Electricity generated by fossil fuels in Great Britain drops to record low

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/24/share-electricity-generated-by-fossil-fuels-great-britain-record-low

by kieranmaine • 2 years ago

58 45 2 years ago

theguardian.com

sambeau• 2 years ago

"for an hour"

danielovichdk2• 2 years ago

You were not even kidding. "My tests runs green 100% at a time...at this second on this weekday".

Ericson23143• 2 years ago

Intermittent renewables mean any too short metric is essentially a gamed cherry-pick.

Give me your lowest monthly average, please.

pmlnr• 2 years ago

https://grid.iamkate.com -> Past Year

sebzim4500• 2 years ago

You can see here[1] that the trend is extremely good. 25.1 GW of fossil fuel power in 2012 compared to 9.3 GW now. IIRC the UK was the first western power to half its CO2 output compared to its peak.

[1] https://grid.iamkate.com/

NikkiA2• 2 years ago

We will also have 0% coal by the end of the year (Radcliffe upon Soar has to shut by the end of October IIRC), by law.

yuumei2• 2 years ago

66% maximum fossil fuel usage last year: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-fossil-fuels-fall-to-re...

Ericson23143• 2 years ago

OK, Good! I'm not saying there is no progress, I am saying that the stat that this article chose to lead with is not a useful indicator of progress.

mft_2• 2 years ago

Talk about letting perfect be the enemy of good...

Ericson23143• 2 years ago

Complete misunderstanding.

I am not saying that "Gas and coal accounted for just 2.4% of power generation for an hour last week" is good but not good enough, I am saying that it is meaningless. The problem here is not the degree progress, but the choice of measurement.

I will happily celebrate incremental progress with the measurements that I think actually matter.

cinntaile• 2 years ago

Gas and coal accounted for just 2.4% of power generation for an hour last week,
earlier this month the share of fossil fuels in the generation mix taken over an entire day fell to a record low of 6.4%, on 5 April.
15 years ago, when gas and coal power plants made up 75% of the electricity mix, while renewables accounted for only 2%. Last year only a third of Great Britain’s electricity came from fossil fuels, compared with 40% from renewables.

There are several metrics in the article, not just short ones.

mhandley• 2 years ago

As renewables started to increase, people were saying it wouldn't be possible to keep the grid stable once renewables reached 50%, due to the lack of spinning mass in fossil generators. That obviously has been proven wrong. If I understand correctly, they could have run without any fossil sources on a few occasions recently, but keeping some helps with grid stability. Next step is to reduce fossil fuels to zero for some short periods. But there will be some spinning mass still in nuclear and in biomass generation. Eventually the biomass needs to go too, but each step is good and not completely trivial to achieve.

gwbas1c7• 2 years ago

Celebrate the small victories: Progress is the sum of many small accomplishments.

geye1234• 2 years ago

Nothing to do with the upcoming frequent blackouts that are widely predicted (and the gaps in power that are becoming more common and were unheard-of 20 years ago).

gwbas1c7• 2 years ago

In the US, the "the gaps in power" have very little to do with renewables. They have to do with deferred maintenance and an unwillingness to maintain existing infrastructure.

Remember, the massive blackout in Texas in 2021 happened because most Texan powerplants weren't winterized. (Natural gas couldn't get to the power plants because it contains moisture that condensed and froze.)

hinkley• 2 years ago

And then there was Enron that was causing the rolling blackouts in California on purpose. Some of those people went to jail for other reasons.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/enron-caused-california-bl...

MichaelNolan• 2 years ago

Just a minor correction, the massive black out was in 2021, not in 2023.

https://www.ferc.gov/media/february-2021-cold-weather-outage...

cpach• 2 years ago

Perhaps we could mitigate such risk with batteries? AFAIK they have decreased a lot in price.

NikkiA2• 2 years ago

This created a mental image of 'Hey, Frank, pop down t' tesco and get us some AAs, here's a tenner' from someone at the national grid :D

wood_spirit• 2 years ago

Dieter Helm, the well world renowned professor of energy policy, recommends we measure carbon consumption not carbon production, else we have a perverse incentive to increase total carbon footprint by outsourcing it.

An interview about it last week https://spotify.link/SKSpdUCL3Ib

GardenLetter272• 2 years ago

Electricity is fungible though so how do you track consumption?

I agree it's a problem though, like where Germany just reduced total production and then imports (mostly nuclear) electricity from France and Sweden.

gwbas1c7• 2 years ago

How much was from burning wood?

In the UK, some coal plants converted to burning wood, and importing scrap wood long distances, such as from the US.

This is not sustainable.

AndrewDucker• 2 years ago

I assume that would be under Biomass, and about 5% over the last year: https://grid.iamkate.com/

sn0wf1re• 2 years ago

importing scrap wood long distances, such as from the US

From Western Canada too, and it isn't scrap. It's good timber that could otherwise be milled into lumber.

t43562• 2 years ago

There is one big UK powerplant that does that, Drax and it's a big controversy. It's about 5% of the UK's electricty capacity.

To quote the BBC:

"In response to the latest findings by the BBC, Drax admitted it has taken wood from old-growth forests. But it told Panorama that 77% of the material for its Canadian wood pellets came from sawdust and sawmill residues, with the rest coming from forestry residues and low-grade logs."

So the UK government is, IMO, full of bullshit on this one but it shouldn't dampen our spirits - the news is very good excluding this one blemish.

danielovichdk2• 2 years ago

Please read "The Price is Wrong" by Brett C. It takes you around the industry and business models of green renewables.

It's an amazing book.

bryanlarsen3• 2 years ago

A carbon tax & tariff & rebate would let the market fix the problem. But tax is a dirty word so most governments aren't brave enough to do it.

Thanks for the book recommendation, have purchased.

mrangle• 2 years ago

"Fix" the problem, like, sate the core tax-motivation behind most top-down domestic political issue incitement? How? Via a rigidly capped tax?

Or would it be a beginning tax that is mere precedent and has a de facto uncapped potential? In order to allow limitless and much easier siphoning of production value by those who control the tax.

Can the tax go to 99% to take us back to the stone age? Can the tax be abused against powerful political enemies who derive their incomes from industry?

As an adult you can't possibly believe that taxes, let alone punitive taxes like this proposal, are implemented to solve problems. There's nothing "brave" about voting to move money from the coffers of others to one's own. But as governments become more broke, do expect to see more agitation in favor of such taxes.

Tell me about your problems, and maybe I'll even get on board to help solve them. But end up at a final act of utilizing taxation to "solve the problem" and I then know that you are running a mafia hustle and were the entire time.

GardenLetter272• 2 years ago

How would you enforce it internationally though?

jl6• 2 years ago

I really want to see some attempts at closed-loop renewable industry. Power generated from wind turbines built from steel made in direct hydrogen reduction steel plants (and the circuitry made with copper mined using electric mining gear, and so on and so on). It’s the project of our generation to rebaseline industry to work without fossil fuels. Renewable electricity generation is just the first step.

mistrial9• 2 years ago

keyword search: Industrial Ecology

between that and "Green Chemistry" there was quite a push about 20 years ago.. in hindsight, it is not clear that there was more than sporadic implementation, despite excellent design and communications work from some circles

Ringz3• 2 years ago

The findings lend support to the aims of the ESO to begin the “groundbreaking and world-leading” step of running a zero-carbon electricity grid for Great Britain for short periods from next year.

Running a „zero-carbon“ electricity grid also means to switch off nuclear since nuclear isn’t zero-carbon (even the ICCC estimates are disputed) nor renewable.

When you take into account that nuclear reactors are not particularly fond of being ramped up and down (load-following operation), because this is neither economically nor technically desirable, these 15% must also come from renewable energy sources in order to truly speak of zero CO2 emissions.

Ringz3• 2 years ago

Downvoted? Why?

gwbas1c7• 2 years ago

Because you wrote incorrect information.

Your logic that claims nuclear power isn't carbon neutral makes no sense. The ramp up and ramp down issue is handled by pairing nuclear power with storage, the same kind of storage that renewables uses.

Edit: Furthermore, a lot of the storage facilities that were paired with nuclear power often pivot to providing storage to renewables when the nuclear power plant decommissions. An example is the Bear Swamp storage facility in Western Massachusetts on the Deerfield River.

fanf2• 2 years ago

The worst bit of greenwashing in Britain is the Drax power station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_Power_Station

It’s the largest power station in Britain, originally built to burn coal, but now it burns trees shipped from Canada. It isn’t sustainable.

mrlonglong• 2 years ago

Drax must close. The Tories are too cowardly to do it.

Electricity generated by fossil fuels in Great Britain drops to record low

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