quantinghome
Established Member
- Joined
- 1 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,886
I'll believe that when they stop build new coal power stations. Last year China added another 95GW of coal power. It has plans for 291GW more.
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Wind Power and UK Energy Use
- Thread starter richard_S
- Start date
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
To replace coal power stations being decommissioned. Check out their coal consumption in 2025 vs 2024…
That compares with 135GW of solar and 119GW of wind generation.
However, installed capacity is only half the picture in terms of power generation the use of coal reduced from 5,864 TWh in 2024 to a projected* 5,774 TWh in 2025 (-1.5%).
Which doesn't appear much until you realise that energy use is also up from 10,066 TWh in 2024 to a projected* 10,421 TWh in 2025 (+3.5%).
*note "projected" is used as the values are yet to be audited, however the numbers could be adjusted when thefinal data is released during September typically totals are revised upwards and so it's possible that coal could see a small increase vs a small drop, how've solar and wind would likely see rises too.
To put this into context it added 430gw of solar and wind capacity installed. 95gw was approved for construction in 2025 and only 35gw of capacity installed off which nearly all of them replaced existing ones with newer cleaner and more efficient plants. They are projecting to install even greater amounts of renewables this year whixch will continue to reduce how often their coal plants are used.
China as climate villain is really about 10 years out of date!
Indeed, and the other factor in the "China isn't a climate villain" is that whilst their total emissions are large, they have broadly the same carbon emissions per person as we do, yet within their's is all the emissions of the stuff we (and a lot of others) buy from China.
If the US carries on its current "drill baby drill" path, in 5 years time there could still be people arguing that China is bad, when the total emissions for the US could be just about to overtake China's.
(Yes, I know that things could change in the next presidential term, but these things take time to slow and reverse).
EGL3 and 4 appear to be progressing nicely. Contracts for the converter and cable systems have all been singed with National Grid in the last few month with onsite construction due to start in 2028 and 2029 respectively. Yes, there will probably still be constraints but it’s pretty clear everyone (National and local governments, National Grid, private companies and suppliers) are all aligned and moving in the same direction on this one (unlike some other NSIPs that could be mentioned).
This. It is utterly ludicrous that the consumer policy costs are added almost exclusively to electricity bills rather than gas bills, given that fossil fuels is down to less than 30% of electricity generation.
It’s not that ludicrous when you consider the uses of gas domestically are heating and eating. Not a good look politically to be making those more expensive given the costs of moving to electric versions.
And electricity isn’t used for the same? At least split the costs across both. Many gas boilers and ovens won’t even work without electricity.
Last edited:
Trainbike46
Established Member
Electricity is widely used for both of those things. The current way is also deeply unfair to those households that are heated electrically already (think storage heaters and other resistive electric types of heating). There is some indication (but I wasn't able to find a recent source confirming this) that energy poverty is more common among households with resistive electric heating.
I would also point out that rebalancing the policy costs across both electricity and gas* wouldn't lead to an overall cost increase, but rather a change on what part of the bill the cost ends up on, as electricity would get cheaper while gas got more expensive.
*There are a few ways this could be done, from the same policy cost rate per kWh of energy, whether that energy is electricity or gas. Or by removing some policy costs from the bill completely. The government did partially do the latter by moving some policy costs to general taxation recently.
I flew over China on the way to Japan early last year and one thing that stood out to me was the number of truly vast solar and wind farms on scale of nothing like I've ever seen in the UK or flying over other European countries (I suspect in fairness the offshore wind farms might be similar in scale). They might still be constructing coal plants but they are not hanging around building renewables on a staggeringly vast scale.
quantinghome
Established Member
- Joined
- 1 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,886
These are the same talking points made in defence of China for decades. They are in opposition to the published data:
https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption-co2-emissions
China's per capita GHG emissions in 2024 (the latest data we have) were 10.8 t CO2eq. The UK's were 5.6. They are not remotely broadly the same.
China's total GHG emissions were 15536 Mt CO2eq. For comparison the US's were 5913.
The vast majority of China's GHG emissions are down to its stupendous internal economy. The difference between China's territorial emissions and consumption emissions is around 12%. It really doesn't change the overall picture.
China made a strategic decision around 2000 to massively expand fossil fuel consumption, mostly through new coal plants, in order to become an economic superpower. No one forced China to do this, and they did it in the full knowledge of the reality of man-made global warming. China is an advanced, developed country and should be held to account for its actions just as much as the US (or any other country for that matter).
Whatever the verbal emanations spewing from the White House, the facts on the ground in the US are that renewables continue to be rolled out at pace. The pro-coal policies of the current president are largely to delay closure of existing ageing coal plants, not build new ones. The last new coal plant in the US was opened in 2013. They can try and prop up an ailing industry (as seen by the 13% increase in coal use last year). But the reality is that the white house's policies in this area have already failed as they aren't building new coal plants and the ones they have are becoming ever more decrepit. It won't take long for this to be reversed - the white house is swimming against an increasing tide, dictated by the basic economics of renewables being the cheaper option. What it DOES mean for the US is it's given up any chance of being a leading producer of renewable technology.
95GW started construction in 2025. 35GW went into service. I don't care whether they were newer, cleaner and more efficient, they're still coal plants shoving vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Yes, they're building masses of renewables, but that's not to replace fossil fuels, it's just adding to total generation. Decommissioned coal plants have to be replaced with renewables, not MORE coal plants.
Yes, Chinese coal consumption declined slightly from 2024 to 2025. But we've been here before - as you can see in the chart above, overall CO2 emissions in China reduced slightly from 2014 to 2016 as well, before resuming their upward trajectory.
I don't understand people's need to try to exonerate China on this issue. Yes, it's doing tremendous things with batteries and rolling out renewables. But I will only believe China's commitment to combating climate change when it stops building new fossil fuels plants, starts decommissioning old ones, and we see continued, significant, drops in its overall CO2 emissions.
Last edited:
All fair points. One thing you missed is that China is in the process of shifting coal from baseload (ie always on) to being repsonsive, ie to fill gaps from solar and wind. There’s also some remarkable hydropower projects in construction, including the 60GW project at Medog.
But China’s position doesn’t detract from our need to decarbonise. We all need to.
From the link you get the differing values giver if you use territorial emissions, how've of you use the consumption values then they are broadly comparable with the UK being around 7t and China being around 7.8t.
If we weren't buying the stuff China wouldn't make it and so their emissions would be lower.
Otherwise the UK could get to being net zero fairly easily, we just stop making anything here and offshore all our production (and a lot of the transport emissions due those products too).
That's one point I didn't make but the new plants are set up to be more responsive and replace older unresponsive plants. They are also retiring older plants faster than they commission new ones. They are using coal for the energy security to fulfil to help back up role much like we are using Gas.
If they keep deploying renewables and nuclear massively faster than new coal plants alongside moving to an electrified economy than their emissions will steadily fall year by year. As the share of renewable energy across the economy increases replacing oil, gas and coal in heating than the emissions will continue to fall significantly despite using an ever smaller share of coal in electric generation.
In UK terms a pragmatic reset on Net zero might be accepting a slower conversion of electric generation to renewables for a cheaper policy if electrification of sectors like transport, heating and industry where many cheaper alternatives which reduce emissions faster are available.
quantinghome
Established Member
- Joined
- 1 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,886
Yeah, that's a fair point. Although China's emissions don't change that much with the adjustment, ours do.
Yes, but only a bit lower. China's emissions are dominated by its internal market. Becoming an exporting superpower, fuelled by coal, was totally China's decision. No one forced them to do this.
Not really. Only a small amount of our emissions come from manufacturing and even if our industrial emissions returned to where they were in 1990, it would be slightly under 1/3 of our total emissions.
Last edited:
Technologist
Member
- Joined
- 29 May 2018
- Messages
- 467
As a nuclear engineer who has been working on RR SMR for 10 years I have more faith in the published cost figures.
A lot of the work is being done by the RAB funding model. It knocks around 1/3 off the cost of HPC vs SZB.
If you actually do it properly there is no particular reason why you shouldn’t be able to get the costs down radically lower in the future. The same level of cost drops seen in offshore wind are possible if you procured nuclear in similar volumes.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Virtually all wind is covered by a CFD which pays the developer a fixed cost per MWh.
They get paid whatever’s the settlement cost is on a day to day basis. Over a fixed time period they either pay a surplus to or take a payment from a fund so that their average payment matches their strike price.
The price we pay for wind depends on the cost in the CFD auction which prior to the most recent one was actually a price in 2012 money. The strike price goes up with inflation.
The most recent CFD for offshore wind was £90/MWh which is not cheap electricity by any means.
I ran a quick LCOE calculation a typical CCGT plant would beat £90/MWh even with gas prices as they are today. The reason why gas is uncompetitive is because we add carbon levies to it and then set the market up so that the capacity factor of the plant is pushed down.
Factoring in how much cheaper the grid cost would be with gas suggests that the thesis that renewables are why UK electricity is expensive is a pretty good one.
Last edited:
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9871/CBP-9871.pdf states (page 11)
There has been an increase in renewables, but it seems unlikely to have gone from that state to even a majority of renewable generation, never mind 'virtually all'.
I believe that it's possibly doubled. However still less than half.
Electricity bills have traditionally been used to hitch things to because the vast majority of households are connected to the electricity network (whereas fewer are connected to mains gas, use oil, lpg etc).
A pragmatic reset through focused on cheaper electric prices mens these all really have to go elsewhere but probably not on gas due to the hardship this would cause to low income households.
Given that gas heating and hot water efficiencies are likely to be 60% to 70% in the real world due to system inefficiencies, electric heating is already cheaper without heating pumps for many smaller homes if a full life cycle cost benefits approach is undertaken.
As I said up thread many other avenues to reduce the emissions like adopting EV's, moving to electric heating and moving industrial processes requiring heat to electric operations offer far cheaper and more effective ways to reduce emissions over the next decade rather than continuing to target ever smaller returns from speeding up the rate of renewable expansion on the grid.
I'm not saying to stop renewable installations just to keep them in line with grid development to avoid excess curtailment costs and to avoid excess costs bringing forward grid upgrades to facilitate earlier deployment.
If this means we needed to really on gas generation for a few more years but start to cut oil and gas use elsewhere faster than it's a win for cost of living and climate policies. It's also likely to help keep the public more on board with climate action.
Oh yes, that was the status twenty years ago. Things might change.
I was referring to the status now. We have dramatically cut electric emissions and now it will be cheaper to cut emissions by transferring as much as possible to electric like heating, transport etc. The cost of this will be cheaper in the next decade than racing for net Ero electric only whilst reducing emissions faster.
HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 14 Jul 2011
- Messages
- 20,326
Without grid upgrades we will rapidly run out of people in Northern Scotland to consume the excess electricity, even if we set electricity prices to below those of gas/heating oil and start handing out heaters.
Very few people live north of the Tay as a fraction of the population but that is by far the easiest place to build wind turbines etc.
Grid upgrades are essential to escape the trap that the electricity supply industry has spent the last 35 years creating, without them you are effectively ending renewable deployment and stalling decarbonisation entirely.
I'd prefer just building a pair of ultra high voltage overhead lines down from Northern Scotland but everyone else wants subsea HVDC links.
quantinghome
Established Member
- Joined
- 1 Jun 2013
- Messages
- 2,886
This probably explains why 6 out of the 7 off wind farms currently under construction are in the Southern North Sea. And of the 7 of the 9 windfarms in preparation (up to and including AR7) are in England or Wales. The largest proposed offshore windfarm in Scotland - Berwick Bank - will have two export cables, one to Dunbar, one to Blyth which avoids the grid bottleneck to an extent. No significant offshore wind farms will be built for a good while in northern Scotland, at least not until 2029 when the first two HVDC interconnectors get turned on.
Scotland has a further significant drawback in that the seabed in the northern North Sea is significantly deeper than it is in the south. That means more expensive foundations, or floating wind which is yet to prove itself commercially.
brad465
Veteran Member
The Celtic Sea is being looked at for Floating Wind farms, and given the level of planning progress in this report it must be viable. This area is on the frontline for prevailing W/SW winds and can send power into the industrial South Wales' area, so bodes well overall:
Port Talbot to become offshore wind hub for Celtic Sea
Port operator ABP will begin work on developing a facility to assemble and launch turbines out to sea.
www.bbc.co.uk
My comments were to slow the rate of grid upgrades to in essence create a rolling programme offering lower costs. In order to avoid excess curtailment payments renewable installations in areas where grid capacity is not adequate for the level of generation proposed would need to be slowed. One way would be to reform to locational pricing based on grid availability for new generators.
The comments on other avenues to reduce emissions faster and cheaper via speeding up electrification of other sectors, was to show where money could be better spent to reduce emissions faster given the grid is already quite low emissions and will continue to get steadily so in the future.
I'm in essence suggesting a slowing of electricity decarbonisation and instead a speeding off if other sectors electrification to reduce overall emissions faster and cheaper.
Are we now chasing the wrong target in the shirt term and spending more for less?
Trainbike46
Established Member
There's a few things I disagree with in your post, but a very key one is that you appear to treat grid upgrades as solely for connecting more renewables. While that is a big train for grid upgrades, they are also required for the electrification of other sectors you suggest doing instead. Insufficient grid capacity is a major driver of delays in grid connections, and this slows down all kinds of projects, from railway electrification (upgrades), industrial electrification, new industry, etc.
Therefore, I don't see how you could speed up replacing gas/oil/other fuels with electricity, without grid upgrades and more (renewable) generation.
For domestic heat pumps instead of gas/oil heating, which could be installed more widely without grid upgrades, the climate change committee recommends the ratio of electricity to gas prices should reduce to something between 3:1 to 2:1 (see the first point under "priority actions"). This will also support industrial electrification.
And the only realistic proposal to reduce wholesale electricity prices is to reduce the amount of time gas contributed to the grid at all. This requires more renewables, more storage, and more grid upgrades.
However I do agree other measures are important, and the government decision to include heat batteries and air-to-air heatpumps in the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is a good start on that
According to this TicTok there's likely to be a government announcement on breaking the link Bryan electricity prices and gas prices next week:
Same video is also available on Facebook:
www.facebook.com
Same video is also available on Facebook:
136K views · 5.6K reactions | Ecotricity did it - after four years of campaigning to reform our energy market by ‘breaking the link’ - our government just announced it will. Our bills will be lower, so will inflation and bank lending rates, our econo
Ecotricity did it - after four years of campaigning to reform our energy market by ‘breaking the link’ - our government just announced it will. Our bills will be lower, so will inflation and bank...
www.facebook.com
There is growing opposition to wind farms and mega pylons in the North of Scotland, caused b poor planning and disruption to small communities using infrastructure that cannot cope with increased construction traffic.
The webpages below are just a sample of the local opposition in the Scottish Highlands, they explain why they are opposed and the issues that they say are the start of the industrialisation of the area.
“
Communities B4 Power Companies
Communities B4 Power Companies is a campaign group set up to stop the annihilation of our environment by a wealthy multinational company.
www.communitiesb4powercompanies.co.uk
“
NORoS - No Ring of Steel Kyle of Sutherland
www.noringofsteel.com
There are many more of these groups.
Last edited:
Technologist
Member
- Joined
- 29 May 2018
- Messages
- 467
See previous point on LCOE of gas plants, at today's gas prices a CCGT plant would deliver electricity at less cost than all the offshore wind contracts bar the AR4 2021 costs. Those wind turbines were priced cheap because there was a low oil price due to COVID and most of the inputs to a wind turbine are dependant on primary energy costs. The CCGT costs more than wind because of policy choices to run them less often and then apply carbon levies.
The whole sale electricity cost is a pretty low fraction of the bill, bills are expensive because we are paying for more renewables, more storage, more peakers and more grid upgrades.