How much CO2 emission is produced from burning coal to make electricity?

First attempt at finding out, and we will refine as we find out more.

To make a kWh of electricity the first thing we find out is that it is going to vary according to the coal being used, and the design of the coal plant. This makes the calculations of averages we have seen very dangerous to use when estimating, because there can be a substantial spread of values.

We are going to use, for estimating purposes, a rounded value of:

1kg CO2 emissions per kWh electricity

There are many other emissions produced as well of course.

With so many experts on coal around, and so much information, we still think it's important to try to work out things for ourselves, so that we can try to understand.

UK Coal Power Stations

From gridwatch.co.uk

  • The CO2 of Coal power generation is calculated using the value 870g/kWh.
  • There are currently 16 Coal power stations in the UK. 
  • The current Government plan is to shutdown all coal stations by 2025.
If you want to add any details, just use the twitter handle @DormouseRoared.

From http://www.powerstations.uk/

This picture shows a discrepancy of 7 remaining vs 16 above.


This article from 2015 gives a useful overview. 
For coal, the good news is that no coal capacity additions have been made since about 1986 (Drax).

From this Guardian article, at the beginning of 2018:


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