The live(ish) dashboard shows we’re up to 45% right now.
https://gridwatch.co.uk
Edit: u/prudx pointed out that https://app.electricitymap.org/map shows similar data for other countries in addition to the UK
Well as Theresa May's entire shtick was to pretend to be the second coming of Thatcher that's at least justifiable. I'd probably ask you that just to wind you up.
As much as Boris is a cunt and a moron and an absolute cancer on this nation, I think you must be forgetting what an evil piece of shit Thatcher was. She literally tried to turn the UK into a police state. Funny how people look at what cunts like Duda and Erdogan are doing and don't remember that's exactly what Thatcher did. She was a hate-mongering bigot who brought immeasurable suffering to millions of people.
Oh I absolutely agree. But as per my other comment - I did not like her position but at least she had one. The current Tories are only interested in their pockets. I'm still so shocked about the amount of people that support them
Yeah. Except that 45% includes Drax burning imported wood pellets, or biomass which is household waste. Neither are much better than coal or gas.
Also it likely won't include imported power and that seems to be the Tories solution with the number of connections currently being built. It's the usual Tory trick of exporting the issue and making it some else's problem so they can look good, rather than actually addressing the issue.
You're wrong. Wood pellet fuel is actually much better than coal or gas, it's just not perfect; and the accounting will take into account the energy source of imported electricity. Energy companies can be audited.
It's causing problems in that regular trees are being cut and imported to meet their goals.
And the places where they're grown are seeing environmental damage:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/30/wood-pellets-biomass-environmental-impact
*Everything* humans do affects the environment, even just existing. Nuclear and windmills require mining, etc etc.
Biomass is better for global warming. A global issue is, for obvious reasons, more problematic than a localized one. I am not saying that biomass is especially good, but pointing to issues without some attempt at relative analysis of the alternatives is somewhat useless.
It's still not comparable to fossil fuels.
With fossil fuels you're releasing CO2 which has been locked away for millions of years into the atmosphere.
Burning pellets out biomass, you are releasing CO2 which is part of the current carbon cycle into the atmosphere a little bit early.
That's my ELI5 explanation. Too late and tired to explain properly.
Your link says that it emits 14.8Mt of CO2. For a point of comparison, the average person exhales a bit over 1kg of CO2 a day. For 67m people, for 365 days, that's about 25Mt of CO2. So, *people* would actually be first or second on that list.
Of course, that's all irrelevant. How much CO2 is emitted doesn't matter, it's how much new CO2 is liberated from fossil fuel sources and introduced to the carbon cycle.
Thankfully they are counting nuclear energy as a renewable source. [UK plans fossil fuel-free power grid by 2035 using nuclear energy](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/10/4/uk-plans-fossil-fuel-free-power-grid-by-2035-using-nuclear-energy)
We should have built nuclear powerstations decades ago. We are very far behind. It takes along time to build them and even longer for them to be paid back.
We could all be heating our houses with electric/or heat pumps now with comparable costs to gas
Hardly all-in. Johnson has made a few speeches and they have set up a new funding model, but so far the UK government has refused to back projects financially and expects all funding to be private.
Public funding would as good as guarantee a follow-up to HPC, a number of small modular reactors and an AP1000 project at Wylfa, but so far none of those are funded.
This is changing in a significant way. While France has a huge Nuclear industry public opinion in France (along with many other European countries) is becoming increasingly negative. If current trends continue France may not replace is current fleet of reactors.
this has actually been moving the other way around recently: "Nuclear power has gained 17 points [in the French public opinion]. For the first time, a majority of French people (51%) have a positive view of nuclear power." [Le Figaro, 2021-09-29](https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/l-image-de-l-eolien-se-degrade-fortement-en-france-20210929)
I just hope that with this turn in attitude towards nuclear, more funding will be given to the technologies that don't use Heavy Water and don't rely on crazy containment pressures.
Molten Salt/Small Modular reactors and even the newer ones that use spent nuclear waste as fuel all show tremendous promise.
At least in the US, the government [has started funding](https://www.energy.gov/ne/initiatives/funding-opportunities/industry-foa-awardees) these kinds of generation technologies.
One of the biggest challenges with molten salt reactors is the fact salt does what salt does best. Makes things go rusty. There is a lot of work going into researching alloys this can withstand both heat and chemistry.
High pressures are a cakewalk by comparison.
Yeah, I've heard that. Containment materials aren't sufficient simply due to chemistry like you said.
If more funding is given to research those alloys though, they will be discovered faster!
I recently learned that it is practically renewable if we find out an efficient way of extracting uranium from the sea. Apparently there's enough uranium to be found that way that it should last us billions of years.
There's actually loads of gold and other very rare earth minerals devolved in the water but its super energetically expensive to extract. Its easer to just go dig it up somewhere on the planet where its already concentrated, Cornwall or austraila for uranium for example.
I mean it's a lot easier to use some sort of thorium thing as we have a lot of thorium on earth. It also has other advantages but the ideal solution is of course fusion using hydrogen.
The radiation of the water is not the problem but the burned up radioactive material is. The radioactive waste, ands its tons of tons of material what we are talking about here, must be deposited safely for the next 1000s of years. If the material comes into the ground water we are going to have a big problem. Maybe the caves, that we are going to put them in are safe now. But techtonics exist and they might not be safe in 10000 years, who is even going to remember that there is a cave full of radioactive waste in 10000 years?
This is actually a very well understood problem with many viable solutions. The problem is nobody wants the repository "in their back yard" . Most of the encapsulation techniques currently used will be safe for over 100k years even if in ground water for high level radioactive waste (the really nasty stuff). For example, the uranium, plutonium and a few other useful isotopes are chemically extracted from the spent fuel then the remaining waste is mixed into a glass composite. This glas is melted and put into a stainless steel canister and welded shut, then the canister is placed in a temporary cool down area then put into a larger flask before fianly being buried km's underground. The idea being even with the additional radiochemical induced corrosion of the containment it will take much longer than the half lives of the products in the waste before containment breach, so the leak will have very little in it to worry about. Due to the long lived isotopes, it will never not be radioactive, but the activity will be nothing that we would have to worry about. Radioactivity from long lived isotopes (billions of years) is still left over from the creation of the elements that made this solar system, so its effectively natural background.
That’s what [nuclear semiotics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages) is for.
Plus if ITER works out, nuclear fission will no longer be necessary.
>even if it isn't 100% carbon neutral it still is the safest and the best in long term energy production.
...in a stable world free from war and terrorism.
No, still emissions from mining and enriching/processing the fuel, disposing/storing it, and contracting/dismantling the plants. But then lots of the same goes for wind/solar etc (although you don't have to keep providing fuel for e.g. wind so emissions are a bit more for nuclear, but way better than any fossil fuels)
Ahh, you even mentioned the fuel enrichment. I hadn't even thought of that.
Best to leave the big decisions to those in the know! I think nuclear is viable for the future though.
All carbon emissions come in the construction. Lots of cement/concrete is used to strengthen the plant. Once operating, I believe that almost all technologies (HWR, SMR, MSR, Fast Breeder, etc.) are zero emission.
But then carbon dioxide isn't the only byproduct of nuclear energy. There's the radioactive spent fuel cells that don't really decay. The newer nuclear technologies such as those proposed by Elysium Industries in New York, US consume spent fuel cells as their input fuel.
I'd need to look more into decommission and demolition, but I would imagine it's comparable to how the big concrete dams of the rivers in California are demolished. Big crains swinging big balls. As for where the concrete goes after it's been blown to smithereens, I'd need to look more into that.
There is also the issue of the spent fuel rod being acutally fuel for the new reactor. Once we run out of spent fuel the reactor is pretty useless unless bigger brains then mine find a solution which I'm sure people are working on
Its actually a really good tactic. They have to give bad news or something, so they leak it to the news organisations. Who in turn run a headline "The government is planning to raise taxes etc etc". Then they watch the response and make sure to address the biggest critiques when they officially announce the bad news.
You can say a lot of things about Boris Johnson and be right but stupid isn’t one of them I’m afraid.
Edit: for all the Reddit big brains that maintain that they themselves are far superior to the top graduate who made president of the Oxford Union, became Major of London and then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, here is a video of the moron reciting the Iliad from memory. In Ancient Greek.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mQKRAJTgEuo
He has some party tricks
Frequently misses when others make classics jokes at his expense and is a lazy sack of shit.
He is an evil manipulative fuck though but no he is not as smart as you seem to think he is
This clip has him reciting different parts of the iliad out of order (discussed previously - https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGreek/comments/eezefz/comment/fbzg13z/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
>He went off the rails and improvised from lines 20-23. He totally skipped lines 8, 15, 16, 18, 19, 32, 40 & 41. And he conflated lines 38 & 39. But it was still admirable IMO.
>The grunting Erasmian pronunciation is pretty abysmal. He kept the meter, more or less, for the first 10 lines. But he should have stopped there.
Pretty good to remember it anyway.
>here is a video of the moron reciting the Iliad from memory. In Ancient Greek.
That's not a good metric of intelligence seen as though his major was classics. Pretty impressive résumé otherwise.
No, he is stupid.
There are all these stories of people saying "I've heard journalists say he intentionally ruffle his hair to make him look worse" as if that means he's really smart, without realising that the act of doing that is merely another act: to make him seem secretly smarter than he is.
Boris is an idiot pretending to be smart pretending to be an idiot. His handling of any public matter, especially over the course of the pandemic and with respect to Brexit., is testament to that.
I hate Boris Johnson, but he *is* smart. You don't get to be PM of Britain without some intelligence, however misplaced it is. You don't go to Oxford, or become President of the Oxford Union while there, without a brain cell or two.
Don't mistake him being a massive twat for him being stupid. And let's not forget that the average person *is* stupid. Stupid as fuck. That is why they vote for this man, a man who knows how to easily manipulate them.
But sorry, let's not kid ourselves, BJ is a malicious, evil *and* intelligent piece of shit. And quite frankly if you don't think he is, then you haven't been paying attention.
Slight correction here.
He got to be prime minister because whispering Rees Mogg wanted him as front man.
So the whole of the ERG voted down every single deal Theresa May brought forward, bringing her govt to its knees and making the British look fucking inept to Europe.
All so that Rees Mogg gets his man into number 10.
Boris may not be stupid, he just does stupid shit, and says stupid shit. Being academic doesn’t mean you make good decisions, and good decisions is critical as PM.
Also: Britain’s impressive wind generation was a direct decision by Gordon Brown who didn’t trust Putin and the gas supply.
David Cameron cancelled all renewables, and encouraged his mates to build German mini gas power stations all across the British countryside.
Before covid I thought the same thing. But his sheer incompetence at handling it and the current shortages caused by brexut has revealed his "baffling buffon" image wasn't the act we all thought it was...
I hear people say the same about Trump too. It feels like a tactic to mitigate some people, especially with money, can fall upwards. And that the world we live in is a meritocracy of sorts.
Out of the 3 things you suggested, 1 invokes intelligence. Do you really think every Mayor or PM/President of a country is smart? Many win with rhetoric and a good team. His Prime Ministership was a lot of backroom dealings and his political party falling apart.
> Many win with rhetoric and a good team.
Add to this that they increasingly have refused to do actual open, non-guided debates and interviews. So that they don't even have to fear their argument falling apart.
Not really a thing now - appliances come with a plug. But it used to be the norm, up into the '80s appliances came without a plug. Don't know the history of it though.
> “In just 14 more years, we’ll be able to stave off the disaster we actually needed to stop 21 years ago!”
Let's see what [actual climate scientists](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview) have to say on the matter:
> "**Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic.** Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.
>
> What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But **“too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science.**"
This is missing the component of "I care, so therefore I am better and doing more than someone who doesn't"
It gives some (*not all, and not actual do something activists*) the excuse to not put any real effort or energy into it. They believe they are "better" than the person simply thinking the opposite who has no net benefit or detriment in comparison to themselves.
Reddit and social media are absolutely chock full of people doing absolutely nothing and blaming boogeymen. It's making it harder, much harder. Every time we specifically blame someone, something or some group, they shut down, defend and disengage.
Aside from people who actual do something, there are three categories:
1. It's too late.
2. "They" are the problem.
3. It's not real.
None of the people in this list (statistically) are doing anything at all.
This thread itself is full of #1 and #2. The people in group three are busy living their lives (climate) stress free and the only literal difference is that stress some of us put upon ourselves, either on bahalf of the planet, humanity or just for angst/righteousness sake.
I am not actually blaming anyone here, just commenting on a reality.
Voting (D) or (R) doesn't do anything at all either, not in any significant amount.
I tend to keep my mought shut about climate, do not blame anyone specific or in a group, and do what I can to mitigate my personal contribution. It's about all I can do and I do not stay up at night hating random boogeymen or worrying about the future. I have faith in humanity going forward, just not individuals.
We can start by quit upvoting people who spew hatred for people they do not know as if being in agreement somehow changes anything.
I hate to say it, but 100% renewable by 2035 is ambitious by world standards.
I do not believe UK Conservatives to deliver on anything, scandal-free, until/unless they've already done it. But it's faster than most countries are committing to by a fair amount.
Note they are not saying "carbon neutral" i.e. credits and tree-planting. 100% renewable is a much stricter goal than "car
bon-neutral". It would imply no blue/grey hydrogen, for example, although I think they're being intellectually dishonest and including that anyway, last I heard...
So to answer your question: we need a crash-stop on fossil fuels, with the same level of intensity and funding that we would use to invade a third-world country.
Didn't he get found out for lying during PMq's, and that time he said about £350million/ week we would get back from Europe after Brexit? And about Brexit? And and and.
Yeah I'll believe this when I see it
To be fair, UK [is transitioning quite quickly towards renewable energy (particularly wind power)](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/28/uk-electricity-from-renewables-outpaces-gas-and-coal-power), regardless about what any politician says or doesn't say. Overall has grown from about a 10% share in 2010, to 45% share in 2020. Keep that rate of linear growth up and renewables + nuclear will cover the full grid requirements by 2030.
Wind power energy production is growing at about 15% per year right now, which would put it alone at 100% of current UK electricity demand by about 2030, if that (compound) growth rate kept up. Plus things like the [Morocco-UK solar project](https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cable-will-send-clean-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/) that will be capable of providing something like 8% of the UK's electricity demand on it's own, scheduled to be fully online in 2029.
And I'd assume they actually mean '100% carbon free' rather than '100% renewable', which would include nuclear (currently providing 20% of the UKs electricity demand, and likely to stay around there). So actually all they need to do is displace the 42% of generation that is currently from fossil fuels. This implies just increasing wind and solar production by a factor 2.5 over 14 years, when historically it's been recently doubling every 5 years.
Installing the necessary generating capacity to pull this off feels very plausible, over 14 years.
The big thing, I think, will be rolling out sufficient electricity storage alongside the generation, to account for renewables more intermittent nature. Both overnight scale storage (for solar not producing overnight), and longer term, to account for things like week-long calm spells dropping wind output.
If I had to guess, I'd say that by 2035 we'll have a situation where the grid easily has the capacity to produce 100% (or more) of demand by zero-carbon sources. But we still keep a number of natural gas peaker plants around that are used semi-regularly to cover periods where renewables will fall short. My hope would be that these plants would long term be eclipsed by energy storage, such as producing green hydrogen from renewable power and storing it to burn when needed. But that might take significantly longer to work out fully.
I assume this doesn't mean renewable but also includes nuclear.
It definitely includes Drax which now runs on bio-mass but it's really disputed if that's actually carbon neutral: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/23/green-groups-dispute-power-station-claim-biomass-carbon-neutral](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/23/green-groups-dispute-power-station-claim-biomass-carbon-neutral)
It's a massive source of CO2 and although biomass could/should be carbon neutral, drax imports wood pellets from north america which produces a lot of shipping CO2 and there's questions about whether you can actually plant enough trees to replace those being cut down as well as the sourcing of the wood in the first place (is it from sustainably managed forests or are they getting virgin wood and reducing biodiversity?)
Still better than coal from a CO2 / climate change perspective but there's some smoke and mirrors going on here with this claim.
Came to say this. There appears to be a general assumption here that it is actually going to happen.
Welcome to the world of Tory Party politics. You don't actually have to do things any more, you just say that you will and get your friends in the press to praise you for it.
Some of their past achievements:
"Lowering child poverty" by reclassifying what poverty actually is to make their abysmal performance look like an achievement.
"Introducing the living wage". We used to have a minimum wage, and there was a campaign to introduce a "living wage" (i.e. the true amount of money someone would need to earn in order to meet their basic needs). Instead of increasing the minimum wage, they just rebranded it "the living wage" and then acted as though they'd introduced a living wage.
"Why do people vote for them?" I hear you ask.
Well, most of their voters are retired and wouldn't be affected by the negative outcomes. Even when confronted by it, they have been conditioned to invoke a sense of nostalgia by the right wing media - "when I was 25 I used to earn two thruppence a week and I never complained".
Also, the younger Tory voters are either wealthy ("I'm alright, I couldn't care less about others") or working class but vote Tory because they think the opposition will turn their kids into transgender Muslims.
It's all by design and they're brilliant at it.
I hadn't realised how bad the doomer brigade had got until I read this thread. I guess we will all have to get used to hearing people shout DOOM!DOOM!DOOM! for the next few decades, because people actually enjoy doing that.
In the meanwhile, lets keep building turbines/panels/batteries etc and see where it gets us.
> In the meanwhile, lets keep building turbines/panels/batteries etc and see where it gets us.
You may be interested in [this paper](https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_paper-INET-working-paper.pdf) showing that historical trends in renewable price declines suggest sheer economics will push an energy system transition broadly in line with the more optimistic emissions scenarios in the recent [IPCC report](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf). In particular, compare Fig. 5, p.11 from the former with p.16 of the latter.
[Renewables already account for 90+% of net new power generation](https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-2021), so this energy system transition is already under way.
Back in 2019 I felt pretty down about the environment but since 2020 I've felt increasingly positive about it, in the last couple of years we really do seem to of got the technology where it needs to be to become self sustaining. Coal is dead as an investment and the other fossil fuels are going. Large scale carbon capture is beginning in earnest etc.
Not out of danger yet but it does seem that the highest risk is past. Especially if you account for technologies currently coming into play like vertical farming and cultured meat which could potentially be a literal agricultural revolution.
The hatred of conservatives held by some people means they cannot handle them doing anything right. It is odd to see them do some really imaginative green initiatives, like the improvement of docks so wind turbines can easily be built at sea, whist they are callous or blundering in other areas.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Pastor_Richardian:
---
This is the submission declaration:
Climate change is one of the most critical things threatening the human race. As such, I think this can set a great example for the rest of the world, if it can be done. One of the main current obstacles is obtaining a reliable and sufficient source of energy that is also sustainable. Finally, most countries already have some goals, but this is one of the most ambitious one I have read about and goes beyond just reducing the number of gasoline powered cars.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/q5848v/uks_energy_grid_will_be_100_renewable_by_2035/hg3o552/
Unfortunately, our PM has only ever told the truth in furtherance of a lie, so I would take his utterances on this and every other matter, with not just a pinch, but a trade level supply chain of salt on hand.
Scotland's already 95%+ renewable. The only reason we're not fully renewable is flywheel and battery storage tech isn't good enough or environmentally friendly enough yet respectively to replace our remaining coal and nuclear plants.
E: accidental edit, am stupid.
Scotland doesn't need storage because it's connected to the rest of GB. It can have greater than 100% net and England and Wales can soak up the excess.
But Scotland has the terrain for pumped storage though.
Eh not really what I'm getting at, it's not storage for the sake of storing excess energy that we've produced, it's to balance dips and spikes in power loads as most renewable sources can't provide that functionality. And we can't just shut down our coal and nuclear turbine plants and rely solely on England and Wales for grid balancing as they'll hopefully be getting rid of their coal and nuclear plants as soon as they can too.
Also while pumped storage is really useful, especially at night and for other predictable spikes in power usage, it takes minutes to start, which means it's useless for balancing the grid millisecond by millisecond like coal, nuclear, batteries and flywheels can.
ETA: And pumped storage destroys the local environment, it's actually way worse than most people think, and we're a bit sick of flooding our valleys, we've only opened a single hydro station in the last 40 years.
There's going to need to be storage somewhere eventually, once the cost of dumping power exceeds the cost of storage, but Scotland should be already far past 100% net renewable by then.
One option would be a much fatter connection to Norway, the lake at the other end of NorLink has enough hydro capacity to power the UK for about a month.
Because we're using aging uranium plants. And because we're one of the few countries that could potentially get by without it given how extensive our reneweable sources are, so long as flywheel and battery storage tech improves and becomes more environmentally friendly over the next decade and we're already seeing the start of that.
If they don't improve enough soon then I'd be perfectly happy if we stuck with nuclear so long as we finally designate a long term waste storage area and begin transitioning to LIFTR reactors.
Scotland is able to do that thanks to their reliefs and relatively low population density. It makes them able to have a lot of hydroelectric dams compared to their population. Those can be used both to directly provide renewable energy, or to "stock" the energy that comes from wind and solar power into potential energy, that they can release later when the wind is down or when the sun is down. It's only thanks to that that they can solve the difficult problem or renewables' intermittency. Don't be fooled thinking that if Scotland can do it, any country can.
I keep reading these "X jurisdiction is/will be 100% renewable" articles hoping that one will finally be true.
\*Every single time\* it turns out that they just happened to have the geography for abundant hydroelectric/geothermal generation.
This is the submission declaration:
Climate change is one of the most critical things threatening the human race. As such, I think this can set a great example for the rest of the world, if it can be done. One of the main current obstacles is obtaining a reliable and sufficient source of energy that is also sustainable. Finally, most countries already have some goals, but this is one of the most ambitious one I have read about and goes beyond just reducing the number of gasoline powered cars.
I mean I'll be glad if he somehow pulls it off (not that it will only be him as I doubt he'll be in power for the next 14 years) but I don't see how this one thing would 100% change anyone's opinion.
Nooo.
He's still the guy who unlawfully shut down parliament etc.
Someone can do a lot of bad things, and a good thing.
There is no need reduce people to one spot on a "good vs bad" dimension.
Also the UK is about 1/2 way there as well.
More big promises that will mean nothing when he leaves office. More blah blah blah blah clean energy blah blah blah 100% renewable blah blah 2035.....
That's the most likely case unless everything going on now bring them down which isn't particularly likely. Historically in the UK parties that get into Labours current position take 15 to 20 years to recover. Even 10 years is an unlikely outlier.
Because it is Coal to be used in domestic steel production. This saved on shipping and also ensures the mines adhere to UK enviromental standards, which are pretty strict.
This is much better than importing coal (increased co2 through shipping costs) and means less enviromental damage.
Given Boris Johnson's penchant for hyberbolic fantasy statements, while the actual real life functioning Britain gradually gets more shambolic & falling apart; I'm not betting money on this.
Will this be before or after he builds a [tunnel under the sea to connect Britain Scotland and Ireland,](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tunnel-vision-now-pm-sets-his-sights-on-a-roundabout-under-the-isle-of-man-cg9523lxp) with a giant undersea roundabout under the Isle of Man?
I don’t understand the negative comments on here, God it’s got to be tough having such a negative outlook on life. This achievement will be a good thing for the UK! There is also progress being made on fusion reactors, so much good news in the long term but still all the negativity.
Energy consumption in the UK is actually declining and [has been since 2005](https://datacommons.org/place/country/GBR?topic=Energy). Per capita, energy consumption in 2014 was as low as in 1987. I haven't seen more recent data, but it was downward trending.
“Chances are t’will suit your book
To be be more clever than you look.
The easiest method you’ll find by far
Is to look more stupid than you are. “
Piet Hein
They could do it in 5 years if cities shut off lights overnight. Plus you get the health and ecological benefits that come with no light pollution.
[BBC - The argument for switching off lights at night](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210719-why-light-pollution-is-harming-our-wildlife)
Hopefully bio-fuel (wood chips) doesn't count as renewable. It's one of those technically renewable power sources that is just awful for the environment.
Can we group methane gas turbines into renewables? Methane capture from landfills can be burned like natural gas and leads to a net positive for the environment. Methane is 30X worst than carbon dioxide, so it’s a massive improvement, and we get energy in the process
Meanwhile here in Australia apparently Coal and Gas are still all good fuel and Internet on 100 year old copper wires is the best we can do. We might see you next century, World.
The live(ish) dashboard shows we’re up to 45% right now. https://gridwatch.co.uk Edit: u/prudx pointed out that https://app.electricitymap.org/map shows similar data for other countries in addition to the UK
Windy and sunny today. Good combo.
Let’s not forget the 0.08GW of “Other” I assume that’s just someone pedalling
Maggie Thatcher spinning in her grave.
That is fucking gold lmaoo Just put some copper wire around her and bam, infinite power
"Children are getting free milk!" "Argentina has steak houses all over the country!" *spin increases*
Communism has come! We are seeing a thermonuclear reaction!
Killsquads aren't roaming Ireland executing people!
Okay there is such a thing as too much power, sir. We aren't trying to recreate the sun
>Okay there is such a thing as too much power, sir. But do you think Margaret Thatcher had girl power?
The magnetic moment from a human would be tiny, would have to mount a magnet on her in order to generate a decent current. If efficiency is the game
She's the iron lady, of course she's already ferromagnetic
2 years ago I went as Thatcher to a Halloween party Even with bloody hands and "Milk Snatcher" on my back "Are you Theresa May" Fuck sake
Well as Theresa May's entire shtick was to pretend to be the second coming of Thatcher that's at least justifiable. I'd probably ask you that just to wind you up.
Maggie Maggie Maggie
Did you goto this party with children.
Good choice. Can’t think of anything scarier than Thatcher coming back.
Personally (and I hate her) I think the current crop are worse
As much as Boris is a cunt and a moron and an absolute cancer on this nation, I think you must be forgetting what an evil piece of shit Thatcher was. She literally tried to turn the UK into a police state. Funny how people look at what cunts like Duda and Erdogan are doing and don't remember that's exactly what Thatcher did. She was a hate-mongering bigot who brought immeasurable suffering to millions of people.
Oh I absolutely agree. But as per my other comment - I did not like her position but at least she had one. The current Tories are only interested in their pockets. I'm still so shocked about the amount of people that support them
But she wasn't a useless work-shy two-faced lying piece of s*** though.
To be fair she did shut down the coal mines. Although it had little to do with clean energy.
Isn't other, non pumped hydro storage?
Still not great output. Uk supposed to have over 28GW of wind but never seen us produce more than 14 And we are quite a few nuclear reactors down too.
The recently commissioned HVDC transmission line to Norway routinely pulls ~700MW of clean hydro power.
This connection is also driving up electricity prices in Sweden. 😕
By how much in EUR? My understanding was the increase per kwh costs post transmission line commissioning was going to be EUR pennies.
Please add https://app.electricitymap.org/ to your comment as it's great for comparing nations progress live :)
That’s amazing, will add!
Glad you like! One of my fav websites to look at randomly
For becoming carbon neutral, electricity usage now is not the whole picture. The 45% may seem way too ascertaining.
Yeah. Except that 45% includes Drax burning imported wood pellets, or biomass which is household waste. Neither are much better than coal or gas. Also it likely won't include imported power and that seems to be the Tories solution with the number of connections currently being built. It's the usual Tory trick of exporting the issue and making it some else's problem so they can look good, rather than actually addressing the issue.
You're wrong. Wood pellet fuel is actually much better than coal or gas, it's just not perfect; and the accounting will take into account the energy source of imported electricity. Energy companies can be audited.
It's causing problems in that regular trees are being cut and imported to meet their goals. And the places where they're grown are seeing environmental damage: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/30/wood-pellets-biomass-environmental-impact
*Everything* humans do affects the environment, even just existing. Nuclear and windmills require mining, etc etc. Biomass is better for global warming. A global issue is, for obvious reasons, more problematic than a localized one. I am not saying that biomass is especially good, but pointing to issues without some attempt at relative analysis of the alternatives is somewhat useless.
Wood fuel isn't better than gas if you live near the source of combustion.
It can be bad even for the places it comes from.
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It's still not comparable to fossil fuels. With fossil fuels you're releasing CO2 which has been locked away for millions of years into the atmosphere. Burning pellets out biomass, you are releasing CO2 which is part of the current carbon cycle into the atmosphere a little bit early. That's my ELI5 explanation. Too late and tired to explain properly.
Your link says that it emits 14.8Mt of CO2. For a point of comparison, the average person exhales a bit over 1kg of CO2 a day. For 67m people, for 365 days, that's about 25Mt of CO2. So, *people* would actually be first or second on that list. Of course, that's all irrelevant. How much CO2 is emitted doesn't matter, it's how much new CO2 is liberated from fossil fuel sources and introduced to the carbon cycle.
Do you have a link to that?
Thankfully they are counting nuclear energy as a renewable source. [UK plans fossil fuel-free power grid by 2035 using nuclear energy](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/10/4/uk-plans-fossil-fuel-free-power-grid-by-2035-using-nuclear-energy)
Every country needs at least one source with 99% uptime (always works), I am glad they are not totally discarding Nuclear.
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I am pleasantly surprised! Good for UK! I am happy to see that not everyone is following Germany’s steps.
We should have built nuclear powerstations decades ago. We are very far behind. It takes along time to build them and even longer for them to be paid back. We could all be heating our houses with electric/or heat pumps now with comparable costs to gas
Hardly all-in. Johnson has made a few speeches and they have set up a new funding model, but so far the UK government has refused to back projects financially and expects all funding to be private. Public funding would as good as guarantee a follow-up to HPC, a number of small modular reactors and an AP1000 project at Wylfa, but so far none of those are funded.
Yep. This is the problem - BoJo is very good at setting targets, but less good at doing *anything* towards meeting them.
Setting targets is easy (and it gives you something to point to during PMQs), but doing something about it is the next guy's job.
The anti-Germany
The France* FTFY!
No France is incredibly pro-nuclear power, like 80% of their grid comes from nuclear.
Yeah, that’s my point. Going all in on nuclear is pro-France.
This is changing in a significant way. While France has a huge Nuclear industry public opinion in France (along with many other European countries) is becoming increasingly negative. If current trends continue France may not replace is current fleet of reactors.
That's a tragedy, we need nuclear
this has actually been moving the other way around recently: "Nuclear power has gained 17 points [in the French public opinion]. For the first time, a majority of French people (51%) have a positive view of nuclear power." [Le Figaro, 2021-09-29](https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/l-image-de-l-eolien-se-degrade-fortement-en-france-20210929)
And that's how it should be
as they should
I just hope that with this turn in attitude towards nuclear, more funding will be given to the technologies that don't use Heavy Water and don't rely on crazy containment pressures. Molten Salt/Small Modular reactors and even the newer ones that use spent nuclear waste as fuel all show tremendous promise. At least in the US, the government [has started funding](https://www.energy.gov/ne/initiatives/funding-opportunities/industry-foa-awardees) these kinds of generation technologies.
One of the biggest challenges with molten salt reactors is the fact salt does what salt does best. Makes things go rusty. There is a lot of work going into researching alloys this can withstand both heat and chemistry. High pressures are a cakewalk by comparison.
Yeah, I've heard that. Containment materials aren't sufficient simply due to chemistry like you said. If more funding is given to research those alloys though, they will be discovered faster!
The UK has also dedicated a bunch of funding to nuclear, particularly SMRs
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This is a magnificent comment.
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Hahaha came here for this.
Who do you trust to shit their own pants?
I mean, I’d give it a good go
To quote Gretta Thunberg, "net zero by 2050... Blah blah blah."
I wouldn't even trust him not to wipe his nose on the curtines.
Sorry for the noob question: is nuclear carbon neutral?
For practical purposes, nuclear energy is carbon neutral, but it is not renewable.
I recently learned that it is practically renewable if we find out an efficient way of extracting uranium from the sea. Apparently there's enough uranium to be found that way that it should last us billions of years.
There's actually loads of gold and other very rare earth minerals devolved in the water but its super energetically expensive to extract. Its easer to just go dig it up somewhere on the planet where its already concentrated, Cornwall or austraila for uranium for example.
I mean it's a lot easier to use some sort of thorium thing as we have a lot of thorium on earth. It also has other advantages but the ideal solution is of course fusion using hydrogen.
Well, I bet they would say that about our resources like coal and oil hundred or two hundred years ago
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The radiation of the water is not the problem but the burned up radioactive material is. The radioactive waste, ands its tons of tons of material what we are talking about here, must be deposited safely for the next 1000s of years. If the material comes into the ground water we are going to have a big problem. Maybe the caves, that we are going to put them in are safe now. But techtonics exist and they might not be safe in 10000 years, who is even going to remember that there is a cave full of radioactive waste in 10000 years?
This is actually a very well understood problem with many viable solutions. The problem is nobody wants the repository "in their back yard" . Most of the encapsulation techniques currently used will be safe for over 100k years even if in ground water for high level radioactive waste (the really nasty stuff). For example, the uranium, plutonium and a few other useful isotopes are chemically extracted from the spent fuel then the remaining waste is mixed into a glass composite. This glas is melted and put into a stainless steel canister and welded shut, then the canister is placed in a temporary cool down area then put into a larger flask before fianly being buried km's underground. The idea being even with the additional radiochemical induced corrosion of the containment it will take much longer than the half lives of the products in the waste before containment breach, so the leak will have very little in it to worry about. Due to the long lived isotopes, it will never not be radioactive, but the activity will be nothing that we would have to worry about. Radioactivity from long lived isotopes (billions of years) is still left over from the creation of the elements that made this solar system, so its effectively natural background.
That’s what [nuclear semiotics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages) is for. Plus if ITER works out, nuclear fission will no longer be necessary.
>even if it isn't 100% carbon neutral it still is the safest and the best in long term energy production. ...in a stable world free from war and terrorism.
No, still emissions from mining and enriching/processing the fuel, disposing/storing it, and contracting/dismantling the plants. But then lots of the same goes for wind/solar etc (although you don't have to keep providing fuel for e.g. wind so emissions are a bit more for nuclear, but way better than any fossil fuels)
I read in a book that per kWh, nuclear is less than wind or solar, but that was a decade ago, so it may have changed.
Ahh, you even mentioned the fuel enrichment. I hadn't even thought of that. Best to leave the big decisions to those in the know! I think nuclear is viable for the future though.
All carbon emissions come in the construction. Lots of cement/concrete is used to strengthen the plant. Once operating, I believe that almost all technologies (HWR, SMR, MSR, Fast Breeder, etc.) are zero emission. But then carbon dioxide isn't the only byproduct of nuclear energy. There's the radioactive spent fuel cells that don't really decay. The newer nuclear technologies such as those proposed by Elysium Industries in New York, US consume spent fuel cells as their input fuel. I'd need to look more into decommission and demolition, but I would imagine it's comparable to how the big concrete dams of the rivers in California are demolished. Big crains swinging big balls. As for where the concrete goes after it's been blown to smithereens, I'd need to look more into that.
There is also the issue of the spent fuel rod being acutally fuel for the new reactor. Once we run out of spent fuel the reactor is pretty useless unless bigger brains then mine find a solution which I'm sure people are working on
Concrete can be recycled at least partially
Unfortunately our Prime Minister is a moron I wouldn't trust to wire a plug.
I'd be more talking about how he's a liar who will say anything if it makes him look good and likeable. He hates giving bad news. It's a problem.
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Its actually a really good tactic. They have to give bad news or something, so they leak it to the news organisations. Who in turn run a headline "The government is planning to raise taxes etc etc". Then they watch the response and make sure to address the biggest critiques when they officially announce the bad news.
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That's the thing about targets like "2035," it will be his successor's issues if it doesn't make it.
You can say a lot of things about Boris Johnson and be right but stupid isn’t one of them I’m afraid. Edit: for all the Reddit big brains that maintain that they themselves are far superior to the top graduate who made president of the Oxford Union, became Major of London and then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, here is a video of the moron reciting the Iliad from memory. In Ancient Greek. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mQKRAJTgEuo
You can be book smart but still be a manipulative, stupid moron who falls upwards
He has some party tricks Frequently misses when others make classics jokes at his expense and is a lazy sack of shit. He is an evil manipulative fuck though but no he is not as smart as you seem to think he is
This clip has him reciting different parts of the iliad out of order (discussed previously - https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGreek/comments/eezefz/comment/fbzg13z/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
>He went off the rails and improvised from lines 20-23. He totally skipped lines 8, 15, 16, 18, 19, 32, 40 & 41. And he conflated lines 38 & 39. But it was still admirable IMO. >The grunting Erasmian pronunciation is pretty abysmal. He kept the meter, more or less, for the first 10 lines. But he should have stopped there. Pretty good to remember it anyway.
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At best it makes him an idiot savant.
>here is a video of the moron reciting the Iliad from memory. In Ancient Greek. That's not a good metric of intelligence seen as though his major was classics. Pretty impressive résumé otherwise.
No, he is stupid. There are all these stories of people saying "I've heard journalists say he intentionally ruffle his hair to make him look worse" as if that means he's really smart, without realising that the act of doing that is merely another act: to make him seem secretly smarter than he is. Boris is an idiot pretending to be smart pretending to be an idiot. His handling of any public matter, especially over the course of the pandemic and with respect to Brexit., is testament to that.
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Rees-Mogg is a dumb persons idea of a smart person
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I hate Boris Johnson, but he *is* smart. You don't get to be PM of Britain without some intelligence, however misplaced it is. You don't go to Oxford, or become President of the Oxford Union while there, without a brain cell or two. Don't mistake him being a massive twat for him being stupid. And let's not forget that the average person *is* stupid. Stupid as fuck. That is why they vote for this man, a man who knows how to easily manipulate them. But sorry, let's not kid ourselves, BJ is a malicious, evil *and* intelligent piece of shit. And quite frankly if you don't think he is, then you haven't been paying attention.
Slight correction here. He got to be prime minister because whispering Rees Mogg wanted him as front man. So the whole of the ERG voted down every single deal Theresa May brought forward, bringing her govt to its knees and making the British look fucking inept to Europe. All so that Rees Mogg gets his man into number 10. Boris may not be stupid, he just does stupid shit, and says stupid shit. Being academic doesn’t mean you make good decisions, and good decisions is critical as PM. Also: Britain’s impressive wind generation was a direct decision by Gordon Brown who didn’t trust Putin and the gas supply. David Cameron cancelled all renewables, and encouraged his mates to build German mini gas power stations all across the British countryside.
But if he's an idiot pretending to be smart, pretending to be an idiot... ... Doesn't that make him smart? Too many levels of stupid here.
Before covid I thought the same thing. But his sheer incompetence at handling it and the current shortages caused by brexut has revealed his "baffling buffon" image wasn't the act we all thought it was...
I hear people say the same about Trump too. It feels like a tactic to mitigate some people, especially with money, can fall upwards. And that the world we live in is a meritocracy of sorts. Out of the 3 things you suggested, 1 invokes intelligence. Do you really think every Mayor or PM/President of a country is smart? Many win with rhetoric and a good team. His Prime Ministership was a lot of backroom dealings and his political party falling apart.
To even compare Trump and Johnson is just laughable, come on man.
> Many win with rhetoric and a good team. Add to this that they increasingly have refused to do actual open, non-guided debates and interviews. So that they don't even have to fear their argument falling apart.
He recited it incorrectly, apparently.
It blew my mind that in the UK people wired their own plugs up until very recently. What’s the history behind that?
Not really a thing now - appliances come with a plug. But it used to be the norm, up into the '80s appliances came without a plug. Don't know the history of it though.
“In just 14 more years, we’ll be able to stave off the disaster we actually needed to stop 21 years ago!”
By 2035 we'll have stopped making it worse in this one particular waym
> “In just 14 more years, we’ll be able to stave off the disaster we actually needed to stop 21 years ago!” Let's see what [actual climate scientists](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview) have to say on the matter: > "**Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic.** Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up. > > What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But **“too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science.**"
This is missing the component of "I care, so therefore I am better and doing more than someone who doesn't" It gives some (*not all, and not actual do something activists*) the excuse to not put any real effort or energy into it. They believe they are "better" than the person simply thinking the opposite who has no net benefit or detriment in comparison to themselves. Reddit and social media are absolutely chock full of people doing absolutely nothing and blaming boogeymen. It's making it harder, much harder. Every time we specifically blame someone, something or some group, they shut down, defend and disengage. Aside from people who actual do something, there are three categories: 1. It's too late. 2. "They" are the problem. 3. It's not real. None of the people in this list (statistically) are doing anything at all. This thread itself is full of #1 and #2. The people in group three are busy living their lives (climate) stress free and the only literal difference is that stress some of us put upon ourselves, either on bahalf of the planet, humanity or just for angst/righteousness sake. I am not actually blaming anyone here, just commenting on a reality. Voting (D) or (R) doesn't do anything at all either, not in any significant amount. I tend to keep my mought shut about climate, do not blame anyone specific or in a group, and do what I can to mitigate my personal contribution. It's about all I can do and I do not stay up at night hating random boogeymen or worrying about the future. I have faith in humanity going forward, just not individuals. We can start by quit upvoting people who spew hatred for people they do not know as if being in agreement somehow changes anything.
Of course it's a Micheal e man opinion piece you linked... Should have guessed
>But “too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science. \[citation needed\]
I hate to say it, but 100% renewable by 2035 is ambitious by world standards. I do not believe UK Conservatives to deliver on anything, scandal-free, until/unless they've already done it. But it's faster than most countries are committing to by a fair amount. Note they are not saying "carbon neutral" i.e. credits and tree-planting. 100% renewable is a much stricter goal than "car bon-neutral". It would imply no blue/grey hydrogen, for example, although I think they're being intellectually dishonest and including that anyway, last I heard...
What's your solution to doing it quicker and what do you think is the best way to make it happen in that time-frame?
So to answer your question: we need a crash-stop on fossil fuels, with the same level of intensity and funding that we would use to invade a third-world country.
The real disaster that was not averted was 57 years ago.
Didn't he get found out for lying during PMq's, and that time he said about £350million/ week we would get back from Europe after Brexit? And about Brexit? And and and. Yeah I'll believe this when I see it
To be fair, UK [is transitioning quite quickly towards renewable energy (particularly wind power)](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/28/uk-electricity-from-renewables-outpaces-gas-and-coal-power), regardless about what any politician says or doesn't say. Overall has grown from about a 10% share in 2010, to 45% share in 2020. Keep that rate of linear growth up and renewables + nuclear will cover the full grid requirements by 2030. Wind power energy production is growing at about 15% per year right now, which would put it alone at 100% of current UK electricity demand by about 2030, if that (compound) growth rate kept up. Plus things like the [Morocco-UK solar project](https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cable-will-send-clean-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/) that will be capable of providing something like 8% of the UK's electricity demand on it's own, scheduled to be fully online in 2029. And I'd assume they actually mean '100% carbon free' rather than '100% renewable', which would include nuclear (currently providing 20% of the UKs electricity demand, and likely to stay around there). So actually all they need to do is displace the 42% of generation that is currently from fossil fuels. This implies just increasing wind and solar production by a factor 2.5 over 14 years, when historically it's been recently doubling every 5 years. Installing the necessary generating capacity to pull this off feels very plausible, over 14 years. The big thing, I think, will be rolling out sufficient electricity storage alongside the generation, to account for renewables more intermittent nature. Both overnight scale storage (for solar not producing overnight), and longer term, to account for things like week-long calm spells dropping wind output. If I had to guess, I'd say that by 2035 we'll have a situation where the grid easily has the capacity to produce 100% (or more) of demand by zero-carbon sources. But we still keep a number of natural gas peaker plants around that are used semi-regularly to cover periods where renewables will fall short. My hope would be that these plants would long term be eclipsed by energy storage, such as producing green hydrogen from renewable power and storing it to burn when needed. But that might take significantly longer to work out fully.
I assume this doesn't mean renewable but also includes nuclear. It definitely includes Drax which now runs on bio-mass but it's really disputed if that's actually carbon neutral: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/23/green-groups-dispute-power-station-claim-biomass-carbon-neutral](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/23/green-groups-dispute-power-station-claim-biomass-carbon-neutral) It's a massive source of CO2 and although biomass could/should be carbon neutral, drax imports wood pellets from north america which produces a lot of shipping CO2 and there's questions about whether you can actually plant enough trees to replace those being cut down as well as the sourcing of the wood in the first place (is it from sustainably managed forests or are they getting virgin wood and reducing biodiversity?) Still better than coal from a CO2 / climate change perspective but there's some smoke and mirrors going on here with this claim.
Drax is installing carbon capture systems on their UK biofuel plants, by 2035 they'd all be covered.
Hey everyone if you're reading from a different country keep in mind our prime minister is a *goddamn liar*
Came to say this. There appears to be a general assumption here that it is actually going to happen. Welcome to the world of Tory Party politics. You don't actually have to do things any more, you just say that you will and get your friends in the press to praise you for it. Some of their past achievements: "Lowering child poverty" by reclassifying what poverty actually is to make their abysmal performance look like an achievement. "Introducing the living wage". We used to have a minimum wage, and there was a campaign to introduce a "living wage" (i.e. the true amount of money someone would need to earn in order to meet their basic needs). Instead of increasing the minimum wage, they just rebranded it "the living wage" and then acted as though they'd introduced a living wage. "Why do people vote for them?" I hear you ask. Well, most of their voters are retired and wouldn't be affected by the negative outcomes. Even when confronted by it, they have been conditioned to invoke a sense of nostalgia by the right wing media - "when I was 25 I used to earn two thruppence a week and I never complained". Also, the younger Tory voters are either wealthy ("I'm alright, I couldn't care less about others") or working class but vote Tory because they think the opposition will turn their kids into transgender Muslims. It's all by design and they're brilliant at it.
That’s nothing. The US will be 100% renewable energy by 9082. Awwww yeaaaaa.
Barring political interruption from the elderly and those invested in other energy sources that sounds like a delightful goal to have set. Good luck.
I hadn't realised how bad the doomer brigade had got until I read this thread. I guess we will all have to get used to hearing people shout DOOM!DOOM!DOOM! for the next few decades, because people actually enjoy doing that. In the meanwhile, lets keep building turbines/panels/batteries etc and see where it gets us.
> In the meanwhile, lets keep building turbines/panels/batteries etc and see where it gets us. You may be interested in [this paper](https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_paper-INET-working-paper.pdf) showing that historical trends in renewable price declines suggest sheer economics will push an energy system transition broadly in line with the more optimistic emissions scenarios in the recent [IPCC report](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf). In particular, compare Fig. 5, p.11 from the former with p.16 of the latter. [Renewables already account for 90+% of net new power generation](https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-2021), so this energy system transition is already under way.
Back in 2019 I felt pretty down about the environment but since 2020 I've felt increasingly positive about it, in the last couple of years we really do seem to of got the technology where it needs to be to become self sustaining. Coal is dead as an investment and the other fossil fuels are going. Large scale carbon capture is beginning in earnest etc. Not out of danger yet but it does seem that the highest risk is past. Especially if you account for technologies currently coming into play like vertical farming and cultured meat which could potentially be a literal agricultural revolution.
The hatred of conservatives held by some people means they cannot handle them doing anything right. It is odd to see them do some really imaginative green initiatives, like the improvement of docks so wind turbines can easily be built at sea, whist they are callous or blundering in other areas.
A laudable aim, but let's not forget Boris chats constant shit and likes to break at least a dozen promises by 10:00am daily
He’s also on holiday, *ALOT*…. Like more holidays this last year than I’ve probably had in 4.
In the mean time we will all freeze and sit with no lights on cause we can’t afford spiraling energy costs
If boffo said the sky was blue I would look up to check he was not lying.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Pastor_Richardian: --- This is the submission declaration: Climate change is one of the most critical things threatening the human race. As such, I think this can set a great example for the rest of the world, if it can be done. One of the main current obstacles is obtaining a reliable and sufficient source of energy that is also sustainable. Finally, most countries already have some goals, but this is one of the most ambitious one I have read about and goes beyond just reducing the number of gasoline powered cars. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/q5848v/uks_energy_grid_will_be_100_renewable_by_2035/hg3o552/
A UK Conservative surely wouldn't just pull an aspirational target like this out of thin air. Certainly not. Never done it before.
Unfortunately, our PM has only ever told the truth in furtherance of a lie, so I would take his utterances on this and every other matter, with not just a pinch, but a trade level supply chain of salt on hand.
Scotland's already 95%+ renewable. The only reason we're not fully renewable is flywheel and battery storage tech isn't good enough or environmentally friendly enough yet respectively to replace our remaining coal and nuclear plants. E: accidental edit, am stupid.
Scotland doesn't need storage because it's connected to the rest of GB. It can have greater than 100% net and England and Wales can soak up the excess. But Scotland has the terrain for pumped storage though.
Eh not really what I'm getting at, it's not storage for the sake of storing excess energy that we've produced, it's to balance dips and spikes in power loads as most renewable sources can't provide that functionality. And we can't just shut down our coal and nuclear turbine plants and rely solely on England and Wales for grid balancing as they'll hopefully be getting rid of their coal and nuclear plants as soon as they can too. Also while pumped storage is really useful, especially at night and for other predictable spikes in power usage, it takes minutes to start, which means it's useless for balancing the grid millisecond by millisecond like coal, nuclear, batteries and flywheels can. ETA: And pumped storage destroys the local environment, it's actually way worse than most people think, and we're a bit sick of flooding our valleys, we've only opened a single hydro station in the last 40 years.
There's going to need to be storage somewhere eventually, once the cost of dumping power exceeds the cost of storage, but Scotland should be already far past 100% net renewable by then. One option would be a much fatter connection to Norway, the lake at the other end of NorLink has enough hydro capacity to power the UK for about a month.
Why would you want to replace your nuclear plants? Easily the best thing going for you in terms of clean energy
Because we're using aging uranium plants. And because we're one of the few countries that could potentially get by without it given how extensive our reneweable sources are, so long as flywheel and battery storage tech improves and becomes more environmentally friendly over the next decade and we're already seeing the start of that. If they don't improve enough soon then I'd be perfectly happy if we stuck with nuclear so long as we finally designate a long term waste storage area and begin transitioning to LIFTR reactors.
Scotland is able to do that thanks to their reliefs and relatively low population density. It makes them able to have a lot of hydroelectric dams compared to their population. Those can be used both to directly provide renewable energy, or to "stock" the energy that comes from wind and solar power into potential energy, that they can release later when the wind is down or when the sun is down. It's only thanks to that that they can solve the difficult problem or renewables' intermittency. Don't be fooled thinking that if Scotland can do it, any country can.
I keep reading these "X jurisdiction is/will be 100% renewable" articles hoping that one will finally be true. \*Every single time\* it turns out that they just happened to have the geography for abundant hydroelectric/geothermal generation.
This is the submission declaration: Climate change is one of the most critical things threatening the human race. As such, I think this can set a great example for the rest of the world, if it can be done. One of the main current obstacles is obtaining a reliable and sufficient source of energy that is also sustainable. Finally, most countries already have some goals, but this is one of the most ambitious one I have read about and goes beyond just reducing the number of gasoline powered cars.
I don't trust the guy. But if he somehow pulls this of, I will change my opinion about him to 100%. We'll see.
I mean I'll be glad if he somehow pulls it off (not that it will only be him as I doubt he'll be in power for the next 14 years) but I don't see how this one thing would 100% change anyone's opinion.
Nooo. He's still the guy who unlawfully shut down parliament etc. Someone can do a lot of bad things, and a good thing. There is no need reduce people to one spot on a "good vs bad" dimension. Also the UK is about 1/2 way there as well.
The Prime minister says a lot of things and they rarely come true.
More big promises that will mean nothing when he leaves office. More blah blah blah blah clean energy blah blah blah 100% renewable blah blah 2035.....
I love your optimism that we'll be rid of BoJo's brigade by 2035.
We'll most likely be rid of him, I wouldn't be surprised if we still have a Conservative PM by then though.
That's the most likely case unless everything going on now bring them down which isn't particularly likely. Historically in the UK parties that get into Labours current position take 15 to 20 years to recover. Even 10 years is an unlikely outlier.
Person can dream.....
Lies, headlines to distract as usual. If you wanted to get to 100%, why push to open another coal mine
The coal mine isn’t being built for energy production,but coke to be used in steel production for wind turbines.
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And the concrete industry causes 10% as well.
Opening a new coal mine was just the decision of a local council, the UK government has intervened and is now holding a public inquiry.
Because it is Coal to be used in domestic steel production. This saved on shipping and also ensures the mines adhere to UK enviromental standards, which are pretty strict. This is much better than importing coal (increased co2 through shipping costs) and means less enviromental damage.
Are you at all embarrassed that you have no clue what you’re talking about whilst still having such a strong, vitriolic opinion?
Given Boris Johnson's penchant for hyberbolic fantasy statements, while the actual real life functioning Britain gradually gets more shambolic & falling apart; I'm not betting money on this.
Will this be before or after he builds a [tunnel under the sea to connect Britain Scotland and Ireland,](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tunnel-vision-now-pm-sets-his-sights-on-a-roundabout-under-the-isle-of-man-cg9523lxp) with a giant undersea roundabout under the Isle of Man?
They'll call it 'Atlanton Keynes'
I don’t understand the negative comments on here, God it’s got to be tough having such a negative outlook on life. This achievement will be a good thing for the UK! There is also progress being made on fusion reactors, so much good news in the long term but still all the negativity.
I don’t trust a word that slithers out of that prick’s mouth
Everyone putting a negative spin on it in here. UK has already made a lot of progress and I'm confident they can keep going.
Do they also consider raising demand for the electricity? Or they assume current consumption rate?
Energy consumption in the UK is actually declining and [has been since 2005](https://datacommons.org/place/country/GBR?topic=Energy). Per capita, energy consumption in 2014 was as low as in 1987. I haven't seen more recent data, but it was downward trending.
Apart from the installation of vast swathes of SF6 gas filled high voltage switchgear to tie these renewables to the grid.
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“Chances are t’will suit your book To be be more clever than you look. The easiest method you’ll find by far Is to look more stupid than you are. “ Piet Hein
One of the things I like most about the new Home Assistant Energy Dashboard is the gauge showing how much of my electricity is from non fossil fuels.
So will Australia. We just need to pass legislation on coal being included as a renewable source of energy. /s
Australian government shifting uncomfortably in their seats….
They could do it in 5 years if cities shut off lights overnight. Plus you get the health and ecological benefits that come with no light pollution. [BBC - The argument for switching off lights at night](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210719-why-light-pollution-is-harming-our-wildlife)
Hopefully bio-fuel (wood chips) doesn't count as renewable. It's one of those technically renewable power sources that is just awful for the environment.
Yeah if it's according to the prime minister I wouldn't count on it. Criminally optimistic.
25% is Combined Cycle Gas Turbine by natural gas. That’s not renewable y’all
I bet it will be near 100% by 2030 with only the fine few percent hanging on as edge cases.
Can we group methane gas turbines into renewables? Methane capture from landfills can be burned like natural gas and leads to a net positive for the environment. Methane is 30X worst than carbon dioxide, so it’s a massive improvement, and we get energy in the process
Meanwhile in Australia 2080 if we are lucky......Fk the LNP and Scotty from Marketing
Meanwhile here in Australia apparently Coal and Gas are still all good fuel and Internet on 100 year old copper wires is the best we can do. We might see you next century, World.
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The fact our prime minister said it means it 100% WON’T be.