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UK Draft Energy Bill Avoids Banning Coal Or Gas Power
Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK's new Draft Energy Bill (PDF) avoids banning coal or gas powered plants. The bill would guarantee profits for new nuclear and offshore wind plants by putting a levy on people's energy bills. The bill does not mandate a statement that minsters had previously made about having totally clean energy within two decades. The government states that provisions within the bill will ensure a balanced diverse energy mix as well has stating that future emissions from gas powered plants will have to be captured and stored. The bill also aims to increase competition in the UK energy market by making it easier for new competitors to become connected to the grid. Joss Garman of Greenpeace states: 'By failing to set a clear goal for carbon-free electricity by 2030, ministers are opening the door to a dangerous new dash for gas that will put up both bills and carbon emissions, and increase our dependence on imported fuel. This means families and business will be exposed to rocketing international gas prices. The fastest and cheapest way to bring down bills and carbon emissions is by ramping up energy efficiency but Ministers have totally failed to deliver on this.' Additionally it would appear that the guarantee of profits for new nuclear power plants may not be legal as there is a ban on subsidies for nuclear power under European law and the UK coalition government agreement."
Note that wind projects are getting profit guarantees and not just nuclear.
Should we operate on the assumption that the UK assumes that it won't get built?
"Senate Candidate Kid Rock Fires Back at Eminem for His Anti-President Trump Rap" - I don't think this is Earth Prime.
This is really no surprise from the Cameron government, which acts like a puppet of oil and gas interests. First dismantling the UK Carbon Trust, and now openly pushing legislation like this. Deplorable all around. As bad as Blair and Brown were, the UK managed to find someone worse in Cameron. Amazing.
Uh, perhaps there's some measure in the law which places tariffs on higher-polluting sources, but I can't recall any time when mandatory, arbitrary efficiency/emissions standards have lowered costs. If higher efficiency truly creates savings, then the mandates aren't necessary. Witness the boom in demand for fuel-efficient cars as gas prices go up.
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Since coal and gas powered plants are the number one cause of pollution and greenhouse gases, this is a pretty big oversight.
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UK draft bill avoids fantasy land. Remains connected to reality.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
...have spokespeople that can actually make good sense on energy policy without sensationalizing the story, backing it up with maths based on massive over-estimates, or begging you to give them money at the same time? I'm almost impressed!
Oh yes, because that really encourages people to support clean energy and encourages utility companies to reign in the budgets as much as possible for green energy projects.
Although if they outright banned coal and gas, nuclear is sort of controversial and on the fence, that would leave nothing but green energy from this point forward. Well, unless they can run a plant on Hogwarts magic, that would mean "Oh bloody hell, the wind isn't blowing and the sun's not out so we have no electricity at the moment." That would go over really well. What the need is a Mr Fusion that takes any regular matter like a bunch of US universities are inventing.
As a tree-hugger myself I don't see how a modern economy can just dump a major source of power like coal and gas in less than one generation so I can't blame them for this. However, I would've liked to have seem them at least set a goal with some teeth behind it. My feeling though is that people hate to sacrifice even to save themselves and we'll just have to have a real climate hell before anything changes. Sort of like the guy who ignores his health until he has a heart attack despite all the warnings.
Actually, as an American, I wouldn't mind seeing the UK turned into a test platform for green energy (and some social engineering to push it). If it succeeds, they could show the rest of the English speaking world how to do it. And if it turns out to be a hippie pipe dream and fails--well, then we learn a valuable lesson without having to suffer for it in the U.S.
You're on point, Britain! Watch out for mines, and good luck.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
One person's puppet of oil and gas is another person's guy trying not to implode the economy.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
They endured how many wars through the centuries, a religious fascist takeover, AND a total collapse of empire---and they are still there. A bad economy and an energy bill that is *completely reversible at any later date* isn't going to topple them to the point they aren't Britain anymore.
Can't we come up with scrubbers to clean up the pollution that coal plants put out?
It's a shame coal is so polluting, because we have so damn much of it. It's one of the most plentiful fuels in the world! There has to be a way to burn it cleanly!
I have a relative who is a big shot consulting engineer for GE.
And I pepper him with questions like this whenever I see him.
Yes, there are scrubbers - including taking out the metals like mercury - all that mercury in your predator fish (shark, tuna, swordfish, etc ...) is because of coal fired power plants.
BUT power plants have a very long economic life and environmental laws and knowledge hasn't been around that long. You also have folks who don't give a shit about the environment or at least place economic activity above human health - like China and every other Third World Country.
But anyway, GE at least, has technology to make coal as clean as Natural Gas - but you have to pay out the ass for it.
This bill isn't about efficient energy use, that's another subject which is addressed elsewhere. This is about setting a realistic policy for clean and reliable energy production.
The nuclear industry needs to give up on the large, one off plants and come up with smaller, factory built nukes that can be installed in series, much like batteries.
These are being worked on and some already designed and in prototype stage, but taking them commercial is a regulatory hell.
People are always trying to get the federal government to "do something" that they are better off doing themselves or being done by local governments. But clearing the regulatory hurdles and standardizing these products is a perfect example of what the federal government should be doing.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
reporting that the UK's new Draft Energy Bill (PDF) avoids banning ... gas powered plants.
Given the staggering decline in north sea production, because its all gone, I don't think this is terribly relevant.
The fastest and cheapest way to bring down ... carbon emissions is by
is by burning up all the gas? Can't emit carbon if there's none to burn.
I follow the energy business and the UK is in serious danger of disaster in the next decade or so. They don't have the technical equipment or the economic strength or the installed capital (like insulated buildings) to survive the transition from a fossil fuel exporter to pretty much having to import everything. The lights are going out and no more central heated homes. The strong "business as usual" and "kick the can down the road" isn't helping the situation. There will be people freezing to death in the winter, there will be rolling blackouts...
Also all/most of the coal was burned up in the industrial revolution. The last mine in cornwall (and it was a tin mine anyway) closed up more than a decade ago. They can import, for awhile. Its kinda expensive.
People have a very difficult time understanding technological limitations. If only the price gets high enough then the boffins will magically find an expensive way to do anything. Well, no, not really. Print as many pounds / euros as you want, they can't magically fill an empty fuel tank.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Why not? Insular much?
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A bad economy and an energy bill that is *completely reversible at any later date* isn't going to topple them to the point they aren't Britain anymore.
You do realise that you can't just build new power stations overnight and no-one wants to build nuclear stations in Britain right now because the government can't decide whether they want them or hate them?
I guess it was just a matter of time.
1: Government builds the infrastructure.
Problem: Not profitable enough.
2: Make the government pay private companies to build infrastructure.
Problem: Not profitable enough.
3: Steal..err...privatize the infrastructure.
Problem: You still have to pay those damn progressive taxes, and what happens when you have to build new infrastructure?
4: Guarantee profits on new infrastructure and not via taxes. Instead just force the citizens to buy it so that it works like a regressive tax.
I'm pissed that he didn't ban CO2 exhalation by humans. I mean it is clear we are a threat to the planet and need to be stopped. Then again that's about what I'd expect from the Cameron government, which acts like a puppet for that outrageous corrupt evil special interest corporation known as humanity.
Nuclear and wind producers are getting guaranteed profits. You don't think that is a sign of special interest?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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That'd be true if Cameron at the same time tried to actually do something with the economy, instead of trying to squeeze it as much as possible with new austerity measures. The ones that have already caused a new recession in the UK.
We're mostly engineers here. Some of us are also scientists and scientists are exceedingly cautious and humble about traveling outside their extremely limited domain of expertise.
So please , tell us why you know better than the world's assembled experts on this topic. And while you're at it, tell us about eh vast left wing conspiracy that keeps the large numb er of legitimate, duly qualified scientist's voices repressed on this topic.
I love it when deniers attempt to assume the mantle of "reasonable citizen" when in fact along with evolution deniers, two populations with enormous overlap in membership, they're the the living embodiment of anti-rational, reality-denying ideologues.
If your opinion about AGW is formed by rants of slashdotters instead of looking at the science, the problem might be on your side. However, I do agree that resource depletion will bite us in the arse before AGW will. In particular considering peak oil.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Ehm, I did not answer to you, but to the poster above. How do you get the idea I am a denier?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Fuck ....sorry. Mea culpa.. it was the layout of the posts on my screen. Total apologies are due to you, good Sir.
Nevermind. Now go and get yourself more coffee! ;)
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Early Grey. Hot. London Fog.
I'm confused. Story states that viable energy sources aren't banned in favour of unproven and/or expensive energy sources, and that means Cameron's a puppet?
Kneejerk often?
(Note that I'm not challenging whether he's a marionette, just your logic in inferring it from a fairly innocuous part of a report that has far more important implications)
The leaders in both America and the UK are essentially trying to mothball their own economies while transferring their wealth to Asia. They do NOT have YOUR interests at heart. They have their own legacies to financially float and it won't be in the UK. Yes, your fucked!
Wow! Someone else on /. who is capable of critical thinking, understands what's going on, and doesn't buy into the propaganda!
Bravo, Sir, bravo!
Now, all we have to do is cut through all the propaganda, disinformation, deliberate self-imposed general state of ignorance/stupidity, ideological warfare, and political partisanship to educate the drooling masses of the US/UK Idiocracies.
Yeah. We're fucked. :(
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
How are nuclear getting guaranteed profits? They don't generate, they don't get income, and the price they get is determined by the market...
Not that I am aligned to any UK political party at this moment in time, but anything that stops my taxes being spent on organisations like the UK Carbon Trust built entirely on unproven Al Gore loony theories ("I didn't massage the global temperature change figures by 60 years, honestly I didn't") is a good thing in my book.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
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My argument is and will always be with scale, effect, and information reliability.
This is pathetically underspecific. You can apply this to anything you don't like for any reason at all. It is not a reasoned argument, or even an argument at all, it's an emotional tone.
Saying we have to cut all dependence on fossil fuels, coal, and the like is not a problem solution. It's economic collapse.
And therefore AGW is false? Is there an argument in there somewhere?
Furthermore , as to your non-argument, no one is saying cut all fossil fuel; your statement is therefore a red herring. The Princeton Wedges concept - which if implemented would avert climate disaster and give us time to continue to develop alternative fuels- specifically does NOT require the abrupt discontinuation of all fossil fuels. I don't know of any plan that does. So, you used a red herring in an argument but worse, you use it in your own internal reasoning process.
Also, the US Navy is cutting their fossil fuel consumption by 50% no later than 2020. So apparently at least the Navy believes it can be done.
Also, there is not a consensus. In science, there should rarely ever be a consensus, until all outside explanations have been exhausted.
That is simply not how science is conducted nor could it be. No scientific theory ever is completely closed to modification, amendment, or rejection. It's an impossible standard that even Newton's laws cannot and in fact do not live up to. So all we have here is yet another poor argumentation technique- the demand of impossible standards. This is a completely typical denier technique and if accepted a perfect excuse for permanent inaction. Thankfully, no one in any position of responsibility takes this argument seriously.
Wikipedia has a decent list of scientists that oppose the notion of AGW negativity. So just because the majority says X does not mean there is consensus.
Widespread consensus means exactly super majority opinion which is even LESS than what we actually have- well over 95% agreement of scientists. To assert otherwise is to consciously and deliberately avoid seeking out the serious and definitive rebuttal of all such claims which is always available to anyone online.
Lists of scientists who are not climate experts, who have not published in the field, who are merely physicists or engineers and such like are pointless since none of these people have the required domain expertise. That's how science goes-- experts are just those people who spend all their time actively conducting research, making contributions, reading the literature and keeping up, not to mention doing the undergrad and grad school grunt work as a pre-requiste.
You can't be a dilettante - even a smart one who is or was an expert in another tangentially related field - and hope to offer arguments which will not be concisely and definitively torn apart by the real experts who spend all their time doing what you think you can do part time.
There are a few legitimate duly qualified dissenting scientists- a very few. There are also duly qualified scientists who do not believe that HIV causes AIDS. That's normal science and invariably the outliers are, just you you would suspect, wrong. This is true no matter how smart you are; Einstein's rejection of QM springs immediately to mind here.
All national academies of science are in agreement that AGW is real and caused by the release of carbon depots otherwise sequestered in coal, oil and other prehistoric depots. We know this is the source of the carbon because of the specific carbon isotope which is in such historical excess. We know that carbon is a greeenhouse gas and we know what concentration of said gases begin to cause the greenhouse effect. This is science from the 19th century.
It's amusing to see lists of alleged dissenting scientists bandied around the internet