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Who Needs Coal? Britain Did Nicely Without Coal for 24 Hours

posted by mrpg on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:08AM   
from the electrifying-news dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

The energy provider, National Grid, on Twitter confirmed that, on April 21st, Britain went without coal-generated power for its first full day.

Environment watchers can mark off Friday, April 21. In a 24 hour period, confirmed National Grid, electricity demand in Great Britain was supplied without the need for coal generation—that is, without coal fired power stations.

Climate Action, which works in partnership with the United Nations Environment Program, said that, specifically, by 10.50 pm on Friday the UK had not required electricity sourced from coal.

Coal accounted for just 9% of electricity generation in 2016 - down from 23% the year before.

Coal-fired power plants emit almost double the amount of CO2 (a heat trapping gas blamed for global warming) as gas-fired power plants, said Reuters.

So, April 21 is a day to remember as no coal was used to generate electricity. Sources that kept the lights on included natural gas, nuclear, wind, biomass, and imported energy.

An attention-grabbing headline, but the bigger news may be the decline in coal-powered production from 23% of the total in 2015 to 9% of the total in 2016.

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Original Submission

• Re:Imported energy Re:Imported energy (Score: 5, Informative) by butthurt on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:49AM (2 children)

  by butthurt (6141) on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:49AM (#500579) Journal

  In France, coal power plants provided just 2% of total electricity in 2014.

  [...]

  France will have just 3,018 MW of capacity remaining online in mainland France after 2015. This will be just 5 coal power units, spread across 4 plants.

  -- https://www.e3g.org/library/snapshot-of-france-coal-phase-out-progress [e3g.org]

  France will shut down all its coal-fired power plants by 2023 [...] The country [...] derives more than 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear fission.

  -- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-close-coal-plants-shut-down-2023-global-warming-climate-change-a7422966.html [independent.co.uk]

  Parent

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• Re:Imported energy Re:Imported energy (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:21PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:21PM (#500690)

  And what about the Netherlands?

  Parent

  • Re:Imported energy (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday April 28 2017, @12:32AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday April 28 2017, @12:32AM (#500975) Journal

    Good question, and I had an answer but I posted in the wrong place:

    /comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=19210&page=1&cid=500722#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]

    Three new coal plants opened in the Netherlands around 2014 or 2015. The plants in the UK are older.

    Parent