No new coal (it's not rocket science, Gordon)

Posted by bex — 17 December 2007 at 4:02pm - Comments

No new coal

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that building a load of new coal power plants probably isn't the brightest idea for the future of our planet, but it's nice when a rocket scientist comes out and says it.

The director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr. James Hansen, has joined the debate on the UK's the new coal rush, and is writing to Gordon Brown to urge him to block plans to build up to eight new coal-fired power stations.

The story made the front page of today's Independent:


[Dr Hansen] said that coal presents the biggest challenge in the fight against climate change because governments around the world appear to be dead set on using it as a cheap and easy source of energy without thinking about the long-term consequences...

Gordon Brown, who supported the Bali agreement last week, needs to understand that his entire strategy on climate change will unravel if he ignores coal, Dr Hansen said. "If he doesn't understand this, then he doesn't yet get it," he said.

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Hansen says that the energy departments of governments take it as a "God-given fact" that they can sanction the mining of all fossil fuels from the ground before moving on to other sources of energy.

If that is done for existing coal deposits, we would end up creating a different planet to the one that has nurtured the development of human civilisation over the past 10,000 years with a relatively stable climate, he added...

"It makes sense not to build new coal-fired power plants and it also makes sense to bulldoze those that we have already within the next few decades. That's when the science will tell us that we are close to the range of dangerous climate change," he said.


The decision on whether to approve plans to build a new coal plant at Kingsnorth in Kent will soon be landing on Brown's desk. Join Dr Hansen and urge Brown to say no to new coal.

Article tagged as: coal, fossil fuels, gordon brown, james hansen, kingsnorth, NASA
Comments Commenting is now closed

Obviously we agree on coal, so I'll stick to the nuclear issue and the energy solution here.

On nuclear, yes, one of our arguments is that it won't stop climate change. This is down to the pragmatic realities of nuclear power - cost, siting, construction time, waste management and nuclear's lack of contribution towards meeting our heating needs.

Nuclear currently meets 3.6 per cent of our energy needs - and the new power stations the government wants to build won't increase this share (they'll just replace the present reactors that are getting too old to operate safely).

So, to maintain nuclear's current contribution to our energy needs - 3.6 per cent - we need to spend between £20 and 40 billion (ignoring the billions that will be spent on operation, waste management and decommissioning). Even then, the reactors won't come online til the 2020s - and the UN says we have to peak and then drastically start reducing emissions in the next 10 years. More here.

So with no nuclear and no new coal, how can we meet our energy needs? Our solution is decentralised energy which is, basically, a combination of three things: efficiency, renewables and combined heat and power (CHP).

Efficiency because it's the quickest and cheapest way to drastically cut emissions: the government's own figures suggest we can cut carbon emissions by 30 per cent across all sectors through efficiency, and research from the US found that every dollar spent on nuclear would deliver 10 times the cut in carbon if it was spent on efficiency.

Renewables for obvious reasons: they rely on on limitless, indigenous sources of energy, they're scalable in size so can be built far more quickly than large power plants, and between them, wind, wave and tidal could deliver more than twice as much electricity than the proposed new fleet of nuclear reactors in the same timeframe.

Finally, there's CHP. Our power stations throw away 2/3 of the energy they generate as waste heat (enough to keep every building in the UK warm, and to provide the hot water too). There's huge potential for capturing this heat by siting power stations near towns and cities or on industrial sites. CHP plants only take a few years to build and just a relatively small number of the largest scale units can provide the same electricity as the proposed new nuclear power plants.

An overview (and film) about this solution at www.greenpeace.org.uk/solution and there's in-depth report on decentralising the UK here.

Hope that helps,

Bex
gpuk

By bex - 3 January 2008 at 2:46pm

Obviously we agree on coal, so I'll stick to the nuclear issue and the energy solution here. On nuclear, yes, one of our arguments is that it won't stop climate change. This is down to the pragmatic realities of nuclear power - cost, siting, construction time, waste management and nuclear's lack of contribution towards meeting our heating needs. Nuclear currently meets 3.6 per cent of our energy needs - and the new power stations the government wants to build won't increase this share (they'll just replace the present reactors that are getting too old to operate safely). So, to maintain nuclear's current contribution to our energy needs - 3.6 per cent - we need to spend between £20 and 40 billion (ignoring the billions that will be spent on operation, waste management and decommissioning). Even then, the reactors won't come online til the 2020s - and the UN says we have to peak and then drastically start reducing emissions in the next 10 years. More here. So with no nuclear and no new coal, how can we meet our energy needs? Our solution is decentralised energy which is, basically, a combination of three things: efficiency, renewables and combined heat and power (CHP). Efficiency because it's the quickest and cheapest way to drastically cut emissions: the government's own figures suggest we can cut carbon emissions by 30 per cent across all sectors through efficiency, and research from the US found that every dollar spent on nuclear would deliver 10 times the cut in carbon if it was spent on efficiency. Renewables for obvious reasons: they rely on on limitless, indigenous sources of energy, they're scalable in size so can be built far more quickly than large power plants, and between them, wind, wave and tidal could deliver more than twice as much electricity than the proposed new fleet of nuclear reactors in the same timeframe. Finally, there's CHP. Our power stations throw away 2/3 of the energy they generate as waste heat (enough to keep every building in the UK warm, and to provide the hot water too). There's huge potential for capturing this heat by siting power stations near towns and cities or on industrial sites. CHP plants only take a few years to build and just a relatively small number of the largest scale units can provide the same electricity as the proposed new nuclear power plants. An overview (and film) about this solution at www.greenpeace.org.uk/solution and there's in-depth report on decentralising the UK here. Hope that helps, Bex gpuk

By bex - 3 January 2008 at 2:46pm

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