Britain's last coal-fired power plant shuts down
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Glad to be moving away from coal, but the lack of serious investment in anything but wind energy has left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world, factories and industry closing their doors, the most vulnerable in society choosing between heating or eating and a very real prospect of blackouts this winter.
We dreamed of a future of energy abundance, almost too cheap to meter. We have the technology in nuclear to do just that and perhaps we will one day.
So celebrate Britain turning off 500MW of emergency buffer supply and try your best to ignore the 50GW of coal power that China brought online in the 12 months of 2023 alone.
Commodities are priced at the margin, and the marginal price in the UK is imported liquified gas.
All the other zones would reduce in price too. Currently you get some oddities like France buying cheap wind from Scotland and since it can't get delivered through bottlenecks, gas plants in England supplying the power.
The cost of this gas is then the source of headlines about how expensive wind backup is, rather than headlines about why Scotland has mysteriously more cheap electricity than England, where onshore wind was effectively banned, and the problems caused by different areas having different amounts of cheap electricity and a single market price.
The cost of intermittent power sources includes the dirty fossil fuel peaker plants built and ran to back them. Think of them as batteries.
Intermittent power sources more or less are financial engineering parasites to the grid at this point. It could be fixed but no one has the political will to do so. Eventually you run out of other people’s power and the chickens come home to roost.
The most obvious investment I’ve made in the past 15 years was natural gas. Until chemical battery storage catches up (doubtful) or there is a return to rationality in this space I expect the party to continue.
I hate it. I think solar and wind are great technologies that are currently horrifically misused by folks getting rich off the backs of regular people.
> while saying the low prices when there is an excess of production is the true cost.
I didn't say that. There are no low prices in Britain because natural gas is expensive. There are low costs to some producers, but low costs and low prices aren't the same thing. There are multiple costs but only a single price, the highest one. You've got to completely eliminate the need for your highest cost producer before prices go down.
From the aricle, Europe's (then) biggest battery could supply just 2 hours of power to 300k homes - compared with ~ 35 million homes in the UK.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/uk-builds-europes...
Natgas cost a fortune, have all kinds of supporting hardware that has to be maintained, fire prone, and they depreciate. Who wants that on their books?
All of that is more true for natgas than for batteries.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/richborough-energy-park-battery...
...and others are being planned....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4j1nrd0ro
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/200-megawatt-battery-s...
Wind has its place, but it will struggle to provide consistent base load or grid inertia that we'll lose from shuttering coal, gas and nuclear.
Remember nobody gives a flying fuck about the future only the present and gas was so ridiculously cheap and simple. Still would be if Putin had been a man of reason.
left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world
Wha? Fair play if you think the US is not a developed country, but £0.255/kWh is towards the lower end of what electricity costs in California. Hawaii is at or above those rates.
My own electric rate in the middle-north continental US is only a third of the £0.255/kWh rate.
We condescendingly laugh at Texas when their grid shuts down, meanwhile we pay 3x the price and our grid burns down towns and is frequently disabled.
We have a state regulatory commission that sets price controls on electricity, which the price at operational costs +10%. Naturally, the costs to deliver power goes up every single time it is assessed.
California is also home to laws that every new house must have rooftop solar, despite excess solar production, in the midst of a housing crisis.
California is also home to income based electricity rates.
There was even discussion of literally taxing individuals for using the sun to generate their own power.
In fairness, that is a weak point among several strong ones. All taxes are arbitrary. Eg, taxing the people who are earning an income is a bit crazy, because to earn an income you basically have to put yourself at someone else's beck and call and try to benefit them. Then taxes get added on top of that to make sure the pain really gets rubbed in. If that sort of taxing makes sense, then it also makes about as much sense to tax people for their property being exposed to sunlight; the incentives might be better than an income tax. It is actually part-way to a land tax which seems like a pretty good idea.
The common factor here is common expectation that taxes are applied to profit in the commercial sphere, or barring that, they are use taxes for public infrastructure.
Probably. There is an effect where, like clockwork, people are outraged by any tax that they can't fob off onto someone else. It is an suspicious coincidence how the tax burden sits the most heavily on a group with very few votes. People being outraged doesn't relate to whether a tax is a good idea or not (at least, relative to other taxes).
> The common factor here is common expectation that taxes are applied to profit in the commercial sphere
With the advent of the Chinese getting good at solar we're moving to a world where people have free energy falling on them from the sky. A sun tax would be surprisingly consistent with the idea that people are taxed on their profits. Sun-exposed land is a whisper away from being an active, profit-producing asset. I have no doubt that California could manage to screw it up but in-principle a sun tax sounds like it'd probably be a good idea. I'd rather people be taxed for loafing under the shade of a solar panel than for working their hands to the bone. They aren't that expensive to install.
To me, it seems like serfdom to extract taxes just because it can be done, or to make people work harder. If someone grows potatoes in their back yard and labor, should they have pay for it just so that they have to work harder? Is the purpose of the state to be a torture machine?
But if we're going to go beyond that, which we are, a "sunlight tax" sounds like it'd be roughly equivalent to a land tax (or corporate tax, or what have you), and a land tax is broadly superior to an income tax for any metric I care about. So it sounds good to me. There is an asset (sunlight on land), it doesn't require investment to maintain it. There isn't any complexity to measuring the amount of sun that I can think of. It is reasonable to tax the owner; they are getting free wealth [0] so it doesn't discourage them from doing anything. They owner worse off, but that is the nature of taxes and if we're levying a tax that isn't in principle something that we are too worried about because we can't escape that without a small-government strategy.
> If someone grows potatoes in their back yard and labor, should they have pay for it just so that they have to work harder?
That is how tax systems are broadly set up. I don't think it is reasonable to come from a position that an income tax is ok but that sort of tax isn't. The only reason that specific activity doesn't get taxed is the enforcement is too tricky to implement in practice [1] but there isn't a theoretical reason not to beyond that. If I grow potatoes for you I'd get taxed, so I don't see why me growing potatoes for me would be above taxation. It is the same amount and nature of work.
And, again, California's implementation might be terrible - but just pointing out they are talking about taxing solar generation doesn't seem like a strong point. There is an idea there that makes a lot of sense.
[0] Which is important and what separates this from a typical wealth tax. The annual sunlight is a renewable resource they are getting - a sort of natural rent on the land.
[1] Ie, how does the tax office detect if you have a pirate potato operation, and if they do how is it done cost-effectively so the tax take is higher than the enforcement cost.
In my moral-political framework use taxes are superior to income taxes which are superior to wealth taxes. In my mind, any just theory taxation is based payment to the state for state services provided.
Use taxes are best because there is a clear quid pro quo, it enables consent (via using the service or not), and can be leveed reasonably proportional to use costs.
Income taxes are next, because they can be framed as a use of the public market space and institutions. Again, there there is a clear quid pro quo, and people can choose to work more or less, and pay more or less taxes.
Wealth taxes are worst because there is no quid pro quo or consent. The taxed gets no new exchange for the payment.
I think solar tax is even worse than this, because there is no underlying profit or wealth. Im not making money with solar, just losing money more slowly.
I think this is equivalent to sending a collector through the serfs to collect taxes for breathing the kings air. The kind didnt make the air any more than the state made the sun.
With respect to Georgism, I think it was amoral to begin with, and economically outdated today. Simply put, a significant portion of value today does not arise from the land. The material inputs for some code are trivial, but that code created may be worth more than a thousand acres of farmland. The material inputs to make a billion dollar stock trade are a few watts to send electrons down a wire.
I'm more than happy to agree that a sun tax is like serfs paying tax for breathing the kings air. But any tax is equivalent to a serf breathing the kings air - the state didn't put in anywhere near the level of support that it is taking away. The people who control the army point out that their army can get the taxpayer, nobody else will save them and ergo they must donate money to the cause. When taxes are involved inevitably the people paying the most tax will have moral objections to picking up the heaviest burden and their moral sensibilities will be overruled by suspiciously more moral and less taxed individuals [0].
The people who pay for the spending aren't doing it willingly, or there wouldn't be any need to engage the tax system to make them pay. Pretending that there is some sort of consent or a quid pro quo involved is just that - pretence. If the taxpayers called your morals, in practice, it will be discovered that the governing bodies were bluffing and some other method of extracting money will be found that is then decided to be most moral by people not paying for the spending. And from that frame there is no difference between taxing solar panels or taxing any other form of wealth generation - except that the people with solar panels are already getting a free ride from the sun so it is a less economically distortive burden for the taxman to take a cut.
I suppose to put it in short, we will have to agree to disagree.
[0] Although there would be a really interesting to run an experiment where votes in an election were proportionally weighted by how much tax the voter had paid in the last financial year.
While I do share some of your cynicism about the extractive nature of the state and public, I think is also clear that norms exist and the public does push back. After all, we dont currently have a tax on breathing the air or home use solar generation.
The state and proponents of these measures go to great lengths to justify or obfuscate purely extractive taxes, which again speaks to public moral sentiment. The idea of might makes right with respect to taxation and state power is still transgressive.
California is terrible company to keep, and has the worst energy prices
in the US.
meanwhile we pay 3x the price and our grid burns down towns and is
frequently disabled.
Texas continues to struggle mightily with adverse weather — ERCOT was way off in their demand forecasts during the 2022 storms. It came down to sheer luck that they didn't see a repeat of 2021. Let's not forget that Texas is cheaper until it's not. 2021 saw residential power reach $9,000/kWh.
Either way, my point wasn't to start a pissing contest about which is worse, but point out the Hypocrisy of Californian condescension. Surely we can agree California isn't a shining beacon of wise grid management.
Even so, cross the border into Oregon and their rates are half... CA is literally double the national average price in the US.
CA makes up about 11% of the US population. So, just short of 90% of the country pays half of what they do.
CA is a big place, but simply is not representative of the country as a whole. They are, in fact, an outlier in many metrics.
I wasn't comparing the whole country to the UK, I was comparing California to the UK.
There are more people in California than in a number of developed countries (e.g. Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Singapore). PG&E alone provides electricity to more people (16 million across 5.5 million accounts) than the entire population of New England (15 million). California as a single market is an entirely valid comparison.
Wha? Fair play if you think the US is not a developed country
Neither are good comparisons for what is "normal"... The only thing the comparison does is prove that the UK has high energy prices.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/documents/billing_and_payme...
I'm pretty sure SDGE (San Diego) rates are higher than PG&E across the board, but I'm too lazy to look it up since PG&E covers a huge swath of California and is already eyewateringly expensive.
At this rate, wont be long before we have to bring a copy of our w-2 to the super market so that the cashier can figure out the price of groceries.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...
PG&E's non-residential rates aren't that much cheaper than their residential rates. The rate schedules are comically complex so I can't give you insight into what the differences are, but they're showing average rates of $0.42/kWh (A-1, Commercial), $0.19–$0.32/kWh (E-20, Industrial), $0.20–$0.32/kWh (B-20, Industrial), $0.51/kWh (AG-1A, Agricultural), etc., etc.
As was pointed out by another commenter California and Hawaii are outliers, but then again so is Texas (where the uncapped market rate plans socked people with $9,000/month residential bills). Thing is both Texas and California are huge markets, so while parts of the US are much cheaper, parts of the US that are each larger than the UK are quite a bit more expensive.
Honestly I had no idea how pricey the non-residential plans are and I feel like there are almost certainly incentives that would cut the net cost significantly.
2024 was the breaking point where more renewables was built than expected grid expansion and emissions are therefore expected to decline.
Nuclear power simply is too expensive. The Hinkley Point C CFD simply is insane and Sizewell C isn’t looking any better.
A coal plant even with all of the modern upgrades is and always has been happiest as a baseload generator. It takes about 4-6 hours for a coal plant to come up from cold start, compared to about 5 mins for a gas peaker plant. This means you can use it for planned/predicted grid peaks but you'll have to run during some unprofitable times to do so.
Essentially coal has the same problem as wind, it's producing at the wrong times. If you want it to be really profitable you need pumped storage and batteries to hold that energy for peaks, something we're still short of in the UK.
It's probably becoming less profitable though- there aren't a lot of guarantees because coal takes a long time to start up, and the UKs energy price is volatile due to the ammount of wind energy in the system.
Probably a reason why natural gas continues to be a fossil fuel with a lot of use in the UK. It's very quick to turn on and off at times when wind is low/high.
The UK (or EU?) introduced air pollution limits and carbon emission taxes. That made coal power unprofitable.
Ratcliffe had a supplemental income as an emergency producer of power, which presumably left it profitable, but it is no longer needed for that.
Going through point by point:
> has left the UK with the highest electricity prices in the developed world
Since when? As of 2023, high, but not highest. [1]
> factories and industry closing their doors
Could you provide evidence that factories and industry are actually on the decline in the UK? Second, can you provide evidence it is related to energy prices?
It seems the data contradicts this type of correlation [2]. Energy prices spiked in 2021 and are now down, to very similar levels as they were over the last decade.
> the most vulnerable in society choosing between heating or eating
Citations needed, and also to demonstrate that this is a new phenomenon. Considering energy prices are lower in the UK than recently, this decision would not be due to an increase in energy prices.
> very real prospect of blackouts this winter.
According to [3]: " The risk of blackouts in Britain will be lower this winter as new gas generation capacity and greater electricity imports from Europe should ensure a larger buffer against potential shortages"
> We dreamed of a future of energy abundance, almost too cheap to meter
Who is we? Was this a party platform? Propaganda? Just something you were lead to believe?
> We have the technology in nuclear to do just that and perhaps we will one day.
First claim is not supported. Is it possible to actually produce that much nuclear energy. Also, energy markets are global. Excess energy is sold, it is not necessarily divided out locally for free. Further, stupid cheap energy would create it's own demand, migration of energy usages.
> So celebrate Britain turning off 500MW of emergency buffer supply
A single plant is the buffer supply?
> ignore the 50GW of coal power that China brought online in the 12 months of 2023 alone.
That is a what-about-ism
‐----- [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/589765/average-electrici...
[3] https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/energy/article/black...
Specifically, the "Britain: the first energy superpower" section: https://ukfoundations.co/#footnote-source-6
I don't understand why these allegedly pro-growth people are so stuck in the 20th century when it comes to energy production but it makes them look disconnected from reality, which is presumably not the intent, just some strange bubble they are in and don't realise they are in.
> It is commonplace to claim that electricity generated from wind or solar power is cheaper than electricity from traditional power plants. Yet the more wind and solar we hook up to the grid, and the more fossil fuel power plants we retire, the higher bills seem to go.
"Seem to"? You're hingeing your entire futurist manifesto on "seem to"?
(If I'd be cynical, I'd guess graphing more countries would show that the UK is not unique here, but I don't know).
Bit surprising that even in this supposed high priced environment, renewable energy seems to not have a market in the UK (at least according to this article). Lots of the world seems to be creating those markets!
Renewables have seen significant growth over the past decade, particularly offshore wind, for which the UK is ideally positioned: https://grid.iamkate.com/
In other words, what behavior is distinct between the UK and France (or other countries)?
Falling demand is notable to me. Though, the nuclear backbone and full embrace of renewable deployments is IMO smart
[1] https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-neg...
> Since when? As of 2023, high, but not highest.
Since 2024, at least. [1][2]
> Could you provide evidence that factories and industry are actually on the decline in the UK?
Tata Steel is the most topical one, production moving to India. Easy to find sources for that, it's all over the news.
> Energy prices spiked in 2021 and are now down.
False. Industrial prices have grown every year since 2011 [3]
> The risk of blackouts in Britain will be lower this winter...
Right, so you agree with me that there's a risk of blackouts then?
> Who is we? Was this a party platform? Propaganda? Just something you were lead to believe?
It's a reference to a nuclear energy optimism from the 20th century. Some reading material for you. [4]
> Is it possible to actually produce that much nuclear energy.
Of course it is. Energy is hard to sell long distance in large quantities. We're perfectly capable of building more supply than demand (FYI that's how the grid operates to this day) and we should certainly be encouraging more demand to improve living standards.
> A single plant is the buffer supply?
No, I never claimed that it was. But coal power has been used mainly to provide a buffer supply only as needed to prioritise cleaner generation in recent years so it's accurate to say we're turning off (some) buffer supply.
> That is a what-about-ism
It is, but I rather enjoy paying attention to the wider world instead of navel gazing and virtue signalling.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/26/britain-burd...
[2] https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/uk-household-electricity-price...
[3] https://www.ibisworld.com/uk/bed/industrial-electricity-pric...
[4] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/history-10...
Britain's fault is in relying too heavily on imported gas — not just for electricity, but also building heat — and not improving building standards.
European countries with similar climates have extensive district heating systems and better (sometimes much better!) building insulation. There are still homes without double glazing in Britain!
England also banned building on-shore wind turbines.
But that's not particularly down to the price of energy is it?
"Electric arc furnaces do not require coal. Tata's plan is to switch from transforming iron ore into metal, and instead take scrap steel from demolished bridges, buildings, cars – anything usable – and melt it down again using electricity. The circular process promises huge carbon savings compared with blast furnaces."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/12/ste...
This would have a lot to do with the price of energy. Processing materials normally takes a lot of it, both in the transformation and transport.
That's speculation.
The old furnaces weren't using electricity, they used coal and the primary reason for shutting them down and moving away from that is climate change targets - https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cj6e863nxn8t
This is not "Tata moving production to India because energy is expensive".
It does support the more generic point that UK industry could be in decline, but as a single data point it doesn't really give us anything meaningful there either.
Speculation it may be. But as speculation goes, it is tame to say that the reason the UK may potentially (and I quote your article again because the quote is delicious) "left without a way of transforming iron ore into steel" is because of the world-famously expensive electricity that they are responsible for.
That article is pretty a pretty solid point in Kognito's favour. The evidence is compelling.
Nor have you got the right read on why Britain will be "left without a way of transforming iron ore into steel".
For a start when you bring up the quote about there being no demand for a second furnace, they are talking about a second steel recycling furnace, not an ore refining one. Which makes it irrelevant to the quote you’re so enamoured with.
Secondly, the UK will be left without a way to transform ore into steel. Port Talbot has closed. Scunthorpe is closing. There is no ‘might’ here and the capability will be lost because nobody is investing in new plants to do that, not the private sector nor government. There are a myriad of reasons Tata might choose to either spin up new capacity elsewhere or just decide it doesn’t need capacity. Either way it’s not clear that energy prices in the UK are a significant factor in the loss of ore processing capability, compared to (as they explicitly say) CO2 emissions.
What they are investing in is an energy-intensive electric-arc steel recycling furnace. Which kinda makes it look like energy prices aren’t that much bother.
It seems to me that you and the OP are both making unsupported assumptions of single motivators in a complex picture of international trade and climate concerns. Not sure why you’re so keen on that, but if you want to ignore the stated reasons in favour of conjecture, that’s on you.
You've said something like that a few times. Do you have a source for the mechanism by which it is being done? Because your links don't support the idea that this is being done to meet a climate target. They talk about the high costs and large daily losses (£1m a day) that the blast furnaces were facing. When you factor in the supply problem that the UK has with coal that is surely an energy problem.
Tata's decarbonisation plans - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c03jy91w87ko
British steel talking about their plans for decarbonisation - https://britishsteel.co.uk/news/british-steel-today-unveils-...
Both also talk in other places about their lack of profitability, sure, at least in part that seems to be down to crumbling, ageing facilities -
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/tata-steel-to-close...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm7xp1erkeo
"Imports of raw materials are continuing but have reduced in light of ongoing production issues. We are working to restore production levels from our ageing blast furnaces"
Both are moving to energy intensive but greener arc furnaces which don't run directly from fossil fuel and which will recycle steel, with partial government backing/investment.
Is energy cost a factor ? Perhaps, but is seems far from a cut-and-dried simple narrative.
Is loss of 'virgin' steel production in the UK a big deal? Yeah probably. But it seems like virgin steel production and climate goals are currently incompatible, which is a bit of an issue!
As hydrogen-based ore refining is not yet very widespread this raises all of the usual questions about whether developed nations are simply exporting their CO2 emissions overseas, though if recycling with arc furnaces can cover part of the shortfall it's less bad. There is (AFAICT) one H2-based virgin steel production facility in Sweden - https://www.mining-technology.com/news/green-steel-hydrogen/ - which perhaps shows the way forward, using H2 to produce "Sponge Iron" from ore, which then goes to an arc furnace. A first stage iron ore facility like this could potentially feed the new arc reactors in the UK, but from what I can see nobody is proposing to build one of those.
Energy prices are an existential issue for brick-and-mortar businesses. Restaurants and cafes in particular struggle to pay their energy bills. Even if you have no customers you still have to heat and cool your premises otherwise you will definitely have no customers.
There is a potential for economic collapse if energy prices were to spike further from here, because many of these small businesses would become uneconomical and shut, leading to mass unemployment.
In many parts of the UK this scenario is already a reality but nobody will take notice until it happens in London.
I am curious why there is such a disparity in general energy cost vs cost to industrial businesses specifically.
> Tata Steel is the most topical one, production moving to India
While I would agree examples can demonstrate the potential for a trend, we need data there is a larger trend and that it is due to energy costs (and not say labor cost, metallurgical coal availability, taxes, brexit, etc). I'm stuck on a phone, otherwise I would try to research that more.
> Right, so you agree with me that there's a risk of blackouts then?
Indeed. Though I interpreted from your phrasing that the risk was at least greater now compared to previous years due to this one coal plants closure, if not a completely brand new risk. Had you said, "_still_ have a risk of blackouts" - that would seemingly have been more accurate. FWIW, I'm a skeptic (or at least try to be). I do want data for significant claims before I start to accept them.
> Of course it is. Energy is hard to sell long distance in large quantities. We're perfectly capable of building more supply than demand
I agree. Though greater supply does not get you to "too cheap to meter." Bitcoin miners would move in en-masse well before that happens.
I would agree that the price of energy for industry could get to at least as cheap as France, if not better.
Is there an energy link directly to France? Honest question. If so, super cheap energy would be sold to france - which would stop some of its production in turn and/or in sell its production to its neighbors. There would be quite a shift of what makes sense to produce based on non-local prices. I was thinking a lot about this topic when someone said we could stop sending food and keep it local. Producing more food means more is sent to the highest bidder (minus transport costs). Producing tons and tons off food does not make the local price necessarily cheaper given there is global demand. I understand electricity does not transport nearly as well as food, yet global markets still are at play in energy markets.
Back to "Too cheap to meter", I would guess that likely requires fusion energy. The amount of nuclear, fuel, managing the waste- all to get to "essentially free" - I suspect is a very staggering amount. Hence, honest question - is that actually possible (and feasible) even with nuclear? My wild ass guess is the UK would need at least 2, if not 3 or 4 orders magnitude more energy generation (and done at a price that was also cheaper than dirt). I'll check [4] out shortly. Though, honest question, can nuclear even do that?
> accurate to say we're turning off (some) buffer supply.
In a strict sense, any extra capacity is buffer supply. So yes. Though, the important source of buffer supply seemingly comes now from oil (per I believe my [3] cited above). I imagine, because we are talking one power plant, it is not a consequential amount of buffer. I'm curious what the ratio of energy from gas is (that would be considered buffer) compared to the one plant. I suspect it is low (again on phone, my apology to not try to look that up myself), thus the one plant (I suspect) is providing a non meaningful amount of buffer. My question there was a question, bit incredulous, but nonetheless a question.
> Some reading material for you. [4]
I appreciate you sourcing where the idea came from. I'll check it out.
> It is, but I rather enjoy paying attention to the wider world instead of navel gazing and virtue signalling.
I don't think it is virtue signalling. The world needs to move away from coal energy. China is deploying a ton of solar (IIRC they put more online last year than the rest of the world combined). IIRC, the cost of solar is so low now, it is better to build solar than to even operate coal plants.
Though, what about'ism does just make for a weak argument. If someone else is murdering a thousand people, you should probably still stop murdering anyone anyways.
Yet, you seem to be conflating the lack of nuclear as a good choice to solve some real energy problems, with taking one coal plant off the grid. I understand you are lamenting that both are not being done (ie: ramping up nuclear while taking coal offline). Your arguments can almost be construed that you disagree with turning off any energy source. I got that vibe, though I'll take your "bittersweet" sentiment to mean you will not miss the coal (you just also wish there were a bunch of nuclear going). Let me know if that is an unfair characterization
To a large extent, I agree with that. Though, at the same time, I would not agree with the statement, "no coal should be taken offline until we have built nuclear to replace it." It over emphasizes the importance of coal as an energy source and does not consider there are other and faster options to ramp up energy production without nuclear. At the same time, I am in favor of a relatively massive deployment of nuclear, but I don't think that nuclear and taking coal energy offline need to be married at the hip.
I appreciate your response and your providing qualification and support for a large number of your claims. Thank you, it has made for a substantially more interesting dialog than typically had.
Sizewell C is being built by EDF, a French company. And it seems that every time they go over-budget they hold their hand out and the British Government coughs up some more. I read that it is likely to cost in the region of £40 billion.
The project is funded by a pre agreed electricity price for the plant once it is operational, and private investment.
It is however likely to impact negotiations for Sizewell C which has not yet been greenlit, as funding terms amenable to the U.K. government and EDF have not been reached. EDF want terms that would cause cost overruns to be born by energy consumers, to avoid a repeat of Hinkley Point.
https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/08/02/uk-government-addr...
I'm sure there are strategies that could, at the very least, make things predictable. I think the biggest trouble with huge projects isn't so much the cost as it is the uncertainty.
A lot of the (finanical and time) investment for Hinkley Point C has been certifying and upskilling the workforce.
Sizewell C is projected to be a much smoother and 'cheaper' operation, as it is a near clone of HPC. And the timing means the workforce will just transfer over to the new site.
Though you make a good point it could be zero sum (or worse or better). Yet, it might be truly better to pay someone else to burn coal if its cleaner to process and burn compared to domestic supply.
It won't be though, will it? They will buy it from the cheapest place they can, which will probably be a third world environmental disaster zone.
Consider oil for example, when the price is high then low productivity oil wells that need high amounts of processing becomes economical. Somewhat similar concept
FWIW, "global energy monitor" wiki has some interesting data: "Note that, perhaps counterintuitively, carbon dioxide emission factors are not necessarily lower for higher quality coals. For example, anthracite coal, which is the highest quality coal, produces more carbon dioxide per Btu than low-quality lignite. This is because anthracite lacks hydrogen, which is a small portion of the content of lower grade coals." [1]
[1] https://www.gem.wiki/Estimating_carbon_dioxide_emissions_fro...
It's obviously better to produce X with 0 jobs than X with 100 jobs. Most people just don't seem to understand that economically instead of accruing some benefit to 100 people, everyone else gains marginally instead.
I absolutely hate political parties harping on about job creation, like that's the goal. No, the goal is value creation, hopefully for society as a whole, in the most efficient way possible.
We can't babysit people their whole lives, nor should we subsidise jobs that don't need to be done. I recognise I'm privileged in saying that, but even so the vast majority of people get by without special treatment to preserve their jobs (every worker in retail and hospitality).
There is no reason, usually, to give special treatment to these jobs.
Predictions is that it'd go up, due to the unreliable nature of wind, solar. Hence the minimum price is the cost to turn on a power generator and fill in the gaps.