
Britain in two-week coal-free record - sohkamyung
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48473259
======
reizorc
Green washing at a national level. Biomass instead of coal is not necessarily
better [1] and the source is very questionable [2].

[1] [https://www.ecowatch.com/chatham-house-biomass-
study-2288764...](https://www.ecowatch.com/chatham-house-biomass-
study-2288764699.html)

[2] [https://theecologist.org/2017/apr/10/no-drax-theres-
nothing-...](https://theecologist.org/2017/apr/10/no-drax-theres-nothing-
sustainable-about-big-biomass)

------
erentz
Note over that time Britain is importing on average something like 1.5-2.0GW
from France and ~1GW from the Netherlands. And producing on average about 15GW
from gas. (Not sure how much oil is still used.)

~~~
pmyteh
Very little oil. The French imports are effectively surplus nuclear, as I
understand it, while the Netherlands imports are more mixed.

We do have a lot of gas still.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Gas is a fine stop gap (less CO2 emitted and cleaner emissions) until you have
more renewables, battery storage, and HVDC transmission lines from other
countries with renewable and nuclear reserves.

~~~
opo
Burning coal is overall much worse for the environment and people, but in
terms of climate change, it might not be much better than coal. The CO2
emissions from a natural gas plant are lower than a coal plant, but it isn't
clear that if you account for methane releases during
production/transporting/storage that it is better for climate change than
coal.

>...Back in August, a NOAA-led study measured a stunning 6% to 12% methane
leakage over one of the country’s largest gas fields — which would gut the
climate benefits of switching from coal to gas. We’ve known for a long time
that methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2),
which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned. But the
IPCC’s latest report, released Monday (big PDF here), reports that methane is
34 times stronger a heat-trapping gas than CO2 over a 100-year time scale, so
its global-warming potential (GWP) is 34. That is a nearly 40% increase from
the IPCC’s previous estimate of 25. ...The IPCC reports that, over a 20-year
time frame, methane has a global warming potential of 86 compared to CO2, up
from its previous estimate of 72. Given that we are approaching real,
irreversible tipping points in the climate system, climate studies should, at
the very least, include analyses that use this 20-year time horizon. Finally,
it bears repeating that natural gas from even the best fracked wells is still
a climate-destroying fossil fuel. If we are to avoid catastrophic warming, our
natural gas consumption has to peak sometime in the next 10 to 15 years,
according to studies by both the Center for American Progress and the Union of
Concerned Scientists.

[https://thinkprogress.org/more-bad-news-for-fracking-ipcc-
wa...](https://thinkprogress.org/more-bad-news-for-fracking-ipcc-warns-
methane-traps-much-more-heat-than-we-thought-9c2badf392df/)

As we use more and more natural gas, we can expect more and more methane
disasters like the leak from Aliso Canyon in CA which was the largest methane
leak in US history. This released over 100,000 tons of methane into the
atmosphere and required 11,000 residents to be evacuated.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-35659947](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35659947)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> As we use more and more natural gas, we can expect more and more methane
> disasters like the leak from Aliso Canyon in CA which was the largest
> methane leak in US history. This released over 100,000 tons of methane into
> the atmosphere and required 11,000 residents to be evacuated.

While tragic, it did prompt California to require utility scale battery
storage replace the gas turbines that used that storage facility.

[https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/aliso-canyon-
em...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/aliso-canyon-emergency-
batteries-officially-up-and-running-from-tesla-green)

> CPUC President Michael Picker said the battery projects were deployed with
> “unprecedented” speed and cooperation among stakeholders.

> “I was stunned at the ability of batteries and the battery industry’s
> ability to meet our needs,” said Picker, speaking at the launch event
> yesterday for Tesla’s battery system at SCE’s Mira Loma substation in
> Ontario, California. “This was something I didn’t expect to see until 2020.
> Here it is in 2017, and it’s already in the ground.”

For reference, total time before Brown's emergency order and this battery
storage facility turning up was just 1 year.

