Wednesday 17 September 2008

"Britain faces power cuts threat"

The BBC have done a fair write up of a press release.

The killer sentence - and not even the Beeb seems to bother denying this - is "And an EU Directive that requires the most polluting coal- and oil-fired power station to close would result in the likely loss of a further 12GW generation capacity."

As a taxpayer and electricity user* who lives on a small, windy island built on coal, may I suggest that ... er ... coal may the way forward? Unlike nuclear or windmills, it doesn't need subsidies - we can collect tax from the mines, the miners and the generators. It's a safe and reliable energy source under our own feet. And BTW, CO2 is not a pollutant, FFS, it's a perfectly natural, airborne plant food. The coal will last us for centuries, and if and when it runs out, future generations can fill the empty shafts with household waste or something.

* In common with presumably 99% of the rest of this island's inhabitants.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

news just in, their might be hope for windmills afterall.

Breakthrough In Energy Storage: New Carbon Material Shows Promise Of Storing Large Quantities Of Renewable Electrical Energy

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080916143910.htm

Coal will do in the meantime, be careful not to let a load of blokes from Barnsley hold a gun to your head, SO I suggest hedging your bets with 4th gen Nuclear, pebble bed reactors. Smaller, safer than safe, and quicker to build.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Brilliant! They're going to store energy on slices of breakfast cereal!

Anonymous said...

Mark - the issue with coal is not the CO2, it's the Sulphur and Nitrogen emissions which create Sulphuric and Nitric Acid in the atmosphere - remember acid rain?
Also, particulate matter - as per the infamous London Smog, which claimed many lives via asthma and respiratory inflammation and infection.
Coal is a very flawed fuel for these reasons.

Nick Drew said...

well you know my views on this: coal and more coal.

but as regards the Directive (the Large Combustion Plants Directive), all the decisions on plants to be closed under that have already been made - by the owners, not the EU or govt - and there's no going back

(plant owners could choose: clean'em up & carry on as long as you like; or don't clean 'em up and you can only use them for another so-many thousand hours, your choice)

once you know a plant is going to close, you stop making routine discretionary investments in it: and when you do that, it just slowly disintegrates, so the plants chosen for "we aren't going to clean 'em up" will definitely close at the end of the period

however, a good brownfield site - with a grid connection & access to cooling water etc - is a great asset, and they'll be used for new plant, for certain

marksany said...

CO2 is a pollutant. Just because it is natural does not mean that too much of it in the wrong place is OK. CO2 does trap heat from solar infra red radiation. This is causing global warming.

Salt (NaCl) is also natural, but in farming systems around the world crops have been poisoned with high salt concentrations. So salt, which by your definition is not a pollutant, is polluting.

I don't understand why people with right of centre or libertarian views are also climate change denyers. In the US, a lot of them are creationists, so I can see their rejection of science, but in the UK?

M said...

Don't worry, when the lights go out we can burn the eco-trendies who are digging us in to this shit to heat and light our homes.

Anonymous said...

Coal is fine, but coal laden with sulphur, in seams that are faulted and shallow, and rather deep down, is crap. Especially since over the years it proved a less reliable supply of energy than oil did.