
Half of UK’s electricity to be renewable by 2025 - Xixi
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-half-uks-electricity-to-be-renewable-by-2025
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dhritzkiv
How much will remain nuclear by 2025 (despite nuclear not being renewable)?
Estimates suggest 20% to 30%, but the article also suggests that new nuclear
plants are not necessarily going to be built as previously slated. Even still,
50% renewable plus ~25% nuclear is a pretty good clean mix.

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nothrabannosir
In the battle against climate change, nuclear = clean. I care about climate
change an order of magnitude more than I do about nuclear waste disposal.
Given this headline, as far as I’m concerned the ideal amount of nuclear in
2025 is 50%.

~~~
danpalmer
Totally agree. We’re also making significant progress on the waste that needs
to be disposed. Gen-5 reactors that could be brought online in the 2030s, with
sustained investment, could be closed cycle enough that waste may only need to
be stored for a few hundred years. That’s short enough that we don’t need
anything particularly special to store it.

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michaelt
Unfortunately, the government definition of 'renewable' in this case includes
'biomass' which in the case of Drax means chopping down American forests and
burning them, dumping the carbon into the atmosphere. Which of course leaves a
bunch of carbon in the atmosphere, as it takes a hundred years for replacement
trees to soak up the released carbon [1].

Makes no sense from a climate change perspective IMHO - I can't see why the
government accepts it, except as a way of cooking the books to hit their own
renewables targets.

[1]
[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512/...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512/meta)

~~~
F_r_k
Better than burning gas or oil, though

~~~
RandomInteger4
Is it? If so, can you elaborate?

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mikekchar
Not the OP, but one could make the argument that if forests are replanted (and
they are in the US) that young trees may sequester carbon faster than old
trees. Here is an interesting article:
[https://icp.giss.nasa.gov/research/ppa/2001/anwar/](https://icp.giss.nasa.gov/research/ppa/2001/anwar/)

From a carbon perspective, it may even be desirable to periodically harvest
trees (not just better than oil/gas), but I think a lot more research needs to
be done.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Thank you for this explanation. Seems weird that someone thought to downvote
me for asking a simple question, because at face value, CO_2 is released from
either source and one might intuitively think that chopping down a source of
CO_2 sequestration is counter productive, but you addressed that concern
adequately.

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gnode
The estimates show the percentage increase from renewables slowing and tailing
off to around 45-50%. Is there any justification for assuming the trend won't
continue at a rate similar to current in the near future?

I don't expect that it would reach 100%, particularly as there are motivations
to preserve the nuclear industry beyond power generation, but 50% seems a low
estimate.

~~~
noir_lord
Storage.

Even at 2am on a still night the UK uses a gargantuan amount of power and we
haven't solved the "How do we manage that with renewables?" problem.

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imtringued
In some areas like Texas wind blows strongest at night. And generally wind and
solar compensate each other's seasonal deficiencies. The biggest problems are
the 3 weeks in a year in which the sun does not shine and wind does not blow
at the same time.

~~~
sinsterizme
I read an article by Ramez Naam that suggested this would be solved by a
nationwide grid rather than separate grids, since weather and usage
fluctuations will average out

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plutonorm
Well that's great but it's not really enough and it's 50 years too late. Also
UK accounts for 1% of global production. Sorry to be negative but we need to
face up to the fact that we are in deep shit.

~~~
SECProto
"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is
today."

The only thing worse than the "not really enough" emissions reduction plans,
is idle comments about how terrible they are without offering any better, more
effective solution.

Reducing the UK by 50% is better than not. If every country didn't reduce
because they "only" make up X% of global emissions, no progress would be made,
period. The solution is to target 0 CO2 emissions, and work our way there one
productive step at a time.

~~~
ForHackernews
There isn't a better, more effective solution. Maybe 25 years ago, but it's
almost certainly too late now. [0] Even if we cut emissions to 0 tomorrow
using magic, the ice caps would continue melting from the CO2 we've already
released.

That said, it's still worth it to keep emphasizing the fact that things are
going to continue getting worse for the environment. Otherwise, people will be
shocked, angry and outraged and societal upheaval and violence are likely to
result. Already, you see people are upset about the wildfires in California,
or the influx of migrants from the global south.

It would be doubly sad (though perhaps some would call it poetic justice) if
we lost our civilization as a consequence of destroying our ecosystem.

[0]
[https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433](https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> There isn't a better, more effective solution. Maybe 25 years ago, but it's
> almost certainly too late now. [0] Even if we cut emissions to 0 tomorrow
> using magic, the ice caps would continue melting from the CO2 we've already
> released.

Please propose an alternative solution that does not involve time travel.

Yes, Climate Change is going to have a negative impact on the world regardless
of what we do today. But if we don't do _anything_ , that impact will be _even
worse_!

~~~
lrem
CO2 capture in the vein of www.climeworks.com might be the solution, but it
would need the political will to tax the humankind. There is no way we will
ever find a commercial use for the captured CO2.

In the meantime, those of us with the means to do so can buy cheap arable land
(of the low yield potential, remote and so on) and plant a native forest
there. If you're in the EU, the cost of doing so might be way less than you
imagine, thanks to the Union heavily subsidizing forestation. My first order
approximation is that fully offsetting the estimated emissions of my family
would delay getting that damned flat downpayment by two or three years. Which
I'm seriously considering.

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bjourne
CO2 capture will unfortunately never be practical. Assuming we can get the
cost down to $100/ton (which is very optimistic!), the cost of capturing all
CO2 emitted by fossil fuels per year would roughly equal 20% of the total US
GDP. Limiting emissions will always be orders of magnitudes more efficient.

~~~
lrem
Indeed. But to really stop the bleeding, we do have to go negative emissions.
It's not like the answer to "we'll reach the point of no return by 2030"
should be "ok, let's settle for 2035 instead".

