Coal power facility to stay open for extra two years in blow to net zero
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
One of Britain’s last coal-burning power facilities is to be kept open for two years longer than planned as the energy crisis deals a blow to the green agenda.
The German energy giant Uniper is poised to keep the unit, at its Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire, open until 2024 after an appeal from ministers – after initially intending to shut it in 2022.
National Grid on Wednesday also left the door open for extending the life of other coal-fired plants.
The moves risk hurting Britain’s ambitions to cut carbon dioxide emissions little more than a year after it hosted the COP26 climate conference, and highlights strains on the energy system following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is one of four units at its station in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottingham. The other three were always planned to remain open until September 2024.
Which all begs the question, what will happen in September 2024, when the whole lot shuts down?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
For how many times can a coal plant have its life extended by two years ?
As long as we require electricity.
As long as Alok Sharma doesn’t have it blown up.
Until the owner packs up his boilers and ships them to São Paulo, where they will be appreciated. And have a future.
“Which all begs the question, what will happen in September 2024, when the whole lot shuts down?” Rolling blackouts (or worse) when it it is cold and there is a wind lull. And of course the situation will be made worse by more nuclear power station closures.
You destroy 23 GW of coal-fired capacity and then extend the life of a 1.2 GW station. Wonderful math!
It was a 2.1GW station and still declaring just under 2GW in the capacity market which is still pretty handy. Personally Alok Sharma should be charged with crimes against the state for his obsession of doing photo ops blowing up power stations before boilers were cold. At least the Germans had the sense to mothball many of their stations.
Yes. 2.1 not 1.2. Sorry.
Still not much compared to 23.0 lost!
An emergency supply of coal presumably will have to be imported at the current high price, since the Government never bothers with a strategic stockpile of anything.
West Burton A is supposed to be turned into Britain’s first Fusion Power Station. There is an artist’s impression of it; which was probably shown to the Government as proof that all the minor technical details* are solved.
* Such as that fusion power is still science-fiction.
How the British government rewards state sponsored vandalism:-
Sharma was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to tackling climate change.
Sharma is viewed as providing a great service. He was also held the Presidency for COP 26.
The level of misery, suffering and arguably death this monster has caused due to fuel poverty in this country alone is absolutely unforgivable.
Even more big industrial users will be paid to switch off or reduce usage at times of inadequate power generation. If that doesn’t work, rolling blackouts beckon, if they don’t arrive sooner anyway.
What was that about moving to all-electric transport?
Big industrial users will move if asked to switch off. They don’t want the damn money. They want to make their products on their schedule. You’d have to pay them huge, obscene amounts of money to keep them from leaving.
BTW, when I worked on the factory floor 45 years ago, a shutdown for a power outage would require DAYS for a restart. A power outage of 10 seconds would cause a 2-4 day outage. You couldn’t just push a start button for the machinery to get going again.
September 2024 will be like back in the 60’s when at midnight the TV stations stopped broadcasting and all we got was a test signal.
But that was due to lack of programming – the transmitters were still running and drawing power from the grid. The way things are looking, the transmitters will be off line, there (probably) won’t be anything for them to transmit, and most of the target audience will be in the dark anyway…
I love the “power facility”. English is such a live language.
If Kwarteng had pulled a finger out we would still have 5GW or more of coal that could be used to displace expensive gas and provide capacity to help keep the lights on. Instead he let Sturgeon and Sharma blow up power stations for fun.
The start of the U-turn, lets hope for a cold spell next week with no wind, 3 weeks should deplete our gas store and then we will be about 20% short of daily gas requirement, leading to power cuts. My dream is that open cast coal mining is needed.
It is a real shame that a basic analysis of “net zero” shows that it will ruin the economy of the UK, impoverish the population and ruin our standard of living and make no difference to the alleged global warming that is apparently an emergency!
And I as a qualified electrical engineer, with an MBA and 50 years experience have to hope for some bad weather to prove me right!
I’m with you on that.
Like China which is going down badly and probably can not recover.
The new buzz-word there translates as ‘human-minerals.’ When you realize you are just a brick in a badly built wall:
I was about to type ‘ Thanks for this film, but actually it will give me nightmares – kid you not.’
My money says they won’t close in 2024, they will carry on quietly hoping no one notices.
Meanwhile in other news….
Britishvolt desperately looking for a miracle before the inevitable collapse.
Another UK steel plant to be mothballed/shut.
In Scotland reality strikes, and pushes ban on ICE car sales away a couple of years.
Sorry it’s 2 Liberty Steel locations to shut!
MrGrimNasty,
“In Scotland reality strikes, and pushes ban on ICE car sales away a couple of years.”
Is that true, I had not seen it anywhere, and if it is I’m astounded as reality seems to have disappeared from the Scottish government some time ago?
It was all over the news, except today they have retracted it and said it was a typo in a Scottish gov. document!
Hello Mr GrimNasty,
that’s more like the Scottish government I know.
Pushing the ban away doesn’t solve the problem. Any notions of imposing a ban at all on ICE need to be removed. Governments should not be banning competition. If EVs are’t selling, there is something fundamentally wrong with the product, basically range and price, i.e. simultaneously LESS practical and MORE expensive than ICE.
Still time for rolling blackouts this winter, get your block letter from here:
https://www.powercut105.com/
Then get your likely (but not certain) blackout periods from here:
Click to access esec-guidance.pdf
‘Britain’s ambitions to cut carbon dioxide emissions’
As far as I am aware, we Britons have never been asked if we would like to cut carbon dioxide emissions. What the Torygraph moron should write is ‘the British Government’s ambitions to cut carbon dioxide emissions’.
Same in every country. Politicians are imposing things the actual population doesn’t want or need
>>we Britons have never been asked if we would like to cut carbon dioxide emission
The energy crisis is caused by the green agenda.
“…the green agenda…”
It would not matter what men believed, if they humbly kept it a private matter. However, there are always enough fanatics, fantasists, kleptomaniacs, and plain psychopaths, to raise the spectre of destruction.
Or slightly milder; the old Victorian lady “I don’t care what people do, so long as the don’t do it in the streets and frighten the dear horses.”