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Denmark Plans To Be Coal-Free In 10 Years
merbs writes "Earlier this year, Denmark's leadership announced that the nation would run entirely on renewable power by 2050. Wind, solar, and biomass would be ramped up while coal and gas are phased out. Now Denmark has gone even further, and plans to end coal by 2025.
"Renewable" energy requires natural gas in order to compensate for fluctuating output.
Not necessarily. In times gone by, town gas was produced to meet fluctuating demands (using coal) by storing in gasometers. Nothing to say this couldn't be also done with biomass gasification.
Sorry I must have misread something. I saw no part that mentioned being more efficient or lowering energy usage.
Its just more morally acceptable to waste the same amount of power if it is 'green' power.
Or, you could use grid-scale energy storage, combined with low-loss HVDC long-distance transmission. HDVC lines can be over 2000km long, bigger than an individual weather system, so a network of them can redistribute intermittent wind and solar output effectively.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You didn't bother to provide a source but I will: New wind and solar plants generate cheaper low-carbon electricity than the latest nuclear reactors, a study shows, indicating they will lead a global push for green energy. There are lot of different factors that make this claim debatable, but even if wind is still somewhat more than nuclear, it's not "very expensive" which was the point.
Ah no. I have to say citation needed. Coal demand is increasing not decreasing.
1990 coal production - 4677mt
2013 Coal production - 7823mt.
Coal mines are only shutting if they were borderline operations. Do not confuse closing a mine that is uneconomical at the current price, a price that is the result of a world wide economic down turn, with a longer term move away from coal.
ref - http://www.smh.com.au/environm...
You know that it is those miners that allow you to have the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed? Like it or hate it without mining the Australian economy is in trouble in a big way. We have always been a primary industry economy, we either farm it or we dig it up. That is not going to change any time soon, we are in a shitty location to be a manufacturer, too far from anywhere. We do not have the capital or employment structures to be an effective IT startup area (see employee share scheme laws). Our population is too small to be the critical mass needed for some other type of business that I can't think of.
We are however very very good at mining, oil & gas extraction and processing. You may disagree with doing it. You may think it is raping the planet. But you reap the rewards of that industry living here.
You can but that costs many billion dollars. To do a continent wide HVDC network with some limited energy storage (compared to what would ideally be needed) you're looking at many hundred billions $$$ or EUR.
So switch from one import of power to another? I think that's kinda defeating the whole point.
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You can but that costs many billion dollars.
So do the alternatives. Coal causes billions of dollars of damage to the environment and people's health. Nuclear costs billions of dollars to build, and in the UK we have to guarantee double the normal rate for the electricity produced during the plant's lifetime. There is a third option, which is spending billions on efficiency improvements.
No matter what we do we will end up spending that money, so the question is what do we want to spend it on.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No we are paying 36 Ãre/kwh, which is around 6 cents, the rest is taxes, transmission and other fucking bullshit stuff. (Which basically means, you can save close to 0 by switching providers, as the main part of your electricity bill is fixed).