More gas power stations.

[Bill]

Headlines this morning was about the plans to build and replace more gas fired power stations to avoid potential blackouts should wind and solar fail to meet the ever-increasing demand. The green activists are understandably upset about this but to me it’s logical and makes perfect sense.

It’s easy to pick up on any one aspect of this and bend it to suit one particular argument. But take a step back to see the bigger picture and I’m sure we’d find an equation with so many variables that it’s far too complex for the average person to understand.  So, we just have to trust that those in charge know what they’re doing.

The proof of the pudding I suppose is the fact that we’ve not had many blackouts (yet) and overall, our levels of pollution have fallen, which has to be a good thing.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

Given the stringent measures to contain pollution and add on new technology to monitor those levels that are produced then a gas fired  generator should be almost pollution free.

i wonder how many of these green activists have gas central heating boilers, petrol, diesel or hybrid cars. all will have mobile phones with access to the internet plus whatever tv and broadband available to them.

i would guarantee that if there were blackouts like those during the miners strikes then they would soon be kicking up a fuss that they can't get a signal or charge the phone, access social media or watch the latest instalment of strictly....

[Observer II]

The eco warriors would commit us to a reliance on wind and solar;  such limited options would leave us vulnerable in future imo.   What we need imo, is a wide range of alternate options such as hydro and nuclear,  to increase self sufficiency in energy and reduced prices.  Alas, our Governments seem incapable of delivering large, long term infrastructure projects on time and on price.     😑

[Bill]

Well, you have to assume that a modern gas-powered plant is going to be cleaner than the older ones but that’s probably not good enough for the hardened environmentalist who seem to want zero emissions. I don’t think 100% carbon capture is realistic with the technology we have today, leastways not at a price that could come anyway near being justifiable.

The problem with hydro and nuclear is that both would take far too long to come to fruition and even the small-scale ones would probably encounter years of planning and legal objections before a spade even hits the ground. On the other hand, expanding and upgrading existing gas plants is probably a quicker and cheaper way to ensure we can achieve energy security. If we had the luxury of only needing to plan for the long term, then yes, go for stuff like hydro and tidal.

On the subject of gas, something I found out just before Christmas was that the old disused salt mines in the Northwich area are now being used for mass gas storage. I don’t know how long they’ve been doing this but thinking about it, how long has it been since we last had those huge gas accumulators everywhere? Apparently they fill them all during the summer months and release it back during the winter. Cleaver eh?

 

Bill 😊

[Confused52]

Yes, the salt mines were used after they decided storage in the Rough gas field was no longer economic. Fortunately the decision on Rough has been reversed and 20% of the storage is back in use increasing UK storage by 50%.