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Post by mrcoke on Apr 22, 2021 16:49:09 GMT
The Green Party in Germany effectively raised the support against carbon neutral nuclear power and Germany now burns more coal than anyone else in Europe. Worse still the east Europeans say "If Germany can do it so can we." That got right on my tits. Germany has done amazing things with renewables and coal is going out (has been dropping since 2015), but they'd be so much further ahead if they'd just kept the nukes open longer. I read an article today that the UK is not as clean as it claims as we have exported most of our industry to China and "poor countries" have to suffer the consequential pollution. There is an element of truth in that but what they fail to appreciate those countries have built massive new works that operate to higher standards than the 50 year old British industry. Do these people think we should have kept those works operating? Would they support investment to replace or modernise those old UK plants? Another good point IMO, 2nd bottom graph in this link shows that. The good news is that our imports pollution stopped going up in 2007, so our overall emissions are still going down. The same article opposed the proposed coal mine in Cumbria as damaging the environment. So do they support the continued import of coking coal from Russia, USA, and Australia? Or do they think we should shutdown Port Talbot and Scunthorpe steelworks and import the steel, which the start of the article criticised the UK for exporting industry in the first place. That's a tricky one mate. If we have hydrogen steelmaking working in 10 years, then maybe 10 years of imported coke followed by forever of hydrogen is better than 30-40 years of local coke. Seems a gamble either way. EDIT: just noticed who posted this, of course you're into metallurgical coal! I enjoyed your post, I agree Germany has gone a long way like the UK to increase renewables, my beef is the amount of coal they are still consuming. That will reduce with more gas, but gas is not the answer to global warming. Like reducing I/c car emissions it is only fiddling with the issue, not solving it. The potential for hydrogen steel making has been discussed on the Proposed Cumbria Coal mine thread, so I won't repeat here, other than I think it will be a lot longer than a decade and even then it will only be commercially viable for high grade expensive steels not the basic strip and general steels produced at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe. I have no personal axe to grind on whether the mine should be built as I have long since retired. In fact I think there is a far greater chance that Port Talbot and Scunthorpe will be closed or converted to electric arc than hydrogen steel developed in the next decade. So why build a coal mine if all our basic steel making has gone? Why produce electricity by renewables to make hydrogen to produce steel if you can use electricity directly. The UK exported circa 11 million tonnes of scrap metal pre pandemic and imported about half that tonnage of steel. The issue is very complex with there being about a thousand grades of steel.
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Post by thehartshillbadger on Apr 22, 2021 16:57:33 GMT
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Post by mtrstudent on Apr 23, 2021 4:23:42 GMT
[snip]I enjoyed your post, I agree Germany has gone a long way like the UK to increase renewables, my beef is the amount of coal they are still consuming. That will reduce with more gas, but gas is not the answer to global warming. Like reducing I/c car emissions it is only fiddling with the issue, not solving it. The potential for hydrogen steel making has been discussed on the Proposed Cumbria Coal mine thread, so I won't repeat here, other than I think it will be a lot longer than a decade and even then it will only be commercially viable for high grade expensive steels not the basic strip and general steels produced at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe. I have no personal axe to grind on whether the mine should be built as I have long since retired. In fact I think there is a far greater chance that Port Talbot and Scunthorpe will be closed or converted to electric arc than hydrogen steel developed in the next decade. So why build a coal mine if all our basic steel making has gone? Why produce electricity by renewables to make hydrogen to produce steel if you can use electricity directly. The UK exported circa 11 million tonnes of scrap metal pre pandemic and imported about half that tonnage of steel. The issue is very complex with there being about a thousand grades of steel. Can electric arcs do all types of steel? I aren't gonna pretend to know enough about this but I'm interested. Any way that it works sounds great to me. And I looked at Germany's numbers and it looks like it's mostly renewables that are driving coal down. They're on ~47% renewable electricity now. If only they'd kept those nukes open though they could have shut down all their black coal.
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Post by mtrstudent on Apr 23, 2021 16:03:10 GMT
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Post by Rednwhitenblue on Apr 23, 2021 17:59:47 GMT
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Post by Kilo on Apr 23, 2021 18:43:59 GMT
It's not interesting, it's the end of common sense.
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Post by Boothen on Apr 23, 2021 18:47:08 GMT
Looks they shoul've got a man in to smash the windows for them.
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