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Union bosses have accused the Scottish Government of being “rooted in the past” over its veto of a new fleet of nuclear power stations to be built north of the Border.
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » This site
Dealing with Climate Change & Justice
(1314 posts)- Started 2 years ago by chdot
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Posted 12 months ago #
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Meanwhile Germany are shutting down all of their nuclear plants.
See Paul Dorfman on Twitter for details on why nuclear is a dead duck https://twitter.com/dorfman_p
Nuclear costs double that of renewables. Worse, nuclear doesn't augment renewables, it displaces them (as it can't be shut down quickly when the wind blows)
So who is really in the rooted in the past?
Posted 12 months ago # -
Posted 12 months ago #
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It seems that the grid connections from Scotland to England are often running at capacity:
https://archy.deberker.com/the-uk-is-wasting-a-lot-of-wind-power/
...moving electricity long distances is expensive. You need big cables, which are serious bits of kit – the last large one we put in cost £1.2 bn. At times, we just have more windpower than we have cables to transmit it. The particular hotspot for this problem is the B6 boundary: the bottleneck for electricity from Scotland to flow to England.
When we’re generating more windpower than we can transmit, the National Grid pays the windfarms to turn off, and pays a (typically gas powered) alternative generator, closer to the demand, to turn on. Consumers end up effectively paying three times for the power they’re getting: the original payment to the windfarm for the electricity, the payment to turn off, and then the payment to the alternative generator.
On Christmas day [2022], we spent £9.2m on curtailment costs, curtailing a total of 76.18 GWh. That’s enough electricity to power ~11’000 households for a year.
Given the above, I strongly suspect that the Canary Wharf story is a load of greenwash. Unless maybe the deal actually includes an upgrade to the grid connection capacity...
Posted 12 months ago # -
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Methane leaks alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed.
Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil- and gas-rich country are “mind-boggling”, and an “infuriating” problem that should be easy to fix, experts have told the Guardian.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
It's almost like we should stop taking this stuff out of the ground. And stop burning it
People will adapt (to not burning stuff)
Posted 11 months ago # -
From today's http://www.carbonintensity.org.uk
Wales is higher again. The site also allows you to look at regions. It's not unusual to find north of Scotland totally hydro and wind. Arrows show power exports. Scotland rarely has arrows indicating imports.
The Norwegian interconnect is cheaper to use than the GB cross border one I've heard. Someone else may know more.
England is reliant on 17% of power being imported at this moment today. Shetland and Orkney are outwith GB in energy graphic terms!(Note nuclear = low carbon intensity on this site)
Posted 11 months ago # -
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Humza Yousaf will call on the UK Government to be a “willing partner” in Scotland’s net zero strategy as he sets out key asks from Westminster to harness renewable energy potential.
The First Minister has warned that Scotland risks losing transformational opportunities for renewable energy without an urgent change of course from the UK Government.
The alarm has been raised ahead of the largest renewable and low carbon energy exhibition and conference in the UK, being held at the SEC in Glasgow, where he will set out his ambitions for the energy sector, including scaling up hydrogen production.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
Did you know the UK Government spends millions subsidising a private company to burn 20,000 tonnes of trees every day, releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere?
Time to end this grotesque distortion of energy policy which does nothing to tackle the climate emergency.
From Tommy Shepphard - Drax gets £1.5 million pounds every day as a biofuel subsidy. This will continue to 2027.
https://twitter.com/TommySheppard/status/1656267888984989697
Posted 11 months ago # -
My understanding is that a large amount of this is shipped into Britain burning sizeable quantities of fossil fuel on the way. There are also allegations that some of the wood Drax is burning is coming from ancient growth forests rather than plantations.
It definitely doesn't tick "renewable" in any understanding of the word that I have.
Posted 11 months ago # -
The rule should be: If you're going to burn trees, or use trees to offset carbon emissions, then you have to grow those trees first, starting from seedling, *before* you are allowed to burn them
Posted 11 months ago # -
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Billions of pounds' worth of green energy projects are on hold because they cannot plug into the UK's electricity system, BBC research shows.
Some new solar and wind sites are waiting up to 10 to 15 years to be connected because of a lack of capacity in the system - known as the "grid".
Renewable energy companies worry it could threaten UK climate targets.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
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Ms Macdonald will say: “I’m sorry to say that our recent experience in engaging with the Government on HPMAs has been far from meaningful. We all need to work to protect nature and we all need to act to help tackle climate change. But this is not the way to do it.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
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Crowther, a civil engineer and chartered water and environmental manager, said his company had spent tens of thousands of pounds over the past six weeks preparing its bid. He said the failure of the agency would impact on climate emergency resilience, and leave an increased number of communities exposed to flooding.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
Maybe we could deal with the problem at source and stop burning fossil fuels and stop building on flood-prone areas?
Or is it "jobs for the boys"?
Posted 11 months ago # -
Only just noticed this
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Pointing to the challenge being faced, Ms McAllan summed it up as changing “everything everywhere all at once”.
She added: “Really there's no sector that is currently doing enough to meet the objectives.”
Ms McAllan is also responsible for the just transition of workers as part of the move to net zero.
She stressed that the transition must happen “in a way that our economy can cope with and our communities can cope with”.
The cabinet secretary added: “So when I see everything everywhere, all at once, that that's what the climate emergency demands, but we have to do it fairly and in a managed way.”
Asked which areas will need more attention to cut emissions quicker, Ms McAllan pointed to transport and heat in buildings, as well as agriculture and energy.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
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Right now, they are getting swamped by offers to sell carbon and biodiversity credits, often to provide other industries with offsets. I can plant a paddock of trees here so that you can release emissions over there.
Tales of potential riches compete with dire warnings of regret for people who sign up to long-term contracts without knowing exactly what they are in for. Every week in my inbox press releases herald the next big offer for farmers when it comes to selling carbon and reducing emissions.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
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Jonathan Brearley, the chief executive of Ofgem, has written to energy bosses to warn that the current system, whereby energy projects queue for their connection, could be replaced by new methods to match power generation with demand.
He will use his appearance at an energy conference to criticise a “legacy of stalled, unviable and often highly speculative ‘zombie’ projects blocking ready-to-go solar, wind and other renewable schemes stuck behind them”.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
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The United Arab Emirates’ approach to the Cop28 climate summit it will preside over in November is “very dangerous” and a “direct threat to the survival of vulnerable nations”, according to the UN’s former climate chief.
Christiana Figueres, who was pivotal to the delivery of the landmark Paris climate agreement in 2015, also said the country holding the presidency of the UN summit could not put forward its own position and had to be neutral.
The UAE is a big oil and gas producer, and the designated president of the Cop28 summit is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the head of the UAE’s national oil and gas company, Adnoc.
Figueres was responding to a speech by Al Jaber in which he said: “We must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero carbon alternatives.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/16/cop28-host-uae-climate-united-arab-emirates
Posted 11 months ago # -
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Marshes store carbon, purify water, provide valuable habitat and act as a natural buffer against coastal erosion. The Environment Agency would like to turn some of the farmland adjacent to the former East Tilbury landfill site back into salt marsh to provide habitats for wildlife and storage for flood waters with sea levels rising, but the presence of waste is complicating those plans.
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Posted 11 months ago # -
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UK journalists and politicians, heavily swayed by the Fossil Fuel lobby, want to believe in carbon capture so much that they’re prepared to disregard simple physics and maths. NZT would have to collect 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year, pressurize it, pipeline it 145km to an offshore platform, sink it 1000 metres beneath the sea bed, then dissipate it throughout an aquifer. The amount of energy that would be required to do this would be colossal. CO2 also corrodes pipelines, so these would need to be repaired and replaced from time to time. But BP plc will probably build NZT because, thanks to Jeremy Hunt’s March 2023 budget, they’ll be able to claim a 100% Capital Allowance on their investment, and it won’t cost them a penny. However NZT would still require a massive annual subsidy to operate. BP won’t be able to claim an allowance for this, because it’s not capital expenditure. So who would pay this? Over to you, Ben.
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Posted 11 months ago #
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