since the 1st of this month is down to its last 20,000 hours which are expected to run out in 2012. I'm hoping that when the full significance of this legislation dawns on the government there'll get some kind of reprieve, perhaps another 20,000 hrs! They produce up to around 1000 MW depending on customer demand. A windfarm near us produces up to 17 MW depending on wind strength - if any! And where will the gas come from to supply all these new gas plants?

Scott Freeman said...

I think this all avoids the question: what is a "shortfall"? Economically it's a meaningless term. All that's happening is that the supply of energy is not rising as fast as demand, and so price is rising.

You can only start using terms like shortfall if you're running a command econo....oh dear, I've said too much! Black helicopters circling!

Henry North London 2.0 said...

No wonder the mayan calendar stops at 2012 and it is theorized that it is the end of the world as we know it

Im getting more and more to the realisation that I must leave Britain by the time I am 40 so that I can escape in time.