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Renewables Are Now Scotland's Biggest Energy Source
AmiMoJo writes Government figures revealed that Scotland is now generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal and gas. The combination of wind, solar and hydroelectric, along with less-publicized sources such as landfill gas and biomass, produced 10.3TWh in the first half of 2014. Over the same period, Scotland generated 7.8TWh from nuclear, 5.6TWh from coal and 1.4TWh from gas, according to figures supplied by National Grid. Renewable sources tend to fluctuate throughout the year, especially in Scotland where the weather is notoriously volatile, but in six-month chunks the country has consistently increased its renewable output.
7.8 + 5.6 + 1.4 = 14.8
It's too late now. We'll have fusion in the next 50 years. It's a known fact since the sixties.
Hence the absence of the word "combined".
It will never work. Just give up.
Oh wait, it's starting to work.
And just as sustainable (if not more) than renewable energy.
So far the only country who doesn't seem to have their head up their ass in regards to nuclear policy is Russia (feel free to point me to other examples).
They did say combined, although they used the short form of it "and". The only thing close to being literally correct would have been to say "generating more power from "clean" technologies than nuclear, coal or gas". It would still be deceptive though, since they are taking the total of every dubiously clean technology and contrasting that to each individual traditional source.
Nuclear certainly can be clean, particularly if you are not trying to produce plutonium for use in weapons. China, for one, is doing a lot of work on Thorium reactors, and they should be extremely clean, extremely inexpensive, and extremely safe. I also wonder how clean Scotland's "clean" technologies are if you factor in the energy spent to produce them. Many supposedly clean technologies are very dirty when you factor in all production. (Which the eco-freaks tend not to do.)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Title of TFA
Renewables Are Now Scotland's Biggest Energy Source
is misleading
Have they factored in the energy used to propel the vehicles on the roads in Scotland?
How can they say it's the "BIGGEST ENERGY SOURCE" when they haven't even exhausted the list of power hungry devices such as cars?
And how much of the renewables was generated at a loss / subsidised by the English?
So long, Irn Bru!
10.3TWh in the first half of 2014. Over the same period, Scotland generated 7.8TWh from nuclear, 5.6TWh from coal and 1.4TWh from gas,
So that's 10.3 TWh renewables vs 14.8 TWh from non-renewable sources.
Interesting numbers game. Certainly only by lumping all the renewables together, and splitting out the other sources, they could make it work. Not exactly a fair comparison. Nevertheless impressive that they are now at about 40% overall coming from renewable sources.
The math is clear
7.8 + 5.6 + 1.4 is greater than 10.8.
And before you go all nitpicky on me, I have combined all non-renewables (nuclear, coal, gas), in the same way as the original submission combined hydro, solar and wind, all of which have less in common than the non-renewables, which are all thermal power plants, and thus have a lot more in common.
One of the biggest challenges on Scotland has been the decentralisation of energy supply. The grid (high voltage power lines) was built to connect power stations that were usually less than 30 miles from cities and then smaller grid segments out to the less densely populated areas such as the highlands & islands.
The challenge Scotland now faces is that a large amount of renewable energy is being produced in the highlands and islands and coastal projects resulting in power having to be shipped "the other way" through the grid. So Scotland has had an enormous new power line from Beauly in the north to Denny in central region to help. The scandal is that a lot of Scotland's renewable energy is idle or switched off because there is not enough capacity in the grid to use it until the new line comes on board. Nearly every loch in Argyll has some kind of hydro power generation capabuility but it is switched off (except Cruachan)
The new wave power production systems are fabulous, especially the inter-connected wavenet squid system.
Vitrification means keeping it desert dry forever. Incorporation such as Synrok is a different story.
This disingenuous comparison would not have been possible without aggregate numbers inflated by biomass.
In addition to transportation, I'm curious about storage. How much "peaking power" comes from renewables (or stored renewables) as opposed to grid purchase (or quick-startup resources such as gas turbine)?
I'm stoked to hear about real-world success in renewable energy, but I see a lot of "fluff" cheerleading in the press without much attention to details about how much this or that project produces, compared to total consumption, and how much power is being consumed by various sectors of society.
As home-built or purchased alt-energy installations become more common, and more people become aware of these issues, I hope we'll see more discussion of these issues in the press. It's about time.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Hell, even oil is renewable. You just need to wait a while.
I remember reading something about so law saying energy cannot be destroyed. ;)
Here in Spain, wind turbines have destroyed many beautiful natural landscapes (while affecting also some wild birds and other fauna).
I wonder wether populating a whole mountain range with huge poles should be considered "clean".
A lot of fluff? We are presently mowing into re globally faster than conventional sources were developed. It's a massive undertaking than has been showing very positive signs of success for years now. It isnt enough than building a cleaner planet has drawn the ire of 6trillion in annual gdp, but now have to deal with clowns like you? Give me a break. Stand aside please. You can watch from the bleechers.
TFA is 190 words long. How is it possible to define this as anything other than a "fluff" piece?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Landfill gas requires using landfills, a terribly outdated and wasteful technology. Hardly "green" energy.
Because you just don't count cars and horses here. FFS, people generata loads of heat energy all the time, yet we leave that from the calculations also. Sun warms way more than all those energy sources combined when it shines. Direct heating renevable!
Why on earth would you have a problem with scotland getting their energy from renevables? It's a good thing if it works. When you count the amount of energy some area produces you are usually talking about electrical energy. Cars zapping around the streets produce no electrical energy.
I suspect than one adds transit to the mix, the headline is rather misleading.
By this means, Canada has met this goal since electricity was commercially available (53% of our electricity is hydro, alone).
Still greener than not using it. Not everything can be recycled or burned. Even the best countries, germany and austria, are still far away from 100% recycling and burning of waste.
... ie 10.3 < (1.4+5.6+7.8)
doesn't it rely on dumping infinity amounts of garbage in holes in the ground?
The combination of wind, solar and hydroelectric, along with less-publicized sources such as landfill gas and biomass, produced 378 GWs as of 2014. While Beilun Coal Power Station only produced 5,000 MWs and Tianwan Nuclear power Station only produced 8,380 MWs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
According to the UK government data in the first link in TFA, renewables share of total generation was less than 20% (and falling) in the first half of 2014.
Renewables' share of total generation in 2014 quarter 2 was 16.8 per cent, an increase of 0.9 percentage points on 2013 quarter 2, with a 6.2 per cent fall in overall generation exceeding that of renewables. This was a 2.7 percentage point fall on 2014 quarter 1's record renewables share of 19.5 per cent.
The biggest hand waving always comes with decommissioning
Okay, I'll wave my hands about and gobble about 'decommissioning'.
People tend to increase over time. Energy use increases over time. Globally we are not even close to providing the whole world with a grid coverage and capacity that provides the comfortable existence we ourselves would not tolerate losing. Every renewable dream has us whizzing around in electric vehicles. But this could come true only if the future is nuclear. The renewable numbers just don't work out, even when you imagine a magical solution to the storage problem, and especially when you include ground transportation.
So where did this 'decommissioning fable' come from? When was it decided --- and by whom --- that ~60 or so years hence there must be a desolate public park at every site chosen for a gigawatt nuclear plant, today?
Suggest to anyone that a water or sewage treatment plant cannot cost what it costs, it must also gather funds to fund its own destruction and demise and people will shake their heads. But this is crazy! The sewage will always flow downhill to here. We're not going to move a water plant, tear the pipes out of the ground and route them somewhere else. Oh, it's soo much different.
But is it really? Who is telling us we will be using less energy in the future? Should we listen to them?
Decommissioning funds gathered for nuclear plants may seem like a great idea, but it has also become an awful idea. It does not make nuclear energy any safer. It has promoted technological sloth, dissuaded investors from supporting (and injecting R&D to improve) the only clean base load energy source on the table. It has handicapped nuclear from being THE cheapest source of energy. It has enabled the most short-sighted and fuck-stupid forms of corporate vandalism. This is because when anyone owns or acquires an aging nuclear plant, they are faced with a choice --- whether to re-invest and re-structure to replace aging components, as they would for any other source, or trigger its destruction and unlock the magic chest of decommission funding. Getting a little kick to the balance sheet by rendering a productive energy source into a blight on the landscape, something intentionally broken that cannot be fixed.
Such as the Kewaunee Power Station which went offline in 2013 despite that it is in good condition, has maintained a healthy balance sheet, perfect safety record, operating license extended to 2033 and had six months' fuel left in the reactor. All because Dominion is riding the natural gas 'glut' at this brief moment in time. When the glut peaks out Dominion will invest in some other, dirtier short-term solution.
We should be upgrading these plants and taking them to the next level as we do with every other utility. Given the gigawatt-year track record they have demonstrated It is ludicrous to assume that any nuclear plant operating today deserves to be destroyed rather than upgraded. There are too few of them and they are too precious.
Do not feed the vultures.
___
Please see Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
It is obvious that if we allow the population to double we will need to double energy production. And if strict birth control cuts our population in half we can essentially do fine with half as much energy production. The issue extends across almost all miseries common to humanity lately. It is also reasonable to view nuclear power as a total failure. Two major disasters and a semi major disaster at Thrree Mile Island are reason enough for the world to get rid of nuclear plants completely. If you don't believe that I have a lovely home in Chyrnoble to sell you on the cheap. The truth is that the system resists change at all costs. Powerful people own oil, coal, gas and nuclear systems. They like their money. The Tesla car demonstrates this issue in spades. Tesla has a breakthrough design and a wonderful product. Make note of how many law suits are attempting to make like impossible for those that own Tesla. And if recent history is a clue there may be fires in the night, untimely deaths, and all kinds of covert actions to try and ruin Tesla. Think about how things really work. The guy responsible for Segway sees all kinds of local laws forbidding the use of the device on sidewalks. Yet electric wheel chairs use the sidewalks and both are electric vehicles. And then I am asked to believe that the owner of Segway gets confused and drives a Segway off a cliff. Despite being a wonderful device the Segway really is not in common use in the US.
The difference to the idiotic solar cells is that nuclear is a proven around-the-clock technology. The enormous subsidies for solar cells would make sense if we had even a *remote* option to make it a baseload power source. The fact is, all options seem abysmal at best.
So, even if nuclear got massive subsidies - they are by now PAID BACK 1000 TIMES by all the economic value we got from that leccy. And by the lives saved because neither France nor Germany nor Japan had to go to war as often as they would have if they had no nuclear energy.
You are spouting the RAND-led* shite of "nuclear is soooo sooo bad" - as long as it is outside the U.S. and its Imperial Desires.
* Herman Kahn and the like; now transformed into GREEN* horror propaganda
At peak load, or even base load does Scotland generate enough power to sustain itself, or does it rely on capacity from the rest of the UK to generate the balance..
I'm sure the press release didn't have the same sensational headline... This is probably another case of bad journalism...
...that the USA, teh greatest country on earth, is getting left behind. Still burning dead dinosaurs and million year-old trees 'n' shit that makes everyone ill.
I get my electricity 'from' wind turbines in Scotland. It was the cheapest on the market when I switched about three years ago and is still cheaper than most other energy companies.
One of the few examples being, errr, in Scotland. Dounreay, if you don''t know the place.
(OK, the decommissioning is not finished there, but it is well down the road to being finished.)
Would I buy a house on the old site? Probably not, but that's because it's in the arse-end of Caithness (to quote a Thursonian friend of many years), not because it's on a nuclear site. Hell, I could probably do with the reduction in radiation counts that I'd get from moving to live on Dounreay. The background radiation there is lower than at home (same Thursonian source, who did Physics in 1st year and was gob-smacked by the background radiation levels when he came to university).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Solar hot water at whatever it can do on one side and mine water at 12 celcius on the other. Not a large temperature difference but things can be done with it.
"Thousands of BritainÃ(TM)s wind turbines will create more greenhouse gases than they save"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/
One of the examples here has the maximum temperature as low as 70C.
http://www.renewableenergyworl...