According to the Today program this morning, some coal stations are to be shut by April. They had the Ofgen regulator chap on too, saying these were being shut down early (no reason given that I could discern). He said we'd need more gas imports for replacement generation. Seems the shutdowns amount to 10% of our capacity.
Anyone know why these are going off early?
Yep, the writing has been on the wall for a quite a while (2006/7) for those that choose to read it. If we get some cold winters in the next few years it will be interesting to see if the lights stay on.
The reason is the Large Combustion Plant Directive. Stations were given the option to clean up their emissions or close down by the end of 2015, they are also limited on the amount of hours they can run so may run out of hours before they have to close.
We lose: Didcot (2 GW), Fawley (1 GW), Littlebrook (1.3 GW), Tilbury (1.4 GW), Grain (1.32 GW), Kingsnorth (1.9 GW) & Ironbridge (1 GW). So nearly 10 GW of capacity to go by 2015, some (Grain amd Kingsnorth) has already gone.
Drax is going to start burning more bio-mass, imported from the US/Canada...
LCP directive. EU thing that says that unless equipped with exhaust scrubbers they are illegal to operate.
Retrofitting not worth the hassle profit wise, since they are nearing the end of useful life.
New coal not worth building because its all being restricted to so many tonnes CO2 per GW i8nstalled capacity. So would have to run at half power, saving no emissions thereby, but doubling capital costs.
Nuclear strangled by paranoid regulation and insurance.
Gas bloody expensive.
No mountains for hydro.
Wind and solar don't work when its calm/dark.
IN short let Britain rot, because there is under current regulations no financial reason to build anything except windmills that don't actually work, but are profitable.
A triumph of politics over common sense, in the Climate of Fear. Made worse by the Liberal Democrats, who are more venal clueless and stupid that Labour.
Not a problem. Wind power can handle half of that, and the remaining shortfall, including too windy, non-windy and wrong kind of windy days can be met by the quite expensive CCGTs.
Meanwhile low-cost nuclear remains minimal and thousands of extra people will die from not being able to afford their heating in the next few cold winters. God save the environment. Brilliant.
Not today. 30MW total UK output from metered, and probably 5MW from less efficient unmetered.
and the remaining
Not when they are being closed because since the capital cost is now only offsettable by calm day generation, no one is building any..
well thats true.
>
Is that an attempt at wit?
That's 30MW, count them, from 7000MW "installed".
I do believe he wasn't being quite serious.
Or has someone sold the sites for flats?
Brian
No not volts potential current maybe.
Brian
It's almost as if Britain had been secretly bought up by it's competitors who are slowly running it down ....
It comes of having the country run by professional politicians, instead of professionals (not just this government, but several before too).
It's not helped by having educated a couple of generations of citizens such that they are almost wholey ignorant in science/technology/engineering nowadays, and can't themselves distinguish between environmental hogwash which has also played a big part in getting us here, and the real science and environmental issues that actually matter.
I was over at my parents' place yesterday, and we heard this on the news several times during the day. Dad said "Andrew warned us about this 10 years ago". Too true, and I did on here too - it's been bloody obvious to anyone who gave it any thought, and in so far as the government has done anything to impact it over that period, everything they've donw has made it worse.
Were the regulations requiring the most polluting power stations to be shut down by a certain date brought in by stealth somehow? Passed in the middle of the night after the UK delegation had gone to bed?
Or is it just the usual politician trick of never doing what can be put off until tomorrow?
I'd be quite happy to have an overriding law which limits terms in public office. Maybe 2 terms max ?
Or, so as not to have accusations that you're throwing talent away, how about a requirement that after a second term you need to canvass ...oh, let's say more than 50% of the popular vote to be returned ?
The idea of politics as a profession should be anathema in a democracy. Oh for a Caesar ...
Well we all knew the answer was nuclear - lots of it. However, since successive governments have dumbed down any hope of a reasoned debate (cf. drugs) it would be electoral suicide to have actioned that. Far better put it off, and hope your successors are forced to act, and make
*them*selves unelectable.Does anyone recall the "New Statesman" episode, where the ever-believable B'Stard commissioned a phoney report saying north sea oil was running out, which scared the pants of the government (B'Stard was in opposition) and they came running to him looking to *lose* the election ....
Isn't the internet wonderful ?
from Wiki
The Party's Over (January 13, 1991) Alan is summoned to the office of Sir Greville, who gives him terrible news: Professor Eugene Quail, the Government's leading oil expert, has rechecked his figures and discovered that the North Sea oil, the foundation of all of the Tories' fiscal policies, will run out any day now, triggering a depression. A snap election is called in the hopes that it will occur before the oil runs out, and Alan is put in charge of the Tory campaign. His strategy of offering free lottery tickets to all Tory voters and putting scantily- clad women in the party's ads is a massive success, and soon the Tories have a 15-point lead. Once again, Sir Greville summons Alan, and explains that the Tory leadership had actually hoped that appointing Alan would be an electoral disaster, as whichever party is in power when the oil runs out will take the blame for the consequences. Alan suggests appointing Piers to run the campaign, which results in the total collapse of Tory support. Alan then sells the information about oil supplies to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and they too begin running deliberately awful campaigns, causing support for all parties to crater. Soon, the news that the oil will shortly run out is leaked to the media, and the election is called off as shares in oil companies hit an all-time low. But just as quickly, the crisis passes, as Professor Quail admits to the media that he had made a mistake, and the oil is not running out after all. It is revealed that the whole thing was orchestrated by Alan from the beginning: he blackmailed Quail into changing his predictions, shorted the oil companies' stock before the crash, then bought up all the shares at the new low price before the truth was revealed. Quail takes a £1 million payoff for his part in the scheme, and Alan is now secretly one of the richest men in England.
Hmmm, I suppose we could go back to the days where politicians were essentially either rich (Tories) or funded by the Unions (Labour). It's not so long ago, either, when MPs were paid £400/year.
It was more an election oin which although accepting the need for nuclear, Labour (milliband) had signed up to a totally disastrous green energy policy. Then the Limp Dims came along on a totally zero nuclear ticket and got into coalition. So they having been the greenest of all, have simply refused to accept the realities. It has to be no nuclear all renewable because that is what they promised. DEspite it being essentially impossible.
The story I heard was that the Huhnatic came into DECC. got David Mackays condensed version of 'without the hot air' walked out and wasn't seen for a fortnight.
Better still, make it at least 50% of those eligible to vote. Unless that's what you mean by popular vote?
Or maybe a Brutus or two
What we have now in terms of politicians can work, but depends heavily on well educated voters, and when that works, it's probably close to the best system anyone's going to get.
Trouble is that we're well into a second generation of voters with substantially failed education, and education not matched to the needs of the world today (caused by guess who?). Then the system falls apart, because career politicians steered by ignorant voters is a recipe for disaster. Democracy relies on the masses being educated well enough to steer politicians in the right direction.
The other disaster that comes with a poorly educated population is that the world has increasingly less use for them, and instead of being productive for the country, they are a massive drain weighing a country down.
The world will belong to the well educated (and appropriately educated) countries, and we've lost that position we once had.
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