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The Death of King Coal

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scotia
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The Death of King Coal

#317042

Postby scotia » June 10th, 2020, 9:37 am

In the UK we have now gone for two months without using coal for electrical power generation.
And its now two centuries since coal miners and their families ceased to be treated as slaves in Scotland
https://magazine.cim.org/en/mining-lore/liberating-scotlands-slaves-of-the-soil/#:~:text=In%20response%20to%20a%20burgeoning,and%20inherit%20workers%20as%20slaves.
Although from 1943 to 1945 one in ten conscripts were drafted to the mines, with imprisonment the alternative.
Coming from a generation who's coal mining families were determined that we would not go down the mines, I feel no loss at the demise of King Coal.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317102

Postby dealtn » June 10th, 2020, 11:08 am

Snorvey wrote:It has been a period of an exceptional drop in energy demand though (industry closed down, warm weather etc), so I'd expect it to pick up again as this thing shifts.

Saying that, if the government is looking for a post lockdown / post Brexit project, why can't it raise the billions needed to plaster the country's roofs in solar panels and car charging points as well as super insulating the houses and business premises of the UK?

Seems logical to me - especially compared to some of the crap they spend money on.


Wouldn't that also apply to the private sector though?

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317112

Postby dealtn » June 10th, 2020, 11:17 am

Snorvey wrote:
dealtn wrote:
Snorvey wrote:It has been a period of an exceptional drop in energy demand though (industry closed down, warm weather etc), so I'd expect it to pick up again as this thing shifts.

Saying that, if the government is looking for a post lockdown / post Brexit project, why can't it raise the billions needed to plaster the country's roofs in solar panels and car charging points as well as super insulating the houses and business premises of the UK?

Seems logical to me - especially compared to some of the crap they spend money on.


Wouldn't that also apply to the private sector though?


Given that the only place a lot of the private sector can raise money these days is directly from the government, then of course it does.


We haven't witnessed as busy a period of equity and debt raising in the markets for several years. What makes you think that private sector couldn't raise funds away from the government?

I suspect the reason it hasn't happened, or isn't currently happening, is that such a universal project isn't likely to be profitable. In that case why should the government undertake it, especially at a time when the public finances are likely stretched greater than ever before?

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317180

Postby didds » June 10th, 2020, 1:21 pm

Snorvey wrote:It has been a period of an exceptional drop in energy demand though (industry closed down, warm weather etc), so I'd expect it to pick up again as this thing shifts.


^^ This.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-envi ... xc2mDmoOpI

Though the use of wooden pellets is still a carbonised fuel basis, whilst apreciating that its carbon neitral (I am told) cos all its doing is oputting back into the atmosphere the carbon that was previously taken out by the trees. as in many ways is coal of course. the issue being the rate of absorbtion over decades/epochs and immediate release "now".

And there is the issue of the pellets being from another country where the UK has no cvontrol over the progeny of the pellets and the subsequent reliance on a foreign power for electricty fuel.

However - it is definitely a huge step in the right directtion.

didds

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317183

Postby UncleEbenezer » June 10th, 2020, 1:29 pm

didds wrote:
Snorvey wrote:It has been a period of an exceptional drop in energy demand though (industry closed down, warm weather etc), so I'd expect it to pick up again as this thing shifts.


^^ This.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-envi ... xc2mDmoOpI

Though the use of wooden pellets is still a carbonised fuel basis, whilst apreciating that its carbon neitral (I am told) cos all its doing is oputting back into the atmosphere the carbon that was previously taken out by the trees. as in many ways is coal of course. the issue being the rate of absorbtion over decades/epochs and immediate release "now".

didds


Yep. That's simply an accelerated fossil fuel cycle, cutting out the ultra-long-term fossil phase.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317470

Postby Leothebear » June 11th, 2020, 10:41 am

Why is it, I wonder, why solar panels haven't been made mandatory for new builds?

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317497

Postby gryffron » June 11th, 2020, 11:30 am

I would also have thought that working down a coal mine would be a terrible job. But living in Nottingham for many years I met plenty of ex-miners. They ALL told me it was the best job they ever had. Good pay. But mostly, the all-male camaraderie and banter they experienced down the mines has never been matched.

Leothebear wrote:Why is it, I wonder, why solar panels haven't been made mandatory for new builds?

That one's easy. Because we already have too much. That's also why solar Feed-In-Tariffs have been cut to <purchase cost. On hot sunny days, UK has relatively low demand, and there is already enough solar (&wind) to supply all we require.

Gryff

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317502

Postby servodude » June 11th, 2020, 11:37 am

Leothebear wrote:Why is it, I wonder, why solar panels haven't been made mandatory for new builds?


They have in some places; which is why "Tesla tiles"
- for the UK though, lack of efficient storage to cache power when you have sun is part of it
- and Luddites

-sd

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317510

Postby UncleEbenezer » June 11th, 2020, 11:43 am

gryffron wrote:I would also have thought that working down a coal mine would be a terrible job. But living in Nottingham for many years I met plenty of ex-miners. They ALL told me it was the best job they ever had. Good pay. But mostly, the all-male camaraderie and banter they experienced down the mines has never been matched.


But how would the story have sounded back in the days when they actually had to go down there? Sounds a bit like nostalgia for wartime.

Leothebear wrote:Why is it, I wonder, why solar panels haven't been made mandatory for new builds?

That one's easy. Because we already have too much. That's also why solar Feed-In-Tariffs have been cut to <purchase cost. On hot sunny days, UK has relatively low demand, and there is already enough solar (&wind) to supply all we require.

Gryff

Nope. In the first place, it should've been mandated long before any of that ever happened (in the case of flats, solar hot water for the building as a whole makes a lot of sense). In the second place, electric cars, and indeed any manufacturing that returns to Blighty post-covid. In the third place, future storage and 24-hour supply. But most of all, you're positing a binary on/off, whereas in reality most of the time we could both generate and use lots more solar supply.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317644

Postby sunnyjoe » June 11th, 2020, 4:22 pm

gryffron wrote:
Leothebear wrote:Why is it, I wonder, why solar panels haven't been made mandatory for new builds?

That one's easy. Because we already have too much. That's also why solar Feed-In-Tariffs have been cut to <purchase cost. On hot sunny days, UK has relatively low demand, and there is already enough solar (&wind) to supply all we require.

Gryff

I think the best we have managed at any instant is 65% of demand. That's very good, but we need to do better.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317648

Postby scotia » June 11th, 2020, 4:35 pm

gryffron wrote:I would also have thought that working down a coal mine would be a terrible job. But living in Nottingham for many years I met plenty of ex-miners. They ALL told me it was the best job they ever had. Good pay. But mostly, the all-male camaraderie and banter they experienced down the mines has never been matched.
Gryff

I think its a bit of bravado and a strong dose of absence makes the heart grow fonder.
In our village none of our (miner) parents wanted us to go anywhere near the coal mines. And that view was widespread in the mining community. I remember on a school visit down a mine, one of the miners grabbed me and said that he didn't mind me watching him work, but I should promise that it would in no way make me want to become a miner. It was an easy promise to make. Then there's the sizeable rate of absenteeism in the coal mines. I remember a TV "investigation" into the absenteeism rate where they asked a miner why he only ever worked four of his five weekly shifts - and his answer was that he could not afford to only work three. As for the high wages - not true. As mines closed and younger miners found other employment there were tales of "why didn't I do this sooner".
As far as I can remember there was only one lad from our class made a career in the mines - after a spell at college he rose up the management ladder.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317661

Postby tea42 » June 11th, 2020, 4:59 pm

We are in the throes of the sixth great extinction.... Time to reduce the human population, the planet cant take it.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317665

Postby dspp » June 11th, 2020, 5:11 pm

gryffron wrote:
Leothebear wrote:Why is it, I wonder, why solar panels haven't been made mandatory for new builds?

That one's easy. Because we already have too much. That's also why solar Feed-In-Tariffs have been cut to <purchase cost. On hot sunny days, UK has relatively low demand, and there is already enough solar (&wind) to supply all we require.

Gryff


WRONG.

In the UK the reason the FIT for solar PV and the other technologies was cut is quite complex, but at heart political. I was close enough to the action to be very very sure. I remember being wheeled into one meeting with the relevant minister when he told the solar lobby he was doing it. I was his protection since I was a renewables person asking for a reduction in the PV FIT tariff. The sandwiches were OK ....

The UK probably needs to continue its solar PV build-out to about 4x its existing amount, depending on a few things. At present it is at about 15 GW capacity. The real issue will be what is the price of battery storage in about 10-years time as that in turn tells us the optimum amount of wind, solar, and the other renewable generating technologies to aim for so as to get an optimal generation mix, and also so as to get the optimal use of the installed base of CCGT gas turbines as they progressively become uneconomic, whilst getting the minimum amount of stranded conventional fossil assets. The battery price will also greatly influence the BEV adoption rate which is another key parameter, so by looking just at the battery price you can see both the direct and indirect path in action. There are many pathways along which it is more cost-effective to overbuild renewable generation capacity as it is cheaper to do that than to buy the (insurance policy) of too much battery capacity.

However, the real reason that PV is not mandatory for newbuild housing is that the Conservatives eagerly gave in to the anti-green and pro-building lobbies, who just want to put up shoddy cheap housing at high prices and massive profits. Again I was there and can be sure. Cameron & Pickles "just cut the green crap". They watered down the requirements for energy efficiency etc in buildings. If it was my call there would be mandatory 2kW per bed room on every newbuild in the UK, likewise for every existing building (as a retrofit) unless there was literally nowhere to put it.

I now need to go and open the box of solar PV samples that have just arrived for me ....

regards, dspp

*estimated from the 2019 position, https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2019/ ... r-capacity

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317668

Postby UncleEbenezer » June 11th, 2020, 5:27 pm

dspp wrote:However, the real reason that PV is not mandatory for newbuild housing is that the Conservatives eagerly gave in to the anti-green and pro-building lobbies, who just want to put up shoddy cheap housing at high prices and massive profits.


That would beg the question, why didn't Blair make it mandatory? I recollect a little rant on the subject back in 2006, when it was obviously long-overdue.

I don't think we've had any government in my lifetime that's covered itself in glory. Nearest thing to environmental sanity was John Major's fuel price escalator: if that had continued, we could be in a much better place right now, with a society built less around the car.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317714

Postby dspp » June 11th, 2020, 8:15 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:
dspp wrote:However, the real reason that PV is not mandatory for newbuild housing is that the Conservatives eagerly gave in to the anti-green and pro-building lobbies, who just want to put up shoddy cheap housing at high prices and massive profits.


That would beg the question, why didn't Blair make it mandatory? I recollect a little rant on the subject back in 2006, when it was obviously long-overdue.

I don't think we've had any government in my lifetime that's covered itself in glory. Nearest thing to environmental sanity was John Major's fuel price escalator: if that had continued, we could be in a much better place right now, with a society built less around the car.


UE,

The Major-Blair-Brown period did a mostly reasonable, but not perfect job at balancing: turning the screws on the fossil fuel pricing; not forcing the poor into greater fuel poverty; not stalling the economy; driving renewables technology forwards to scale; creating a developer/installer base; and improving energy efficiency. It wasn't by any means perfect and I could point to many bad decisions in there, most especially (but not only) under Brown. At every step of the way they were opposed tooth and nail by what we might call neo-luddite-Brexit-man and the red-tops. The UK was even on course to win at least a third, and maybe half, of all the large wind turbine manufacturing factories in Europe.

Into that stepped Cameron and the Cons. They dropped Pickles into DCLG, ran rings around the Liberals, and in practice reneged on all the above. The particular case you are asking about, is that of building standards. There was a carefully calibrated step ladder that was agreed as a trade-off between what was technically viable & cost effective (i.e. the Germans & Nordics were already doing it back then), and what the UK construction industry wanted for maximum profit. So every few years insulation standards etc were supposed to go up, or other measures be introduced (self-generation, i.e. PV), or both. Then Cameron & Pickles dropped that trade-off and just said, "more cheap houses, sold at the same high prices, so maximum developer profit". So that step-ladder to better standards had its top cut off. And another 15-years of bad housing stock has been built as a result, with still not good enough insulation, and still very little self-generation. We should have been at Passivhaus 10-years ago in my opinion - and you have the Cons to thank for not being there.

When Cameron uttered the words "just cut the green crap" that same week a red line went through every single major offshore wind turbine manufacturing site that was basically already won by the UK. The only one salvaged from the wreckage was the blade factory of Siemens in Hull. All the others vanished, and went instead to France, Germany, Denmark. All those jobs, gone. Every single wind turbine nacelle (i.e. all the good quality engineering jobs) that is erected in the UK is first manufactured abroad, and imported. You have the Cons to thank for that.

(And the Brexit vote put another red line through the UK's bid for the first Tesla plant in Europe, as a result the UK never even had a chance at the short list. These utter £$$%%^& never miss an opportunity to utterly $$%%^ it up).

regards, dspp

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317768

Postby Nimrod103 » June 12th, 2020, 7:26 am

AIUI the price of electricity from the Hornsea Phase 2 will be £159/MWhr, while the current market price is £45. If true, the long term economics doesn’t seem so attractive?

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#317787

Postby dspp » June 12th, 2020, 9:13 am

Moderator Message:
RS: This is not really Beerpig Snug material please keep things lighthearted here.Now moved from the snug to Global and Macro


Nimrod103 wrote:AIUI the price of electricity from the Hornsea Phase 2 will be £159/MWhr, while the current market price is £45. If true, the long term economics doesn’t seem so attractive?


Hornsea bid into the 2014 CfD auction at £140/MWh. Things have moved a long way since then, but that is no reason to go back and change the rules on what is - in essence - a government bond.

"The zone was given provisional contract for difference renewable subsidies by the UK government in April 2014.[20] Hornsea Project 1 was given planning consent in December 2014.[21] The 'contract for difference' strike price was £140 per MWh"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsea_Wind_Farm

The 2019 CfD bidding round 3 are now about £40/MWh.

"The UK’s Third Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction has cleared at the record low price of £39.650/MWh for Delivery Year 2023/24 and £41.611/MWh in 2024/25 (2012 real)."
https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/insights/2 ... ction.html

This is how fast the technology & scale curves are working. That seems very attractive to me. It is the result of quite a few people thinking a lot about value-of-delay vs value-of-acceleration, and figuring out what sort of market forces to to put to work in what way at which phase.

regards, dspp

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#318154

Postby dealtn » June 13th, 2020, 11:51 am

Snorvey wrote:
Snorvey wrote:It has been a period of an exceptional drop in energy demand though (industry closed down, warm weather etc), so I'd expect it to pick up again as this thing shifts.

Saying that, if the government is looking for a post lockdown / post Brexit project, why can't it raise the billions needed to plaster the country's roofs in solar panels and car charging points as well as super insulating the houses and business premises of the UK?

Seems logical to me - especially compared to some of the crap they spend money on.


And as if by magic....

The document estimates that 40,000 jobs could be created by the government in insulation over the next two years, and 150,000 by 2030.

Its author, Pedro Guertler, told BBC News: "Really this is a no-brainer. It's fantastically good value for money - it should have been done years ago. We can hit so many government objectives at the same time.

"It's obvious that insulating homes provides very good value - far, far better value for the taxpayer than building roads, for instance."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52999337


Do you have the source document?

From the BBC report the impression I get is they are looking at the cost of creating the job, not a cost/benefit of the underlying economics. It might be cheaper by job but that, at least to me, isn't the correct consideration. You could pay 2 groups creating jobs to firstly dig holes, then fill them, but whilst jobs will be created, so will nothing else. Alternatively fewer jobs might be created but as a result positive economic benefits accrue. To me the latter is better.

Where on that spectrum do the "home insulation" and "road building" projects lie?

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#318164

Postby Nimrod103 » June 13th, 2020, 12:56 pm

Snorvey wrote:
Snorvey wrote:It has been a period of an exceptional drop in energy demand though (industry closed down, warm weather etc), so I'd expect it to pick up again as this thing shifts.

Saying that, if the government is looking for a post lockdown / post Brexit project, why can't it raise the billions needed to plaster the country's roofs in solar panels and car charging points as well as super insulating the houses and business premises of the UK?

Seems logical to me - especially compared to some of the crap they spend money on.


And as if by magic....

The document estimates that 40,000 jobs could be created by the government in insulation over the next two years, and 150,000 by 2030.

Its author, Pedro Guertler, told BBC News: "Really this is a no-brainer. It's fantastically good value for money - it should have been done years ago. We can hit so many government objectives at the same time.

"It's obvious that insulating homes provides very good value - far, far better value for the taxpayer than building roads, for instance."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52999337


The UK is not a cold country, except for a few weeks in the winter.
It would save a great deal more money if the UK population could be educated and encouraged to live their lives without the need to heat their houses to tropical temperatures.

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Re: The Death of King Coal

#318181

Postby dspp » June 13th, 2020, 3:05 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:The UK is not a cold country, except for a few weeks in the winter.
It would save a great deal more money if the UK population could be educated and encouraged to live their lives without the need to heat their houses to tropical temperatures.


Fuel poverty is a real issue in the UK. So too are the health consequences of living in cold damp drafty housing stock. It is easy for the rich to wave these things away.

regards, dspp


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