we're living through a fast-paced technological revolution around green energy and it's getting about 1% of the attention it should. In a month, no one's gonna be burning coal in the UK for the first time since the steam engine was invented.
You're fortunate you don't have a Joe Manchin as a pivotal vote in government trying to prop up coal every chance he gets..
A lot of coal-fired power stations are being converted to burn wood chips. Yes it burns more cleanly and is renewable over 100 years instead of millions, but it's far from ideal.
The US has just stopped building new fossil fuel plants, and I don’t think the average Joe has any idea 95% of new capacity added since 1 Jan 2023 was renewable The other 5% were nat gas peaker plants (And we had some coal to gas conversions that don’t count as new capacity)
That’s pretty neat :)
That’s staggering! London and Manchester are so historically ( and literarily) associated with coal smoke/fog And now there is thankfully nothing
Meanwhile, 3/4th of all energy is produced from other fossil fuels, with 50% of the total coming from methane, whose production entails large amounts of this greenhouse gas, 400 times more potent than CO2. Coal dying off of good, but this isn’t the green revolution some would like to think it is.
That’s pretty remarkable, really. I wonder how much attention the folks of the Industrial Revolution gave to what was going on around them at the time?
The enthusiasm is great but it's good to tell people things in context. The end of coal in the UK is partly b/c of a switch to natural gas, and energy demand dropped b/c the UK offshored industry. Allwood is director of the research program to decarbonize UK industry: youtu.be/xpImlufArwk?...
YouTube video by Professor Julian Allwood - Engineering and Music
So, um, I can give y'all a pretty good price on this coal I was about to deliver to Newcastle?
Maybe it's best we don't draw attention to it, lest the reactionaries decide to kill it?