Rely on gas
A BBC reporter on March 4 described the proposed new gas power station with carbon capture at Keadby, Lincolnshire, as ” continuing to burn the fossil fuels that got us into this mess” .
We have still some way to travel but by every metric like, for example, nourishment, health, sanitation, longevity, etc this young man’s “mess” represents the best condition for humanity as a whole there has ever been, so on his behalf may I make apology to the millions of coal, gas and oil workers world-wide who over the past couple of centuries have provided the energy that makes that “mess” possible.
The programme then switched to another young man who stated authoritatively that further use of renewables backed up by storage and batteries was a far better way forward. May I inform him that we have four huge (hydro) power storage installations which – half a century ago – took about five years each to build at the cost in today’s money of billions, something like 50 lives directly and hundreds of cases of lung disease.
In total they store enough potential energy to provide about half an hour’s UK winter peak electricity. About a million tons of Li battery would provide the same, completely inadequate, amount of storage. I think we are going to need gas power stations for some time to come.
A McCormick
Terregles
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