Britain’s National Grid has announced it is firing up two coal-fired reserve power plants as a winter snap and lack of wind leave the country facing blackouts amid a general energy crisis.
“We’ve issued a notification to warm two winter contingency coal units,” the Grid said in a statement posted to social media, expressing hope that the measure “should give the public confidence in Monday’s energy supply.”
“This notification is not confirmation that these units will be used on Monday, but that they will be available to the ESO [Electricity System Operator] if required,” they added. [emphasis, links added]
Much of Britain’s fossil fuel-powered domestic generating capability and especially its coal-powered domestic generating capability has been significantly eroded in recent years.
The nominally Conservative government has been pursuing a Net Zero green agenda that emphasizes so-called renewables such as wind and importing energy from Continental Europe — which does not count towards the national carbon emissions targets — via subsea interconnectors, but with the wind not blowing reliably and Continental nations enduring their own energy issues, Britain is in a precarious position.
Countries such as Germany have not destroyed as many already-mothballed coal plants as Britain, and so may prove better off if the energy crisis worsens, despite heavy dependence on Russian gas, as they have already been able to power up reserve coal stations in large numbers and have not allowed their gas storage capacity to wither away, either.
“BBC Radio 4 and the Grid are to talk about using more old coal power stations as it is cold with little wind. Why were they not interested in this before when some of us warned them this could happen?” asked Sir John Redwood, a veteran Conservative MP who served in the governments of Sir John Major and the late Margaret Thatcher.
“We should not be worrying about keeping the lights on, [not] relying on imports,” he added, cognizant of the fact that the country has few reserve coal plants to call on if the ones the Grid has warmed up prove inadequate to the task before them.
Despite all this, the Rishi Sunak administration’s decision to finally approve Britain’s first new coal mine in decades — one which will be geared towards producing high-quality coke used for steelmaking — is under ferocious attack by green agenda fanatics within his own party and, ironically, Labour, which built much of its now-tarnished reputation among the working class on fighting against pit closures in the 20th century but is now vowing to see to it that this new one is killed off.
Other enemies of this modest step towards energy independence include failed U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, who now serves as Joe Biden’s climate envoy, who is demanding “a better download on exactly what the emissions implications are going to be” with respect to the British mine.
Meanwhile, Communist China has commissioned 226 coal-fired power plants within the last five years alone.
Read more at Breitbart
I’ll take green fanatics seriously when they actually learn something about the science of the environment they purport to love. A few facts they seem to have no clue about… First, life on earth is carbon-based. A planet without the source of that carbon, CO2, is a dead planet. Because life is entirely composed of little carbon sacks of water called cells. Because of this simple basic composition, oxygen (from H2O) is the most abundant element in living beings (65%). And carbon (from CO2) is the 2nd most abundant (18.5%). Life was born in a fertile environment with more than twenty times the amount of life’s most rare and precious ingredient CO2. More of it always makes life greener, stronger, more drought tolerant, and abundant. That’s why greenhouse growers add up to 1600ppm CO2 to their operations. More CO2 makes life healthier and farming more productive. And contrary to the inflationary energy solar and wind, which don’t work when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, and which require 100% backup from reliable sources! Solar and wind have zero to do with green at all. Putting this modern failure on the grid drives up the price of energy to deadly highs. On the grid, they are a monumental step backwards.
I have noticed a pattern. When blackouts seem imminent, most jurisdictions will fall back on fossil fuel power. Some climateers claim the cause is not enough renewable energy capacity. However, two wind turbines on a still winter night generate no more power than one. The same is true of solar power. The basic problem is wind and solar power can not run a modern industrial nation. If those in charge followed what the climate change advocates wanted, there would be blackouts. Perhaps that would be better because the backlash would weaken the climate change insanity.