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Comment by gjvc | Hacker News Reader

Such generator facilities need to be retained, and not demolished, for contingency purposes.

The actual electricity production and consumption of the UK is declining [0] The UK is also rapidly deploying renewables, and adding more and more interconnection to mainland Europe.

So as the capacity goes up the consumption goes down (for now). It's completely fair to decommission all coal plants.

I assume the energy consumption will go up at some point, as there's only so much you can save with energy efficiency, an delocalisation, and as we shift primary energy usage onto electricity (what's currently being imported in the form of gas and petrol).

But hopefully by this point the continued growth of production means will cover the increase

0: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&countr...

I had understood that one of the reasons for the reduction in consumption was related to having one of the highest priced electricity in the world. With more being deployed it should bring prices down too to allow increased consumption. Hopefully.

It really does make things uneconomic here, and painful for the poorer folks in society.

This is the plant that was retained. It was kept a little longer due to the problems with gas supply after Russia invaded Ukraine.

It's no longer needed for contingency.

We don't need to keep coal for that. There is relatively clean by comparison gas stations for that. Or pumped hydro.

Or just build more wind and over provision

Burn the ships, we aren’t going back. Net zero is within reach, the evidence and data on this is clear.

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