Were you someone who immediately thought that there was a problem with using biomass to fuel large power stations (such as Drax)? \u00a0Did you say,<\/p>\n
'Hang on a bit! \u00a0Why are we trucking wood products to US ports, shipping them across the Atlantic, and then\u00a0using 14 diesel trains a day to finally get them to Drax? \u00a0Can the government\u2019s promise that there'd be no net emissions [of CO2<\/sub>] during production really be true?'<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Did\u00a0you think that this sounded a bad idea as it would be expensive, make air pollution worse, increase our dependency on foreign energy and, compared to gas, make more greenhouse gas \u2013 and soot? \u00a0Did you ask your sixth form students these questions? \u00a0Did you get them to investigate?<\/p>\n
Or did you cheer because you were excited at yet more 'renewable' electricity? \u00a0The owners of Drax were as they anticipated all that subsidy (some say up to \u00a3500m a year) \u2013 as were everyone who'd fitted biomass boilers at home and\u00a0the are now getting the domestic renewable heat incentive (RHI) payments.<\/p>\n
Times have changed, however. \u00a0It seems that Mr Gove is going to (in the jargon) ...<\/p>\n
\"conduct a cross-departmental review into the role of biomass in future policy for low carbon energy and heat, focusing on the air quality impacts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Good. \u00a0Rather late, of course, but good! \u00a0Meanwhile, it's been \u00a0good few days for Drax. \u00a0As I type this, biomass is the third largest source of fuel for UK electricity (7%). \u00a0This is because there's no wind. \u00a0It won't last, of course;as the day develops solar will rise from its current 7% to around 25% in the middle of the day. \u00a0This is, of course, something to celebrate.<\/p>\n
Postscript on June 30th.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
Climate Action reported that UK renewable electricity provided a 30% of UK \"power needs\" (they mean electricity) over the first three months of 2018. \u00a0Headlines include:<\/p>\n
\n
- The amount \u2013 27.9 terawatt hours \u2013 is a 10% increase on the same time last year.<\/li>\n
- Wind power provided 19% of the total<\/li>\n
- all low-carbon sources (including nuclear) was 48%<\/li>\n
- the government\u2019s climate advisers warn that not enough is being done to decarbonise other key parts of the economy. The Committee on Climate Change\u2019s annual \u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0highlighted the strong progress in the electricity sector, but that this has come at the detriment of heating, transport and agriculture.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Were you someone who immediately thought that there was a problem with using biomass to fuel large power stations (such as Drax)? \u00a0Did you say, 'Hang on a bit! \u00a0Why are we trucking wood products to US ports, shipping them...<\/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-7251","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\/7251","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=7251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}