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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Adamsjas on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:02PM (1 child)
Not so sure that's much to brag about.
Natural Gas is not that much better environmentally than Coal. It is certainly no more sustainable, and its CO2 output, while lower at the smoke stack than coal, comes with Methane leakage at the well sites and pipeline. Hydraulic fracturing leakage which combined, actually exceeds the total effect of coal. Porter Ranch was worse then Deep Water Horizon.
The good news here is that most of British Coal plants are old and creaking environmental disasters, and should have been taken off line decades ago as was promised when the government was building Nuclear power stations.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 27 2017, @09:42PM
Porter Ranch was worse then Deep Water Horizon.
Most people would consider the one that killed 11 people to be worse....