Environmental activists claimed a major victory last night when plans for Britain’s first new coal-fired power station for 30 years were shelved after a sustained campaign. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6865464.ece 

I suppose they won't be happy until the UK is covered by windmills. Oh I forgot, they make too much noise.

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They must be supporting nuclear then or will have to sit in the dark to knit beans or whatever the greenies do.

recession claims victory over new power station, more like.

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Phew... I thought for a horrible moment you meant the Hatfield Coalpower site.... now that would be an interesting place for the "Greenies" to protest.... I think the local hospital & dentist would soon be busy with the protesters removing the placards from their a**es..... :devil:

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I'm going to get my tin foil hat on and perhaps talk utter rubbish, it made sense to me following reading "King Coal" Pelican.

The demise of British Coal, as I understand it wasn't just about the NUM taking the mick, it coincided with cheap oil being readily available. A consequence of our "delve into oil" period/gas is that we have a lot of coal left. We actually have a huge amount left in comparison with our land area. 90B tons, I believe (that is known retrievable reserves).

I see several things that make me curious about why they are there. The first being Carbon Hysteria, whilst the IPCC churn out even more hockey stick graphs and we are all to melt, I can't see any relationships in the long term data (real data). There is no direct relationship with known CO2 output and global temperatures.....I wonder why, given this lack of empirical data, that the IPCC are so hellbent on managing carbon usage. I personally believe that it's a noble lie in order to mitigate against the worse impact of peak oil, which is well documented. The irony here is that Carbon Hysteria has caused people to stray away from Coal (high C:H Ratio) and go to lower ratio FF's, like Oil and Gas. If this was the case, Carbon Hysteria to mitigate against peak oil has exaccerbated the problem.

At some point, oil was going to peak and attention would be better spent in the meantime saving our reserves whilst exploiting those which are cheaper. So, I gather at the end of WWII, the Germans were doing pretty well at making oil out of Coal. I can't see why we can't do that either. So, given price hikes, this stuff will be viable. Whether we have the staff or tooling, who knows.....

I'm very much pro conservation of fossil fuels for use in chemical feedstocks and powering proper engines for enjoyable transport! Nuclear seems the most sensible choice for power generation and I really can't understand why our nuke programme was shelved. I assume it was for political wrangling. Shame really, as we could have led Europe in nuclear stuff.....reprocessing, etc.

Wind turbines I gather, are non starters in terms of their overall dust-dust energy cycle. Funnily enough, the undergrad book I have on the matter neatly avoids that issue. It does beg the question "Why are we not using water power?"

Anyway, I wonder about our reserves, the UK is pretty burned out, it's a failure and a drively pathetic entity that will be snivveled at in the EUSSR, which seems to be inevitable (thanks, Ireland! ) now. I've wondered about the purpose of the EU for a while. Since the PIIGS are struggling like hell and Germany are not keen on funding it all, I wonder why everyone is so hellbent on it.....apart from the BBC hoping to be the EBC and people fixing their post-MP jobs on the gravytrain.

I forgot who wrote it, but postwar, there was a real treatise on how the EU would function. It was quite precise and the way that things have unfolded, it makes one wonder if the whole things is one big experiment for the greater good. This would allow everyone to benefit from everyone elses reserves/primaries.....whilst also stopping them from holding each other to ransom.

My opinion is that in the longterm, it would make financial sense to stay out of the EU, thus when oil peaks and coal demand rises, we can boost the living daylights out of our economy again.

So, UN drive Carbon Chaos which disrupts the long term viability of UK Coal. What a shame?

I wonder how long it is going to take before empirical data makes MMCC look very unlikely and this carbon nonsense is dropped. I gather that pumping the CO2 from the power station into the ground will require 25% more power. Thus consuming 25% more coal. How environmentally friendly?

Putting plant food gas underground is just bloody stupid. That is before we start on cement and concrete......

The hippies are basically wanting to manipulate everyone via their sense of moral superiority. They want to change your behaviour. Since left wing politics wasn't working, the environment is the next best thing.....used for the same ends.

:thumbsup:

I reckon there is serious milage in getting water power happening in the order of scale that it was in the 1850's. Sustainable proper power.

I wonder why no-one is doing it. It would make more sense than the even dafter and more ill thought out Wave Hub project.

(all my opinion)

Bloody hippies would have us sit in the dark because of their misguided stupidity.
Coal is an intrinisic part of our energy future wether they like it or not

Just to hijack this thread slightly for a moment. I wonder if anyone on here can see a flaw in what I am about to say.

Between Blaenau and Bala there is a huge reservoir, you know, the one that caused all that arguement when it flooded a valley. Llyn Celyn (it has another name not sure what that is OS call it Llyn Celyn so that's good enough for me). Basically that holds back a load of River Dee water until the Dee is too low then lets some of it out it is supposed to supplement Liverpool's water supply (not getting onto that subject!).

Now, what I want to know is, why can't that water be used as well for electrickery generation? The dam is there, the water is there, the water being let out is there, so why not?

I don't mean a pumped storage scheme like Dinorwig and Ffestiniog, I mean a plain simple hydro electric power station.

Surely all it would take is a small building for the turbines/generators and a connection to the grid.

Simples!

If nuclear and coal is being ruled out then (to me) there is something that is certain. Tidal power. The Severn Barrage has been discussed to death over the years and certainly would create a significant amount of electricity. Problem. Every environmental group from Friends of the Earth to save the Welsh buttercup threatened suicide. So placed on the back burner like this countries energy policy. I'm still managing to avoid your IPCC debate Stuey. :thumbsup:

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the substantive closure of British Coal was due to the Dash For Gas, rather than oil firing. I started working on gas pipelines in 1993 and it was my main source of work for the next ten years.

there are certain technical issues surrounding making oil from coal. It's quite expensive, and there are a LOT of sulpur-related by-products, but it's quite feasible if that's what you want to do.

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If nuclear and coal is being ruled out then (to me) there is something that is certain. Tidal power. The Severn Barrage has been discussed to death over the years and certainly would create a significant amount of electricity. Problem. Every environmental group from Friends of the Earth to save the Welsh buttercup threatened suicide. So placed on the back burner like this countries energy policy. I'm still managing to avoid your IPCC debate Stuey. :thumbsup:

The Severn Barrage has gone very quiet, the following http://www.raeng.org.uk/events/pdf/Severn%20Barrage%20transcript.pdf  may explain why. Takes a bit of reading, ignore the political and environmental bits, concentrate on the engineering, timescale, construction cost/effort and energy price bits, pages 13-33 (interesting particularly comments about other areas like N Wales), 43-49 and 51-67 (this is where the engineering and costings are, absolutely fascinating).

In particular the last two paragraphs of page 58 (section title - Price risks) kill the often heard claim of "free energy" (apart from the cost of building it) stone cold dead.

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In one way green energy could be good for mining as there will be no CO2 levy on processing of products. Although I just fear they will replace it with "green energy sustainabilty charge" or "Landscape tax" for daring to dig up the ground.
..anyway I am just waiting for someone to prove we are entering the next ice age and the CO2 output has balanced this effect...until they start reducing it.

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And here's what could happen.....

Which I'm considering why Brown's Broadcasting Corporation have run it ;)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8297882.stm 

Better build some more windmills then 🙂 :thumbdown:

If nuclear and coal is being ruled out then (to me) there is something that is certain. Tidal power. The Severn Barrage has been discussed to death over the years and certainly would create a significant amount of electricity. Problem. Every environmental group from Friends of the Earth to save the Welsh buttercup threatened suicide. So placed on the back burner like this countries energy policy. I'm still managing to avoid your IPCC debate Stuey. :thumbsup:

The Severn Barrage has gone very quiet, the following http://www.raeng.org.uk/events/pdf/Severn%20Barrage%20transcript.pdf  may explain why. Takes a bit of reading, ignore the political and environmental bits, concentrate on the engineering, timescale, construction cost/effort and energy price bits, pages 13-33 (interesting particularly comments about other areas like N Wales), 43-49 and 51-67 (this is where the engineering and costings are, absolutely fascinating).

In particular the last two paragraphs of page 58 (section title - Price risks) kill the often heard claim of "free energy" (apart from the cost of building it) stone cold dead.

Thanks for the link Digit. Haven't had chance to read it properly yet so have downloaded to read at leisure later. I had a quite detailed analysis of the project when I was doing an oceanography course with the OU some years ago which unfortunately seems to have been swallowed up with the rest of the junk in my house.

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There is a Hydro Electric Scheme at Llyn Celyn using the dam there

Just to hijack this thread slightly for a moment. I wonder if anyone on here can see a flaw in what I am about to say.

Between Blaenau and Bala there is a huge reservoir, you know, the one that caused all that arguement when it flooded a valley. Llyn Celyn (it has another name not sure what that is OS call it Llyn Celyn so that's good enough for me). Basically that holds back a load of River Dee water until the Dee is too low then lets some of it out it is supposed to supplement Liverpool's water supply (not getting onto that subject!).

Now, what I want to know is, why can't that water be used as well for electrickery generation? The dam is there, the water is there, the water being let out is there, so why not?

I don't mean a pumped storage scheme like Dinorwig and Ffestiniog, I mean a plain simple hydro electric power station.

Surely all it would take is a small building for the turbines/generators and a connection to the grid.

Simples!

I suspect it's just the small amount of water that flows along that part of the river makes it not worthwhile.

Chris.