Coal's future is burning hot - just not in Britain

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/8197613/Coals-future-is-burning-hot-just-not-in-Britain.html

Coal's future is burning hot – just not in Britain

"It's possible," said Alistair Phillips-Davies, "that we may never build another coal plant in Britain."


http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01659/mine_1659680c.jpg
Coal - the future is bright (with the exception of Britain)



That's a view that would be embraced by the nation's environmentalists, worried about the continuing use of the carbon-heavy fossil fuel. However, it's actually an opinion that comes from the director of energy supply at Scottish & Southern – one of the UK's biggest producers of electricity from coal. Environmental restrictions are closing down the UK's dirtiest coal plants – more than a third of them will shut by the middle of the decade. But technology for cleaning up coal plants, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), is struggling to get off the ground. This week Powerfuel, which has the UK's only licence to build a clean coal power station, went into administration through lack of funds.

Now Scottish Power is the only remaining company planning to build a clean coal plant, after E.ON, BP and RWE npower all dropped out of their British plans one by one over the last few years. The point of all this is that the future of coal as a power source in Britain is struggling, unless CCS can get going. That's a view that would be embraced by the nation's environmentalists, worried about the continuing use of the carbon-heavy fossil fuel. However, it's actually an opinion that comes from the director of energy supply at Scottish & Southern – one of the UK's biggest producers of electricity from coal.

Environmental restrictions are closing down the UK's dirtiest coal plants – more than a third of them will shut by the middle of the decade. But technology for cleaning up coal plants, known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), is struggling to get off the ground. This week Powerfuel, which has the UK's only licence to build a clean coal power station, went into administration through lack of funds. Now Scottish Power is the only remaining company planning to build a clean coal plant, after E.ON, BP and RWE npower all dropped out of their British plans one by one over the last few years. The point of all this is that the future of coal as a power source in Britain is struggling, unless CCS can get going.

So there we have it, yet another example of total failure by government (the last and with this government, because they also believe the absolute nonsense about climate change) in energy policy which does mean that our lights will be going off within the next few years - high levels of immigration certainly don't help either, far from it along with creating more new homes (requiring grid extension) when we have rows upon rows of inner city housing standing empty.

Now before anyone mentions 'oh Thatcher' - it has nothing to do with Thatcher. These coals plants and coal mines are closing thanks to mainly the last Labour government and the European Union who have both put ridiculous regulations/blocks on coal to fight a non-problem of global warming despite the fact the globe has been cooling for the past 15 years. The blame lays firmly with the Labour Party, the European Union and its ridiculous energy diktats and an equally hopeless 'opposition' who have supported this both out of office and now in office.

Think of the jobs lost, the money wasted - and the markets we are missing out on by being so uncompetitive; a third of coal plants are due to close as the article states and pits have not been allowed to open due to green policy. I must ask though, for the people who harp on about Thatcher and coal so much - what have you got to say about this?

Reality will only dawn for many when the lights finally go off.

Thoughts?

[Wig44.]

Geothermal electricity please. I gather it isn't as profitable as wind farms and solar power though so it's implementation is pretty doubtful. A shame that we have to waste so much money on horribly inefficient methods like wind farms.

[MrPinkPanther]

Sorry but you keep claiming climate change is "nonsense". A scientist are you? Surely the ones making the decisions should be the people with PHDs in the area, the ones that have done decades of research and not the likes of you, me or Lord Monckton. I think you'll find that the government employs thousands of Scientists in order to advise them on sensitive areas such as climate change which is exactly why all of the western economies worldwide are pledging money to fight it.

[Swastika]

Sorry but you keep claiming climate change is "nonsense". A scientist are you? Surely the ones making the decisions should be the people with PHDs in the area, the ones that have done decades of research and not the likes of you, me or Lord Monckton. I think you'll find that the government employs thousands of Scientists in order to advise them on sensitive areas such as climate change which is exactly why all of the western economies worldwide are pledging money to fight it.
If you believe everything that government tell you, then you are mis-lead, uneducated and downright silly.

[Technologic]

If you believe everything that government tell you, then you are mis-lead, uneducated and downright silly.

K. I'll just believe the hundreds of studies in climate change instead then

[GommeInc]

Sorry but you keep claiming climate change is "nonsense". A scientist are you? Surely the ones making the decisions should be the people with PHDs in the area, the ones that have done decades of research and not the likes of you, me or Lord Monckton. I think you'll find that the government employs thousands of Scientists in order to advise them on sensitive areas such as climate change which is exactly why all of the western economies worldwide are pledging money to fight it.
That's the same as saying people who question the role of Government should have a PhD in Politics as the average Tom, Richard and Harry are too thick to comprehend it. Climate Change is considered nonsense by many scientists, and you don't have to have a PhD to read journals, articles and statistics written by experts. "Government" is prone to getting it wrong, the economic downturn is perhaps one of the major foul ups :P

[MrPinkPanther]

That's the same as saying people who question the role of Government should have a PhD in Politics as the average Tom, Richard and Harry are too thick to comprehend it.

Science is...well..an exact Science. The fact is the average Tom, Richard and Harry are too thick to understand something as complex as Climate change. I don't claim to understand it but the fact is that many politicians do which is absolute rubbish, especially when they aren't themselves being advised by genuine scientists.


Climate Change is considered nonsense by many scientists
Oh I totally agree, I'm not catagorically saying it does exist. What I'm saying is you can't simply dismiss it as "nonsense" like Dan here has done because the fact is there is evidence for it and many of the worlds leading Scientists say it's likely that it exists. It may or may not but since there is a decent chance then in my opinion it is worth acting on.


you don't have to have a PhD to read journals, articles and statistics written by experts. "Government" is prone to getting it wrong, the economic downturn is perhaps one of the major foul ups :P

No you don't but lets use me as an example. Say I've read a few papers on Climate change, who knows more, me or the people that wrote them? Your average Joe can realistically never know as much as those who dedicate their lives to researching this specific area.


"Government" is prone to getting it wrong, the economic downturn is perhaps one of the major foul ups :P

To be fair to the Gordon Brown he oversaw the largest period of unbroken economic growth in Britain's recorded history. Although I'm not a big fan of the man, he does deserve credit for that considering it was only broken by a world recession set off by America. Sure he could have done more but how many parties would have realistically done anything different?

[Swastika]

K. I'll just believe the hundreds of studies in climate change instead then
Then you would see that climate change isn't a problem, it's natural - it's been happening for millions of years.

[Inseriousity.]

Sorry but you keep claiming climate change is "nonsense". A scientist are you? Surely the ones making the decisions should be the people with PHDs in the area, the ones that have done decades of research and not the likes of you, me or Lord Monckton. I think you'll find that the government employs thousands of Scientists in order to advise them on sensitive areas such as climate change which is exactly why all of the western economies worldwide are pledging money to fight it.

tbf though science is based on a paradigm. if a scientist disagrees with the norm their research is normally discredited until over time, there's a paradigm shift. So I don't really take climate change for granted.

HOWEVER, I think that article does place an overreliance on environmentalists. I'm sure the better value for money in other more-cheaper countries was probably the biggest factor that led to those companies backing out.

[Ajthedragon]

I don't understand that despite being surrounded my ocean, and having various rivers and mountains in the British Isles we don't rely more heavily on hydro-electric power.

[GommeInc]

I don't understand that despite being surrounded my ocean, and having various rivers and mountains in the British Isles we don't rely more heavily on hydro-electric power.
We only have the seas to rely on, our rivers are quite slow moving and we lack valleys to properly make dams to create decent hydroelectric power :) There have been many attempts to create off-shore/wave related forms of energy, but all have been too costly or do not create that much energy to be of any use. The only thing that comes close are wind farms and solar panels, but they're too expensive, break easily and will never properly replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear.

EDIT: I also have a feeling that some/all of the mountains are in protected areas.

[Ajthedragon]

Ahh, good point. Didn't think of that! :P

[-:Undertaker:-]

Sorry but you keep claiming climate change is "nonsense". A scientist are you? Surely the ones making the decisions should be the people with PHDs in the area, the ones that have done decades of research and not the likes of you, me or Lord Monckton. I think you'll find that the government employs thousands of Scientists in order to advise them on sensitive areas such as climate change which is exactly why all of the western economies worldwide are pledging money to fight it.

Er no actually, I use my head and look at all the governments eagerly jumping on the bangwagon with their green taxes, I look at the likes of the UN and Maurice Strong who have openly pushed for global government (yes they've even openly pushed for that agenda as ludicrous as it) via using this as a tool to secure more powers and thats not even mentioning the EU. I also use some common sense really, the IPCC was set up to come to the conclusion that climate change by mankind is real just as the government hires scientists to come to that very conclusion.

Even if it were real, the mathematics doesn't work out - and more to the point, history blasts the whole theory into smitherins.


To be fair to the Gordon Brown he oversaw the largest period of unbroken economic growth in Britain's recorded history. Although I'm not a big fan of the man, he does deserve credit for that considering it was only broken by a world recession set off by America. Sure he could have done more but how many parties would have realistically done anything different?

The recession had little to do with being caused by America, if you have the kind of fiat money system that we have then you will have continuous boom and bust as shown by the Austrian school theory. More to the point, if you have a goalith of regulation on business then it will simply be more exposed to any downturn and will be unable to recover again which is what we are seeing now in the western world which has sluggish appalling growth - while the public sector continues to grow which is something 'the right' argued and warned against for years. Gordon Brown didn't have a clue what he was doing, this is the man who sold our gold at rock botton prices and who amassed gigantic debts under the guise of 'we cant take amount x out of the economy' - absolute rubbish, every penny the government taxes is taking money out of the real economy; the private sector.

And no, the other two main parties wouldn't have done anything different as they are all incompetent.

[alexxxxx]

If you believe everything that government tell you, then you are mis-lead, uneducated and downright silly.

anything or everything? cause sometimes i feel there's a type of person who lacks any trust in any authority for very little reason thinking they know it all. and it is often the mislead, uneducated and downright silly who do!

coal is expensive to pull out of the ground here, health and safety and running costs are expensive - and is a very dirty fuel.

and undertaker - yes the recession was caused by american banks. Once one domino falls, they all fall. Plus there is no such thing as a 'real' economy. It doesn't matter how the money flows or who commissions work - if work is being done and jobs are created, it is in fact an economy.