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Drax: how long can this go on for?

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Stand by. In the year 2014 You'll all be familiar with this of course, so bear with us whilst we go over some old ground, and we'll see if we can piece a story together, starting with 154 pages of information about using North American woody biomass for electricity generation in the UK. Like all good thrillers, the real story doesn't start here, but we'll have flashbacks, when the screen goes wavy in front of your eyes, to fill in what happened before this. The key words here though are woody biomass. Let's begin. This document was written by real scientists. Now we only have three lifelines, so we're hoping that one of them is to phone a famous scientist friend as many times as we need to. Don't worry, we'll be turning the first page over next, and your patience will be rewarded.
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How much CO2 emission is produced from burning coal to make electricity?

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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...
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UK Electricity Generation Mix: How will it make the transition to less than 100gCO2e/kWh?

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This is an open and ongoing question because nobody knows, but it must still be asked, and asked again. This article is a mish mash of information, mainly because by accident or design, the status and direction of travel for the UK electricity grid is bewildering. It is perfectly feasible to eliminate fossil fuel power stations, probably in the order coal, then biomass, then gas, as a combination of renewable energy, electricity storage and smart grid technologies are installed. Unfortunately this is compromised by government policies, desires to extract the very last drops of fossil fuels from around the UK's coasts, poor incentives, and all the rest of the Heath Robinson set of cranks and levers that result in time passing by with much huff and puff. Fortunately the renewable sector has realised that costs coming down, improving technology, and an expanding skills base means they can really just get on with getting on with the job. And don't worry, the government will...
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