BBC Forget About Oil And Gas
By Paul Homewood
The BBC is gushing about the last three days without any coal power:
Britain has not generated electricity from coal for more than three days – the longest streak since the 1880s.
The new record comes just days after the last record of 55 hours was set, National Grid said.
The coal-free period began on Saturday at 1000 BST and has continued into Tuesday afternoon.
Power generated from wind and gas dominated the mix of energy for users in England, Scotland and Wales.
Just last week the UK grid recorded its first two-day period without using any power from the fossil fuel, which the government has pledged to phase out by 2025.
Coal accounted for less than 7% of the power mix last year, according to official figures.
In April, 2017 Britain went its first full day without coal since the 19th century.
However, experts warned that power generated by coal was largely being replaced by gas, another fossil fuel, rather than renewable sources.
Andrew Crossland, of the Durham Energy Institute, said gas generated 40% of the UK’s electricity and fuelled the vast majority of domestic heating: "As a country we consume nearly eight times more gas than coal."
The daily consumption of gas was outstripped by wind on just two days last year, while all sources of renewable energy – including wind, solar, biomass and hydropower – beat fossil fuels for just 23 days of 2017.
A reliance on gas made the UK vulnerable to the whims of international markets and was "nowhere near clean enough" to meet the UK’s legal targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Mr Crossland said.
The 2008 Climate Change Act requires greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 80% compared with 1990 levels by 2050.
Hannah Martin, from Greenpeace UK, called on the government to provide more support for onshore wind and solar power – the "cleanest and cheapest energy sources".
"Offshore wind has proven to be popular and able to provide affordable clean energy, as well as skilled jobs and fair bills," she said.
"As we have more and more days without coal, we need to make sure it is replaced with the renewable technologies of the future."
Mr Crossland also called for more investment in renewable technologies, such as solar panels and batteries, to store power for homes and businesses, along with better energy efficiency to reduce power use.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43879564
As Anthony Crossland points out, electricity is only one part of energy usage, and natural gas and oil still dominate:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-march-2018
The contribution from wind/solar/hydro has only increased from 1.5% to 3.0% of primary energy consumption since 2013.
Meanwhile, can anybody explain why the BBC always seem to go to great lengths to give Greenpeace a say in these sort of articles?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
1.5% and at what cost?
I can explain why the unspeakable BBC gives such prominence to Greenpeace opinion. It’s because the BBC is a biased group that supports the AGW scam and suppresses anything that doesn’t suit it’s agenda.
AGW scam? I prefer the proper title Fraud on a global scale!
As Jo Nova neatly epressed it a while back.
BBC
Where science reporting
means asking
GREENPEACE
what they reckon…
“BBC Forget about Oil and Gas.”
Actually, the BBC did not forget about gas. They want us to scrap gas:
“A reliance on gas made the UK vulnerable to the whims of international markets.”
If they are arguing for autarky, they should be supporting fracking. Of course the BBC, as a public broadcaster, should not have “a position” on anything.
“…BBC forget…”
to publicise this up-to-date chart:
Note that the BBC cunningly used the term “the fossil fuel” (meaning coal), and no just “fossil fuel”, thereby hiding the fact that they are ignoring oil and gas.
A casual glance at the article may miss that.
It would be hard to miss for the type people that frequent this board but probably more easily so for many in the general public that just skim the article.
“Meanwhile, can anybody explain why the BBC always seem to go to great lengths to give Greenpeace a say in these sort of articles?”
I’ve said it before: The BBC (driven by Cardinal Harrabin) has Greenpeace on speed-dial. That way anybody paying attention to The Biased Broadcasting Corporation gets fake information (aka propaganda).
Absolutely, and not just the BBC, the Government lets Greenpeace dictate its energy policy. Perry has Greenpeace on speed dial as well.
Good article in notrickszone blog about Germany windmill problems as subsidies start to run out. Wonder if our Government is taking any notice. I doubt it.
So what happens when Russia uses the gas supply for political force just as they did to former USSR states. The revenues which they need can be sacrificed to make a point. The continued inclusion of bio-mass as a renewable is a farce when one considers it is more polluting than coal and remember its is not wood waste being burned it is whole forests of whole trees.
Whilst the farms around me here in Southern Scotland are growing crops of anything including grass to feed the local estate digester.
Disgusting and disgraceful.
Talking of interesting ‘scams’…
We are having the A14 upgraded locally (I don’t object to that but naturally during contruction there’s a lot of diversions etc.).
One junction I was using last night has large floodlights to help drivers see what’s going on (and help nightime contruction work); I was somewhat amazed to see that directly under these floodlights were large solar panels – presumably the construction company can recoup their fuel costs this way. Reminds me of the similar scam being used in Spain where they generated PV electricity at night using the same set up: diesel generators powering floodlights…
This is misleading (surprise, surprise!) because I’m sure those coal fired plants were still burning coal in standby.
Complete propaganda. World wide, wind produces net zero. Point two of one percent. Everywhere you see falsehoods, from capacity, to amount produced, omissions of parasitic power, and the grid moving power between countries, to balance their acts. Complete rubbish. Not a single coal fired plant world wide has shut down because of wind.
BBC Forget About Oil And Gas … and American trees.
As everyone here knows, and Channel 4 recently pointed out, the reason we’re not burning coal is that Drax has been converted to burning trees.
How is her claim that renewables are the ‘cheapest’ form of energy allowed to go unchallenged.
The trick is to neglect the general subsidies for unreliables and include all the penalties for coal. Very clever way to make the lowest cost generation (coal) look expensive and the dearest form look cheap. By all means crow about how low our fiddled emissions are but they should not pretend this is not at a massive current cost to the UK and even bigger future cost.
MORE DISGRACEFUL AND DISHONEST BBC LYING TO THE BRITISH PEOPLE!
‘cheapest’
The marginal cost is zero, but so what? The standing cost is ginormous.
Well I just hope those idle coal plants were compensated, just like the wind turbines, when they sit there idle. If so; then the way things are going, it seems that we the consumers are paying for NOT getting power as well as getting it.
It looks like the poverty nutcracker has got us consumers well and truly in its jaws.
Some years back, when DECC existed, I wrote to ask what compensation I would get if I didn’t build a windturbine on my land… surprisingly, the reply I got didn’t address this vital issue!
Precisely Philip. You can’t sell snake oil if there is no one to produce it.
“Power generated from wind and gas dominated the mix of energy for users in England, Scotland and Wales.”
It was a period of low demand and favorable wind conditions.
A quick scan suggests to me gas supplied the biggest proportion, then nuclear (which the BBC forgot) and wind with equal contributions.
I’d also hazard a guess that demand could have been met (just about) without the wind at all. So play another game, and the headline is ‘Windmills completely pointless.’
And they forgot the coal converted to woodchip that was maxing out burning up forests.
To answer your question; the BBC and Greenpeace both have Common Purpose alumni.
It’s only a few weeks since Britain’s coal power stations were running ‘flat out’.
Quite.
The BBC completely ignored nuclear electrical generation.
The Greenpeace (et. al) dependence is the journalist’s requirement that the interviewee has the same level of understanding of STEM subjects i.e. not much.
For some decades, plant ecologists have taken very little organismal work in plants. They eschew learning plants and taxonomy is for the drudges in the herbarium. This has led to some spectacular boo-boos, but with their extra dose of arrogance and elitism they sail by while looking down their noses at the rest of society. They have traded actual field work for computer models where their lack of ability to identify anything can be hidden. Essentially ALL of the climate hysteria comes from computer models. When it is pointed out that the models do not mirror actual data, they favor the models over reality.
Environmental education is even more of a joke. Classes are in administration, public policy, litigation and mitigation. Essentially no science, but plenty of community organizing.
“…drudges in the herbarium…”
I believe that High School courses in Botany, in the USA before about 1900, had, as a normal project, the collecting and describing of local plants in herbarium books. But far more of the population at that time would have been interested in the countryside.
Three cheers for those sources of energy that allowed coal not to be used for 3 whole days! Now, I have a question. Did that happen in the dead of winter or the strong heat of summer? did I hear someone say no? When they can make that claim when it is 20 below, I’ll think it is significant.
It’s interesting that at 8:45 this morning and and solar were contributing only 3.6% to our energy demand. Luckily coal came to the rescue with 7.95% (and CCGT 54.5%). For some reason the BBC hasn’t yet reported that.
(http://gridwatch.co.uk)
I’m glad they’ve made their graphics more friendly
“…graphics more friendly…”
Oh Gosh, Yes, that spares my old eyes!
The fact is, when viewing diagrams or reading, we are actually ‘blind’ for 3/4 of the time, because our eyes are jumping around. We need a simple layout, clear orientation cues, and plenty of illumination – else the brain is always late in interpretation and we become dyslexic.
Why is the time shown on this site one for behind?
That should have read “one hour” – sorry.
Energy demand? Or electricity demand?
I meant the latter. A common error – e.g. https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/04/26/biggest-wind-turbines-wont-solve-our-energy-problems-delingpole/
I see that ‘nuclear,’ from the UK and France, amounts to nearly a quarter of the total.