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posted by janrinok on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the green'ish dept.

The UK smashed 13 clean energy records last year in the 'greenest year ever' for electricity production in the country, according to WWF analysis of National Grid data.

The sweep of new records was powered by the rise of green energy on the system, WWF said last week, with highlights including the first full day since the Industrial Revolution with no coal power, record spikes in solar and offshore wind generation, and record low prices for offshore wind.

The year's performance continues a trend of falling power sector emissions in recent years, as wind and solar replace coal power on the grid. Since 2012 Britain has halved carbon emissions in the electricity sector, and now ranks as the seventh cleanest power system in the world.

Also reported at:

The "green" mix includes nuclear power.


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  • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:05PM (3 children)

    by BsAtHome (889) on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:05PM (#619145)

    If this is the "greenest year", then why are we still blasting more and more CO2 into the air?

    It should read "We're doing a fine job at illusory cleanup.". Every year we manage to highlight the positives, but forget that the negatives are growing as well. It all feels like an exercise in feel-good propaganda.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:03PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:03PM (#619166) Journal

      The world is blasting more and more CO2 into the atmosphere while the UK is having it's greenest year ever for power generation. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:33PM (#619176)

      The CO2 may drop off this year, at least in USA -- latest forecast is for somewhat higher gasoline prices.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:55PM (#619221)

      why are we still blasting more and more CO2 into the air?

      More people on the planet. CO2 is a normal byproduct of life.

      This hypersensitivity over CO2 is distracting our attention from the real poisons and sewage, etc we are emitting along with it. That (and water mismanagement) is what's killing the planet. More CO2 will just make the jungles grow thicker, if we don't chop it all down first.

      The thing to remember is that if we maintain our present growth rate, we have about 450 years left before we generate enough BTUs to boil off the oceans, and that's only if we achieve 100% efficiency on pure "renewables". Don't worry, the growth rate will slow down long before then.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @08:54PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @08:54PM (#619275)

    The UK is increasingly burning wood chips from chopped-down forests. Only by some weird EU accounting is the resulting electricity green.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:13PM (#619503)

      it's not?! Really?! It's 100% natural, straight from mother earth. Just like oil and coal. I recycle old oil by dumping it on the ground, giving it back to mother earth who so graciously gave it to me. It's the circle of life!

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by alincler on Monday January 08 2018, @01:39AM (8 children)

    by alincler (6447) on Monday January 08 2018, @01:39AM (#619354)

    The market driving renewals is great but it's just a drop in the bucket.
    80% of our energy consumption is NOT electricity. Think heating, industry, transportation.

    Nothing that matters is happening.

    After a few years of no growth in CO2 output it went up again in 2017.

    Despite all the recent coal plant cancellations you may have heard about, 1600+ are still in planning phase or under construction in over 60 countries, a combined capacity of over 840,000 MW - or a whopping 42% expansion of current coal power.
    Who's funding it? China, various investment banks from Europe, North America, Australia.

    How's that for show of intent?
    Who are we kidding with these climate talks?

    China continues churning out seas of crap for the western hemisphere (producing insane amounts of CO2 in the process) because we need the new shiny every three minutes.

    Billions of people in developing countries desperate to have basic civ amenities like reliable electricity, running water and just a bit of shiny. Governments also desperate to give it to them. India's electrifying homes of 40 million people in 2018. Even more CO2.

    Demonstrator plants for commercial scale carbon capture and storage (to remove CO2 from the atmosphere) are planned to be shown to investors in the mid-2020s or later. Noone has the slightest idea if the tech is workable at all at scale.

    Cutting consumption is key.

    So.

    Here in the west:
    Would you vote for a PM/Hair piece/King/Schäuble who forced you to cut your consumption by policy?
    Because that's the only way you'd do it.
    Price of shiny x5
    Price of petrol x5
    Price of air travel x50
    No fresh grapes in the middle of the winter from halfway across the globe
    etc.

    I thought so.

    There is no realistic solution for 2C where you get to keep your current standard of living so you won't do it.
    The solution is not compatible with economic growth so money won't even discuss it.

    We're still bang on track for ~4C degrees.
    It's 2018. Do you still have to Google what that world would look like?

    /incoherent rant

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @07:24AM (4 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 08 2018, @07:24AM (#619446) Journal

      Cutting consumption is key.

      It's not because enough of us don't and won't buy the con that global warming is suddenly going to be a lot worse than it's been.

      Would you vote for a PM/Hair piece/King/Schäuble who forced you to cut your consumption by policy?

      Nope. I have more important things to worry about. I'll resign myself once again to being insulted by posters who will call me an idiot and make vapid appeals to the future while presenting both little evidence to support their opinions and little understanding of the state of the world today, including its climate. The climate is not a thing that you can optimize for in exclusion of everything else. Rampant materialism along with associated systems like economies, markets, capitalism, global trade, democracy, legal systems, etc is what made the present world possible and better than anything that has come before. We are now in the first ever situation where most of humanity is doing better than mere survival and that situation is improving. Clueless or corrupt climate change mitigation can harm what has made our present and future so shiny in the first place.

      We're still bang on track for ~4C degrees.

      When will scientists and engineers start talking about adaptation?

      • (Score: 1) by alincler on Monday January 08 2018, @11:41AM (3 children)

        by alincler (6447) on Monday January 08 2018, @11:41AM (#619477)

        ...the con that global warming is suddenly going to be a lot worse than it's been.

        Apart from the doomsayers noone's saying it's going to be suddenly worse.
        Still it's a good idea to start treating cancer at stage I...

        ...cut your consumption...

        Nope. I have more important things to worry about.

        That's most of the world unfortunately.
        Either because they are trying to stay afloat/alive, don't understand the gravity of the situation or don't care or "believe".
        Pushback is great. The uninformed, the paid shills, refuters of science, vested interests...

        ...little evidence to support their opinions and little understanding of the state of the world today, including its climate.

        Ehh, not this argument again. The science is all there. We know it with greater certainity than the link between smoking and lung cancer.
        And we're not trying to handle it out of context.

        Rampant materialism along with associated systems like economies, markets, capitalism, global trade, democracy, legal systems, etc is what made the present world possible and better than anything that has come before.

        Agreed.

        We are now in the first ever situation where most of humanity is doing better than mere survival and that situation is improving.

        Agreed again.

        Clueless or corrupt climate change mitigation can harm what has made our present and future so shiny in the first place.

        Agreed once more.
        Yet we are heading straight into a future where we must try the crazier climate change mitigation technologies such as stratospheric aerosols and cloud whitening, and suffer their side effects.

        ...When will scientists and engineers start talking about adaptation?...

        They are and have been for quite some time.
        The UN is doing it, AR5 dedicates a chapter to it.
        Endangered cities like NY and Miami and London are doing it.
        The insurance industry is doing it.
        The Pentagon is doing it.
        It's trivial to find committee reports, plans, whitepapers, lectures online.
        Analogy time again: No amount of adapting will cure cancer.

        4C is likely beyond adaptation.

        Where's a global public awareness campaign where you need one?

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by J_Darnley on Monday January 08 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)

          by J_Darnley (5679) on Monday January 08 2018, @07:13PM (#619646)

          > Still it's a good idea to start treating cancer at stage I

          Will the cancer reach stage II before I die? I am 31. I don't care otherwise. It is someone else's problem.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 09 2018, @08:02AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 09 2018, @08:02AM (#619913) Journal

            It is someone else's problem.

            If you die before you develop anything worthy of treatment then it becomes nobody's problem.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 08 2018, @07:52PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 08 2018, @07:52PM (#619658) Journal

          Apart from the doomsayers noone's saying it's going to be suddenly worse.

          Well, that's who we're speaking of here. There are two stories in the last week, the end of chocolate [soylentnews.org] (with the cacao plant "threatened" by 2050) and up to 300 million climate refugees [soylentnews.org] by 2050. Well, something big needs to happen between now and then to make those predictions likely.

          That's most of the world unfortunately. Either because they are trying to stay afloat/alive, don't understand the gravity of the situation or don't care or "believe". Pushback is great. The uninformed, the paid shills, refuters of science, vested interests...

          Well, we see here the usual claims of ignorance and short-sightedness on my part along with absolutely no evidence given to back the claims up.

          They are and have been for quite some time.
          The UN is doing it, AR5 dedicates a chapter to it.
          Endangered cities like NY and Miami and London are doing it.
          The insurance industry is doing it.
          The Pentagon is doing it.
          It's trivial to find committee reports, plans, whitepapers, lectures online.

          Doing what? Writing white papers? That's not evidence. Let us recall that tobacco companies wrote white papers defending their claims that tobacco smoking didn't cause cancer. Same with big pharm firms that did recent drug research that turned out in error. Most of the people above generating these reports have a vested interest in furthering the climate change narrative, true or not. Even the Pentagon would be doing their reports at the behest of someone who wants to gin up some FUD.

          Analogy time again: No amount of adapting will cure cancer.

          Speaking of doomsaying, what exactly does climate change have to do with cancer? This analogy breaks on multiple levels. First, one can deal with individual effects of climate change by the simple expedient of moving, some point in the coming decades or centuries. You can't move out of your own body (at least as of now), if you happen to have cancer. That isn't the only simple fix out there. The US can restructure its public flood insurance so that insurance premiums exceed payouts (or just get rid of an unnecessary program altogether). That alone would eliminate most current day climate change damage from "extreme weather" (a particularly deceptive bit of climate change propaganda). Farmers can switch to crops more suited to the new climate. This also applies to nature issues. For example, north-south migration corridors to new wild habitat would eliminate most species depopulation.

          Moving on, the implication is that you know you have cancer, because your doctor did a bunch of tests to confirm that. That's not so for global warming. Sure, we know that we do have a degree of global warming. But as I noted, the claims of harm, particularly near future harm are grossly inflated. It's analogous to the doctor claiming you need to have a mastectomy (surgical removal of one or two breasts) right now because you have a small precancerous growth that could grow into breast cancer some time in the next thirty years. The risk to human life or the environment hasn't been established, yet we're supposed to act on it anyway. This false certainty is a huge problem in the field. There are many such big problems that humanity and the environment faces. Why should we expend more resources on this than our other big problems?

          And that brings us to the last way that the analogy breaks. The mitigation remedies have a huge cost and don't do that much. The UK has incurred significant costs upon itself in this story to have so much green power. And yet, it hasn't actually slowed the rate of growth of greenhouse gases emissions (since most of that happens outside of the UK). Fixing locally doesn't fix the problem at all. It just puts the country at an economic disadvantage to those, such as the US and China, who ignore the alleged problem.Such economic sacrifice makes for great theater, but it's one of those things you'd rather your enemies do.

    • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday January 08 2018, @11:44AM (2 children)

      by Aiwendil (531) on Monday January 08 2018, @11:44AM (#619478) Journal

      Fun part is that it would only take about 20-25 years to get rid of CO2 from electricity globally with nuclear, or as I tend to enjoy pointing out - if denmark had invested 20bn usd in a Barakah-style (UAE) Nuclear power plant back in 2009 they would have CO2-free electricity by 2020, and if germany had invested their 200bn usd spent on "the energiwende" on the same type of nuclear they would have had about 66% of their electricity from new nuclear (now remember that pre-fukushima germany used to get about 24% of their electricity from nuclear, they get about 11% now).

      Even doing a complete new build to de-carbonize the grid in USA would only be on the order of about 1-2trillion usd if going nuclear and be doable in about 20 years. (In case anyone balks at the scale of that - each state only would need to supply parts and concrete for about 8-12 reactors at the rate of about one per year, and about 4000 skilled workers for 20 years, and yes, I'm including a ramp-up time of about two years which is enough to build the steel-forges needed unless you go with a concrete reactor vessels [yes, that works]. Fun sideeffect, you'd also have a kickass construction and steel industry afterwards).

      From a technical point of view this is a non-issue, the scale is big but perfectly doable (roughly the same scale at which we build ships today - and not having to compete with coal and gas for some parts would really shorten the leadtimes), the economies of it makes sense (as long as you think beyond the first decade). The issues are social, political and legal.

      • (Score: 1) by alincler on Monday January 08 2018, @12:48PM (1 child)

        by alincler (6447) on Monday January 08 2018, @12:48PM (#619487)

        Fun part is that it would only take about 20-25 years to get rid of CO2 from electricity globally with nuclear...

        ...the scale is big but perfectly doable..

        Yeah, I think we should do whatever we can even if it only buys us more time.
        Ooh, a chance to link to the bit about nuclear [youtube.com] of my favourite video!

        The issues are social, political and legal.

        ...which is why i'm not holding my breath.

        Also. [stanford.edu]

        • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday January 08 2018, @02:55PM

          by Aiwendil (531) on Monday January 08 2018, @02:55PM (#619512) Journal

          1) Note I never touched energy but only touched electricity.

          2) 435 nuclear powerstations is _WRONG_ is it 435 reactors (a powerstation is so far between 1 and 8 reactors), but yeah, about 200 stations since lots are single unit (which btw is the least good way to do it)

          3) Let's check his math just for fun. He states 105PWh global energy, and then states 25% (~27PWh) will take 3000 power stations (no, see point 2), but even so, he assumes that with 1200MW reactors (I assume he means MWe and not MWt) it will take ~3000 of them. *does a quick back of the envelope* that is for 85% capacity factor (why do non-nuclear people never include this when they present figures?) which is a good estimate today.

          4) He seems to worry about building a 100 reactors per year - on a scale that involves 140 countries, I don't know, for me that doesn't really seem that weird. EU alone is 28 countries and probably could do 50 of them per year and US alone should be able to do that as well (two per states on average)

          4b) Heck, sweden alone (back when it had only about six million citizens) started up on average one reactor per year from 1980 to 1985. France started up 28 reactors in the same time (all those units where in the size of 900 to 1300MWe, with uprates it should average slightly above 1100MWe in where they are now). So if two countries by themselves built 5.5 reactors per year why would it then be that much of an issue for 140 countries to build 100 reactors per year?
          (Japan started 11 in that same time, but their main decades for starting up nuclear plants was the 1970s and 1990s)

          4c) Also, if you are going to do a buildout on that scale you'd probably pick in the 1350 to 1550 range (APR-1400, ABWR, N4, Konvoi, or maybe get ESBWR approved) so the number of reactors needed will drop by about 12-25% so 80-90 reactors per year)

          (If he has something to say after 20minutes give me timestamps)

          I agree with the view that we should take all paths available and after we have reached the goal start selecting technology. For instance Run-of-the-river hydro is often forgotten. However, I want to see them at least pick from the upper half of enery-per-dollar.

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