Wildlife and conservation articles, wild travel advice and reviews
The clean energy transition is accelerating in some parts of the world. It is often cheaper to install solar or wind turbines, than to continue to buy coal to keep using the coal power plant, never-the-less this has not stopped developing countries from failing to make the change.
Coal power plants have to be a thing of the past as soon as possible. This is because no matter how efficient they are, they are powered by digging up carbon and releasing it into the air.
However for the time being, there are many coal power stations across the world. Vishwanath Haily Dalvi of the institute of Chemical technology in Mumbai India has been looking at how we could assist this process with the suns energy.
By collecting the suns heat energy, and using this to heat the water, the amount of coal needed is reduced by 50%.
This could therefore be a more economic way of reducing emissions from power generation. Given that coal power emits 0.85 pounds of carbon per kwh (about 380g), cutting this in half would make carbon far cleaner. While this may well be expensive to set up, it might allow coal power plants to operate for a few years longer and therefore be worthwhile, as well as offsetting some of the damage from the large number of coal powered stations being built across countries such as India and China.
This website was designed to simplify wildlife travel – and we are making progress on this (slowly- terrible timing, given the epidemic), however without significant and rapid cuts to the worlds fossil fuel emissions, impacts from global warming will destroy many wildlife habitats so it is of importance.
Climate change is increasingly causing changes in rainfall. This is turning rainforests to savannahs and savannahs to deserts.
Without dealing with climate change, there will be far fewer ecosystems in which to save the wildlife.
This is why the USA is important. At this point the USA emits roughly 16% of the worlds warming gases.
Continue reading “Manchin has made millions from coal since joining the senate, and he may be able to block Biden’s plan to halve greenhouse gas emissions”Coal is one of the dirtiest power sources, and increasingly around the world it is recognized that its burning must stop if we are to retain a planet easy to live on.
Later this year, there will be a climate conference held in Glasgow and the British government have been keen to make sure that it moves things forwards – if sea levels rise as much as predicted, life in the UK will change dramatically, not least as the UK could become an archipelago.
Continue reading “The British government have decided to ban burning coal for electricity one year earlier in 2024”China has stated that they will peak their emissions by 2030 and hit carbon neutrality by 2060. These targets are just about acceptable in terms of meeting the human races target of holding temperature raise to 1.5 degrees C.
Continue reading “China must close 600 coal-fired power plants early to hit their own climate target – but this could save money”With incredibly cold weather hitting Texas (for instance the beach is covered in snow), Fox News has been making a big thing of the fact that some of the wind turbines are not turning supposedly because they froze – and that this is the cause of the blackouts.
This is factually incorrect. According to data from the Texas government wind turbine shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the total outage. A bigger problem is freezing of oil and gas equipment throughout the state.
Continue reading “Foolish attacks on renewable energy – Texas blackouts cannot be blamed on green energy”At a time when many people are discussing whether we can even afford to continue to extract the fossil fuels we have already started to extract, and when the government is talking about leading the world in cutting fossil fuel use, the local Cumbrian government has given permission for the first deep coal mine in 30 years.
This decision by the Cumbrian local government has been remade on three occasions. The government of the UK in Westminster has claimed this is a local matter and that they have no right to get involved. Obviously this is patently absurd – what’s more if we are to have any chance of meeting our emission reduction promises the government must immediately abandon its foolish position, and make it clear that it is not going to happen.
Clearly despite the promises made about reducing carbon emissions, and the progress made in places such as virtually the end of coal burning for power, are not baked in successes and we must make sure to keep the pressure on the government to keep going and indeed ratchet up the speed of which we deal with a problems.
It would appear that with increasing numbers of of coal powered power plants, the argument we must use them until they need retiring does not appear to hold anymore.
A Friends of the Earth study looking at 6,696 power plants around the world and a further 1,046 that are currently being built 46% will be unprofitable in 2020 up from 41% in 2019.
Continue reading “An analysis of coal power plants finds almost half are losing money”The UK government is being sued after it gave permission for a large new gas powered power plant despite the fact that local planning refuse permission due to the carbon emissions it would produce.
Andrea Ledson overruled the local decision-making process. Drax the power producer, talked about adding carbon capture processes in the future, but not while building. If completed, this power station will emit 75% of the carbon dioxide emissions set aside for power generation in the government’s plans. Added to the plans to increase the size of the coal power plant in county Durham, it suggests a total lack of seriousness over Global warming with the UK government. Given our hosting of the next carbon cutting conference later this year, the governments behaviour is highly embarrassing and thoroughly foolish.
Their supposedly world-leading decision to make the country carbon neutral by 2050 is undone by their continued decisions that go against this aim. On the one hand they demand praise for an aim they have put in law, but on the other hand continue on with business as usual decisions that makes that aim impossible to meet.
One of the recognition’s worldwide is that if we are to avoid the worst of global warming the majority of carbon left in the earth must remain there. This particularly applies to coal.
