{"id":6614,"date":"2016-03-18T07:06:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T07:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6614"},"modified":"2016-03-18T07:06:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T07:06:26","slug":"it-comes-from-coal-and-gas-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/03\/18\/it-comes-from-coal-and-gas-you-know\/","title":{"rendered":"It comes from coal and gas, you know!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That's what a chemical engineer said to me as he caught me plugging my car into the university's electric car charging point the other day. \u00a0And indeed (most of) it does. \u00a0As I write this, on a cold, sunny day in March, 60% of the UK's electricity (35.8 MW) is coming from gas and coal (in a 3 : 1 ratio).<\/p>\n<p>Happily, the car is currently\u00a0charing from <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/07\/13\/update-on-the-output-from-semington-a\/\">Semington A<\/a>'s reliable (if naturally intermittent) solar output, but you have to wonder if the UK is getting closer to carbon-free electricity, or farther away as every day passes.<\/p>\n<p>If only targets were strategy. \u00a0I say that because the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2016\/mar\/14\/zero-carbon-emissions-target-enshrined-uk-law\">Guardian<\/a> is reporting that the government intends to legislate for a 100% carbon-free UK. \u00a0As the G notes, the UK is already legally bound by the Climate Change Act to reduce emissions 80% by 2050 \u2013 although no one knows how this will be done. \u00a0This is why it's apparently no problem to go for the full monty. \u00a080% \u00a0or 100%? \u00a0What's the difference when you've no idea even how to get to 50%. \u00a0It's as though achieving the target\u00a0doesn't really matter when you can write a headline.<\/p>\n<p>The IPCC\u00a0says there must be <em>net<\/em> zero emissions by 2070 if we are to avoid dangerous warming. \u00a0Fat chance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That's what a chemical engineer said to me as he caught me plugging my car into the university's electric car charging point the other day. \u00a0And indeed (most of) it does. \u00a0As I write this, on a cold, sunny day...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}