The Day Coal Dies

[Chris Crew]

On Chris Crew Said:

 “I’ll stick to my 2.5 litre V70, not worth much now due to the £710 a year “tax”, but heyho not to worry.”

Is that right? I had a V70 but traded it for a newer V90 which attracted £580 for the first five years but has now gone down to £170, IIRC. I am not saying £710 tax is incorrect, because it’s your car and you pay the tax, but I am puzzled as the V70 went out of production in 2016/17 they are all well out of the road-tax surcharge period now.

Chris,

 

It’s a 2009 petrol V70, 2.5 “L” on the tax, so yes, i am correct, but thank you for asking.

 

Jimb

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

Also the last day I believe for Britain’s last steel making blast furnace.   Port Talbot is shutting down.

Unfortunately, in the UK today coal isn’t a cost-effective way of generating electricity, making steel in the UK, or supporting other industries like Heavy Chemicals.  Since there’s no local coal left in the UK to speak of, any industry that relies on coal has to import it.  Mostly comes from Brazil and the USA.

Shouldn’t be a surprise.   The change started in 1984, when the government spotted that Britain’s depleted coal-fields were on the way out.  Since then, British industry has changed enormously, and there’s more to come.  Gas and Oil are also finite natural resources, and they too are depleting…

Dave

Britain’s coal fields are far from depleted, at the rate we were using it in the 1970s there were known deposits which would have supplied coal for around 300 years.

Closing collieries and not allowing any new deep mines to be sunk was a conscious decision of successive governments for various political reasons.

Andy

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Obligatory xkcd.com cartoon from  today:-

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

So it’s not that sea levels are rising but that we have sunk by 3″ ? My elevation is about 120′ above sea level so no need to worry yet ? Noel.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Re using wood-chips.

The problem is not only the fuel used to cut, process and transport the wood, but also that wood has about half the calorific value of coal….

[Chris Crew]

On Chris Crew Said:

“The change started in 1984, when the government spotted that Britain’s depleted coal-fields were on the way out.”

I rather think the ‘change’ began a lot earlier than 1984…

I wouldn’t disagree with Chris, apart from the Royal Navy bit!  1984 was the year government pulled the plug on subsidies.   Here’s the story in a graph:

The Royal Navy switched to oil because Churchill and Fisher knew that protecting the British Empire required fast long-range ships.   For this purpose coal has many disadvantages compared with oil.  Time consuming and messy to refuel because it’s a solid; less range due to having a lower thermal value; furnace and boiler inefficiencies;  need for hundreds of stokers;  much coal is poor quality, and fires due to spontaneous combustion in ship bunkers were a continuous problem.    The switch was controversial at the time because  Britain had plenty of local coal, and no oil.  The strategic risk was oil burning fleet could be disabled by an enemy cutting oil supplies, when a coal burning fleet was ‘safe’.

Does anyone know how much coal the Royal Navy consumed before changing to oil?   I’d guess they barely touched  the 250 million tons mined in 1900.  Plenty of others burning lots of coal: the mercantile marine was much larger than the Navy and the railways, steel making, pottery, ship building, chemicals, and heavy and light industry all depended on it in large quantities.

But Chris is right in that the RN started a trend.  Others took note and since then oil has replaced coal for many applications.

Fossil fuels are a finite resource.   Worldwide, coal reserves are good for about another 300 years.  Not in Britain though!   We’ve consumed our share, and now coal has to be imported.  This is a massive change since 1900 when Britain was the world’s largest exporter of coal.   More bad news: world reserves of gas and oil are much smaller.  These will both get expensive over the next 30 years, making it much more costly to run a petrol driven car than it is now.   Grandad’s gas guzzler may see him out, but internal combustion as we know it can’t sustain cheap motoring in future.   Enjoy it whilst it lasts!

Dave

 

 

[Peter Greene]

On Peter Greene Said:

On Andrew Crow Said:

P.s. the wind doesn’t stop blowing at night either so why not use it.

Or a solar array + inverter.

Doesn’t work well at night in winter, which is when I want my central heating

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

You just need longer cables, Duncan

🙂

MichaelG.

[Chris Crew]

On Chris Crew Said:

The Chinese have recently built a new line, the Haoji Railway, to transport 200 million tons (yes, 200 million!) of coal per year from Inner Mongolia to Jiangxi Province at a cost of 27 billion USD. The line is 1,600km long, has a design speed of 75m.p.h. and was completed within five years.

The Haoji Railway viaduct, at 8Km in length it is just a bit longer than the Colne Valley!

 

Clearly, the Chinese are not going to abandon coal anytime soon and maybe they could give the country that gave railways to the world a hint or two about how to build a 118mile long line from Euston to Curzon Street which is three times over budget, taking over 10 years to build and hasn’t even got a station design for the London terminus yet.

Maybe, maybe not?

“Coal plants are struggling economically, according to David Fishman, a senior manager at the Lantau Group, an energy consultancy in Shanghai. He said it was no longer profitable in the long term to build coal power plants in China.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/22/chinas-coal-fired-power-boom-may-be-ending-amid-slowdown-in-permits

 

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Sorry folks … but please don’t blame the innocent messenger 🙁

The [well-illustrated and very interesting] article was freely available on my iPad when I posted the link in the early hours … and this being a Model Engineering forum, I assumed the content would be of interest.

The ‘pay to avoid adverts’ idea seems to be the latest GDPR-based trick of the trade.

Grrr!!

MichaelG.

You’re a very naughty boy Michael! Consider yourself told off. 🤣

Only joking. I managed to read the article just fine on my iPad and found it very interesting, thank you. I’m guessing it may be a PC/Android issue?

[duncan webster 1]

On duncan webster 1 Said:

On Peter Greene Said:

On Andrew Crow Said:

P.s. the wind doesn’t stop blowing at night either so why not use it.

Or a solar array + inverter.

Doesn’t work well at night in winter, which is when I want my central heating

Ah … it was intended to be jocular. I meant the kind of inverter used in electrical circuits to invert an output. I can readily see how it could have been misinterpreted though.

It should have had a smiley but I couldn’t see how to add one.

[Vic]

On Vic Said

I managed to read the article just fine on my iPad and found it very interesting, thank you. I’m guessing it may be a PC/Android issue?

No, it’s an Apple thing, but some of us haven’t been assimilated into the Borg…

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

I will disclose whom but a CE of a housing association fairly local  to me said when I asked why all the lights were left on all night countered by saying the company was with Scottish power and therefore green power and believed the housing association was connected to them, more long cables !

H

[Andrew Crow]

On Andrew Crow Said:

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

…
Shouldn’t be a surprise.   The change started in 1984, when the government spotted that Britain’s depleted coal-fields were on the way out. …

Dave

Britain’s coal fields are far from depleted, at the rate we were using it in the 1970s there were known deposits which would have supplied coal for around 300 years.

Always good to put numbers on things when possible.

As of June 2022, the Coal Authority estimates that, overall, there are 3,814 million tonnes of coal resources still underground across the UK. Of the economically recoverable and minable coal resource in current operations (including those in the planning or pre-planning process), 986 million tonnes is in underground mines and 46 million tonnes in surface mines. England and Wales had an 84% share of current UK coal mines and licenced resources, followed by Scotland with 9%.

3,814 million tons sounds good, but note that only 1030 million tons is considered ‘economically recoverable’.   Consider ‘G-Pit, Washington’, where coal first encountered 195′ down.  Unlikely when this pit was active that any attempt was made to recover any of it, because the seam is only 6″ thick.  A huge amount of work for very little return.  Possible to recover it, but only when the price of coal is sky high.  This coal is in the reserve, as are a number of other thin or low quality seams.   This mine, like many others, extracted deep coal from thick seams.  Doesn’t help us much now that some coal was left behind.

How long the reserve lasts depends on how fast it’s used. Not enough to fuel China for a year, though it would keep the EU happy for nearly 6.   Divide by three if only economically recoverable coal is supplied.

Closing collieries and not allowing any new deep mines to be sunk was a conscious decision of successive governments for various political reasons.

True!    But their decision was activated by understanding coal was on the way out.

Andy

 

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

This is in danger of getting political, let’s not go there

[Mark Rand]

On Mark Rand Said:

On Vic Said

I managed to read the article just fine on my iPad and found it very interesting, thank you. I’m guessing it may be a PC/Android issue?

No, it’s an Apple thing, but some of us haven’t been assimilated into the Borg…

No, Mark … it’s actually a “Newspaper thing”

May I suggest that you read this:

https://pressgazette.co.uk/marketing/consent-or-pay-news-websites-uk/

MichaelG.

[RobinParticipant @robin]

Why would anyone think that the coal will not be used? We cannot predict what our descendants will do any more than our ancestors could predict us. Apart from George Orwell but he must have been special 🙂

 

[Mark Rand]

On Mark Rand Said:

On Vic Said

I managed to read the article just fine on my iPad and found it very interesting, thank you. I’m guessing it may be a PC/Android issue?

No, it’s an Apple thing, but some of us haven’t been assimilated into the Borg…

What a strange comment, what’s upset you so much? 🤣

[Andrew TinsleyParticipant @andrewtinsley63637]

Much more important is the fact that the UK cannot manufacture speciality steels any longer, with the closure of Port Talbot blast furnaces. The proposed electric furnace will only be able to process scrap steel of variable quality.

Strategically, this is a disaster as we must import any speciality steels. These steels will be produced in foreign countries using, guess what, coking coal! So all we have done is to move our CO2 pollution to foreign shores. So it doesn’t help with climate change one iota.

As for not having suitable coal, there was a planning application for coking coal extraction near Whitehaven. Sadly this probably won’t go ahead as port Talbot would have been a prime customer.

So do we finish up buying steel from China?

Andrew.

[Vic]

On Vic Said:

On Mark Rand Said:

On Vic Said

I managed to read the article just fine on my iPad and found it very interesting, thank you. I’m guessing it may be a PC/Android issue?

No, it’s an Apple thing, but some of us haven’t been assimilated into the Borg…

What a strange comment, what’s upset you so much? 🤣

The fact that it applies to everyone who doesn’t use apple devices/accounts means that it’s not a PC/Android issue, but an Apple issue 🙂

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

We won’t have lost the ability to make speciality steels. One needs to be selective in the material that goes into remelt (e.g. it would be silly to use 316 stainless as a basis to make RSJs), but most alloys can be made without issue. for very low alloy steels, such as HSLA, One can use imported DRI pellets. It’s a shame that Tata aren’t including DRI production at Port Talbot, but I suppose it’s actually cheaper to ship DRI pellets than ore.

 

Not a metallurgist, the nearest I got to steel making was doing the performance tests on the Margam Power Station turbines and generators that were fed by steam from a boiler that was fired with coke oven and blast furnace gasses et Port Talbot.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

My understanding which may be wrong, is that a blast furnace converts iron ore into iron metal using coking coal and limestone. Both iron ore and coking coal are low value commodities, which we have to import. We could dig up our own coal, but not iron ore. Steel is made from this iron by blowing air or oxygen through the molten iron to reduce its carbon content, with a lot of scrap steel added. When eventually the steel is scrapped it is currently sent to foreign parts to be recycled into new steel. Makes sense to me to stop importing low value iron ore and keep our own scrap. I think the idea that you can’t make high quality steel from scrap is a falacy.

[Mark Rand]

On Mark Rand Said:

The fact that it applies to everyone who doesn’t use apple devices/accounts means that it’s not a PC/Android issue, but an Apple issue 🙂

But it DOES apply, to Apple devices, Mark

… it didn’t when I first posted the link, but it has popped-up every time since.

Please read the article I linked at 07:47 this morning.

MichaelG.

 

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

The pop-up I see on both Android tablet and PC comes from the Times/Sunday Times web site, and is when it hits the paywall. If you have already said yes to cookies from this site (or actually have a subscription) then you will not see it. I would guess that if you have accepted the advertising cookies from that site via any other route and you are trying to reach the site from the same browser, then that would get through the barrier as well.

Never like this when web sites were coal-fired…

[Chris MateParticipant @chrismate31303]

The day coal dies over the Globe, a new dawn of hard reality will set in over humanity especially the leaders that do not understand the link between Resources & Money & Population Growth per area, continent, country state etc. If you run out of basic resources you starve to death literally, you cannot eat or drink  money, crypto, not even Gold.

For any monetary system not to eventually exponentially implode, the basic resources in volved in everything must be cheap, or it will parasitic load everything further down the line with exponential effects. If everything is still ok, you can talk as you want, do as you want, promise you want and the system will carry it….tilll……

Essentials: If these are expensive, the monetary system becomes a mockery, and you can feel it in your pocket, the poor gets poorer, the middle class gets poorer, the rich must get richer the more money you have the more the need to stay. So in the human game of life on earth by humans for humans, leaders needs to understand this. If we did not had to Eat, Dring water, Sleep, none of this was true, and you could be as rich as you want if you live long enough in a living cycle. So basicly at 8 Billion there is no way everybody in one life cycle will even be reasonably happy on this planet, building stuff will not be fast enough in one lifetine to ever satisfy 8 Billion minds, due to the fact that nothing lasts forever especially any/most things made the last 30 years.
-Water(Nature closed system Earth)
-Electricity(Manmade)
-Oil
-Metals
-Food

“Luxcuries & more”
-Any non basic stuff you can have as you worked and earned it.=(THe human game of life)

So before you think you can print Money as you want, or switch to crypto because you hate money, think about the undenyable link between basic resources & money or whatever your monetary system will be based on, you cannot escape Natures rules in a closed system like Earth ever.

-Corruption(Analog), Modern Corruption(digital-Faster cycles), parasitic jobs, Greed, etc corrodes away the prospect of a good life.
-Money is not a resource.
-Crypto is not a resource.
-Money/Cripto cannot be wasted, it just flow between accounts.
-Every time money is spend, resources(multiple) are wasted by default, the poorer the product, the poorer the service, the larger the wastage as everybody run in circles trying to solve the outflow of problems.
-Pockets never lies……Follow the money.

So think about this -link- in a closed system, as you wonders about the promised future….at 8 Billion plus even if you think theres enough resources and space….on the PLanet.
-So how will any “NEW” product, Construction, or Service eat into this link-?

[Author]

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