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So our government in its wisdom has announced closure of all coal fired power stations by 2025 or earlier (2023). Is this the 1955 'modernisation plan' of the electric power industry? It does mean reliance on nuclear stations (yet to be built by Chinese & French interests which are bound to over-run on cost & time), imported gas (price & supply beyond our control) , and renewables (variable supply). One wonders how feasible and smart this decision is. UK power generation policy has been mainly deferral of costly decisions and 'hope for the best' since dear old Lord Marshall (kept the lights on in 83-4) shuffled off.

 

What does this mean for the rail industry? Closure of the last remaining deep mines, no more opencast, greatly reduced coal imports, no more block coal trains within 8-10 years from Immingham through Lincoln & other places? Redundant 60s, 66s & fleets of coal trains?

 

UK coal and rail have co-existed for 280 years or so. Will this be the end? And will the next step be to clamp down on those 'smoky carbon-polluting' preserved steam locos, or to inflict punitive carbon taxes? I would not put it past our political masters. We do need clean power, but even the flow of anhydrite from power station exhaust gas scrubbers to Rushcliffe over the GCR(N) for conversion to gypsum will go...another manufacturing industry and more jobs will be at risk.

 

What do you think?

 

Dava

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The threat to all steam engines, would be that coal would become so limited in production that it is no longer viable to import or transport at a cost that small users could afford.

So the individual traction engine owner might be forced out of use, the smaller revenue steam railway might find the economics are no longer viable.

The alternative would be perhaps oil firing, which may be impracticable for exactly the same reasons of cost or practicality.

 

As the owner of a couple of vintage lorries, I often ponder if I am only saving them for a future scrap-man, as they become harder to find parts for, as fuel becomes less suitable, and the motoring public less tolerant of a 70 year old relic on 'their' road.

There are currently too many 'preserved' vehicles for them all to last in perpetuity in museums.

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I think that if this is enacted it is essentially just the logical conclusion of policies going back quite a number of years although perhaps this is the point where we explicitly state that elimination of coal will happen.

Is it a good decision? That is a complex question and the answer depends upon how it might be executed. If the phase out of coal is accompanied by sufficient investment in other forms of energy to offset the loss then it probably is the right decision. Ambitious yes but in a sense one of the problems with the UK in the last couple of decades has been a lack of ambition and I think we need to do a lot more big decision making and doing things rather than things just continuing based on little more than institutional inertia and a "that'll do" approach. If it is just a switching off of coal plants without sufficient investment elsewhere then it'll be a disaster.

One way or the other coals viability is limited to emissions abatement and carbon capture I think. In terns of SOx, NOx, particulates and many other pollutants existing emissions abatement works well but so far for carbon despite a lot of hype there has been limited success and you have to ask the question of how much effort and money do we want to throw at making coal work in environmental terms rather than just biting the bullet and moving on.

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This will undoubtedly be a challenge for the rail freight industry but it's welcome news for the planet. Coal fired power stations are Britain's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and we have to deal with that sooner rather than later.

 

Intermodal has already overtaken coal as the largest rail freight sector after years of sustained growth. What really needs to happen is creating the conditions for intermodal to flourish as coal winds down e.g. Felixstowe - Nuneaton upgrading. There's certainly a risk that freight-orientated enhancements will be sidelined or deferred because of Network Rail's budgetary crisis - the industry will need to fight its corner to get the better infrastructure it needs for growth.

 

As for rolling stock, the downturn in coal has already rendered plenty of DB Schenker's HTA hoppers redundant. Some of these are now appearing on aggregate flows.

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Coal traffic is largely power station based but there are other bulk flows, feedstock for coke ovens in the steel industry for one. Yes it will inevitably reduce the demand for rail transport of coal but as I sat through a conference a few months ago when paths for biomass, or the lack of them were discussed, I doubt those paths vacated will be vacant for long and as the UK deep mine industry is paltry and most of it is likely to be defunct by that stage anyway, its little different whether we're importing coal or gas, we don't have control over either of them.

 

Not a great situation but already we've lost control over the vast majority of our electrical generating capability, this alters little.

 

As for the gypsum question, this came about as a by-product of power generation FGDS, it's hardly a primary industry.

 

Like it or not, coal fired stations are going to have to go at some stage

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The latest ORR reporter which reports and tracks changes to pass and freight business in UK reported a few weeks ago, coal by rail this year versus last, down by 67% - so it feels like the beginning of the end.

 

UKs last deep coal mine (Kellingley) shuts in a few weeks time, couple that with closure soon of Longannnet Power Station which takes rail borne coal, and it all starts adding up as to a changed (rail) freight landscape.

 

I traveled by rail to the West last Saturday and was taken by surprise by relatively new HHA Freightliner coal wagons at Exeter Riverside Yard - I'm told they are in storage. Then yesterday saw a Merehead - Wootton Bassett stone train and half the train was DBS HTA bogie coal wagons, used for stone traffic given down turn in coal.

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Like it or not, coal fired stations are going to have to go at some stage

 

The absolutely bonkers thing is that, as far as I can make out, it looks like they will have shut the last coal fired plant before the gas ones are on stream.

 

Better start saving your buckets of electricity...

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Environmentally the reduction in coal use is a good thing. Not sure if UK doing this has a lot of point when Germany is closing nuclear plants and building coal powered power stations!

From a railway perspective we can only hope the freight side of the industry can be used for taking other freight off the road. I know I am a hopeless optimist.

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So our government in its wisdom has announced closure of all coal fired power stations by 2025 or earlier (2023). Is this the 1955 'modernisation plan' of the electric power industry? It does mean reliance on nuclear stations (yet to be built by Chinese & French interests which are bound to over-run on cost & time), imported gas (price & supply beyond our control) , and renewables (variable supply). One wonders how feasible and smart this decision is. UK power generation policy has been mainly deferral of costly decisions and 'hope for the best' since dear old Lord Marshall (kept the lights on in 83-4) shuffled off.

What does this mean for the rail industry? Closure of the last remaining deep mines, no more opencast, greatly reduced coal imports, no more block coal trains within 8-10 years from Immingham through Lincoln & other places? Redundant 60s, 66s & fleets of coal trains?

UK coal and rail have co-existed for 280 years or so. Will this be the end? And will the next step be to clamp down on those 'smoky carbon-polluting' preserved steam locos, or to inflict punitive carbon taxes? I would not put it past our political masters. We do need clean power, but even the flow of anhydrite from power station exhaust gas scrubbers to Rushcliffe over the GCR(N) for conversion to gypsum will go...another manufacturing industry and more jobs will be at risk.

What do you think?

Dava

280 Years of coal and rail?

 

The deep coal mines will be gone by December when Kellingley shuts.

 

All the political parties agree coal isn't the future.

 

But it does make you think what it will do to those locations where coal trains are a big feature.

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They are experimenting I believe with storing energy in the North East either as compressed air or water which basically is pumped to high pressure using renewable energy and then it can be released to drive turbines when required solving some of the problem of demand management with sun and wind schemes.

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So our government in its wisdom has announced closure of all coal fired power stations by 2025 or earlier (2023). Is this the 1955 'modernisation plan' of the electric power industry? It does mean reliance on nuclear stations (yet to be built by Chinese & French interests which are bound to over-run on cost & time), imported gas (price & supply beyond our control) , and renewables (variable supply). One wonders how feasible and smart this decision is. UK power generation policy has been mainly deferral of costly decisions and 'hope for the best' since dear old Lord Marshall (kept the lights on in 83-4) shuffled off.

 

 

 

It's not necessarily all coal-fired power stations. If any go down the carbon capture route, they would still be allowed, but the technology will quite likely be too expensive. Biomas conversions could still happen, but after the Gov't has snafu'd Drax I don't suppose anyone wants to try that route for a while. Thing is there is a supply hole looming and no detailed agreement on how to fill it yet.

 

The gas supply situation is actually a whole lot more stable now the US has got out of the import market completely, and Asia has slowed down. Prices are as low as they ever have been, a good time to switch if you haven't recently....

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We can date transport of coal by rail back to at least 1725 on the Tanfield Railway (290 years rather than 280)

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanfield_Railway

 

No new nuclear stations will be online by 2025 and it is questionable whether there will be sufficient new gas generation capacity, so the ability of baseload generation capacity to meet peak demand will be uncertain. Some good points being made in this debate which is not attracting much media scrutiny.

 

Dava

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They are experimenting I believe with storing energy in the North East either as compressed air or water which basically is pumped to high pressure using renewable energy and then it can be released to drive turbines when required solving some of the problem of demand management with sun and wind schemes.

 

Worldwide there are trials going on to use renewable electricity to make hydrogen, which is then stored in the gas network ready for when the demand arrives.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

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Water (and oil) is incompressible. If it was your car brakes wouldn't work. Must be air - that's compressible. I doubt you can compress enough air to give power station capacity outputs using renewables. Worth a try I suppose.

 

Renewable energy, fine as it is, is just NOT enough. How many windmills / solar panels will replace the big coal stations like Drax, 3960 MW ? As I type Drax is generating 2873 MW, and coal is producing 22% of the nations power.

 

Germany is building new coal stations burning dirty Lignite, shutting down her nuclear plants. China and India also heavily into new coal plants. THEY don't give a toss, why should we (freeze in future winters).

 

We have non engineering background idiots in charge of our country. The lights will go out soon, and we will freeze. (Your gas fired central heating needs electricity to run the pump / controls etc).

 

I despair.

 

Brit15

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Hydrogen, That's the one I was thinking of, I had the ingredients but not the final gaseous solution.

 

Make gas with renewables, store gas, burn gas to make electricity.

 

And I am very tired, storing water under compression, what kinda idiot says that, oh yeah me.

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Worldwide there are trials going on to use renewable electricity to make hydrogen, which is then stored in the gas network ready for when the demand arrives.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

 

Trouble with Hydrogen is that you need to input more energy INTO the system to produce it than what you get out. So it's not cheap and never will be.

 

Also you can't mix Hydrogen with Natural Gas (Methane). This would cause a zillion problems not least conversion of every gas appliance (remember Towns gas conversion to Natural Gas back in the 70's). Hydrogen though is a clean fuel and has many other uses, IF it is economically and commercially viable to produce it.

 

The world is awash with cheap oil & gas at the moment. How long that will last is the $64million question.

 

Brit15

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New build coal was effectively killed in the UK when E.ON abandoned Kingsnorth 5 & 6 and the industry decided the political climate made efforts to build new coal plants a non starter. The older plants can't go on forever, although some have been heavily re-engineered such as Ratcliffe. If the political will and investment is there then I see no technical reasons why a move to alternatives cannot work. However those are two large caveats.

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Trouble with Hydrogen is that you need to input more energy INTO the system to produce it than what you get out. So it's not cheap and never will be.

 

That is true of every power generation and transmission system. The real question is whether it is cheaper overall to do this, than building a whole heap of spare capacity elsewhere running on fossil fuels. A system wide analysis is really quite difficult to do, as so many assumptions need to be made, which then get undone by each successive Gov't's constantly shifting energy policy, usually based on not much more than dogma and ideology.

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There are few if any technical reasons for alternative power generation (wind & solar) not to work. Though they wont work on a still, cold winters night when the load is at peak.

 

Basically you need a hell of a lot of energy (plus a bit more for losses) to produce a hell of a lot of electricity. Wind and solar just are not enough, and never will be. Pumped storage, etc only helps a little. The Severn Barrage would be a good start in my opinion. Morecambe Bay etc also. But these have been recently ruled out.

 

The choice then is either new Gas or Nuclear. Several mega plants with a generating capacity like Drax. Cost £MANY billions.

 

Fracking has gone quietly off the radar recently, So big future new gas loads will need to be imported LNG (liquefied natural gas) from Qatar etc. Bit risky in the long term.

 

We had better, as a nation, take our fingers out and get something built and operating soon.

 

Brit15

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WIth nothing around to replace them in time I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if we find the coal power stations "unexpectedly" staying open past this date. Announcing removing them plays into the environmental line of course but the timescale is so unbelievably short that it really beggars belief.

 

The point about hydrogen is that it's a means of storage, like pumped storage. Overall it uses power but it smooths it out by storing excess production until it's needed (whether that's wind on a windy day for when it's still, or off-peak generation from the likes of nuclear which can't be changed quickly, so you don't need to build enough to meet the peak demand and waste it the rest of the time). I've not a clue how viable it is but at least unlike, say, pumped storage at least hydrogen doesn't require being lucky enough to have suitable geography.

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A problem the delightful Ms. Rudd faces in making such policy decisions is that it is well known that her bro Roland is a heavy hitter in the gas & nuclear PR business leading to claims of conflict of interest which have been well documented:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Rudd

 

Dava

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What does this mean for the rail industry? Closure of the last remaining deep mines, no more opencast, greatly reduced coal imports, no more block coal trains within 8-10 years from Immingham through Lincoln & other places? Redundant 60s, 66s and fleets of coal trains?

 

Please remember that previously coal burning power stations like Drax are heavily investing in Biomas burning - and as the calorific content of Biomas is a lot lower than coal you need to increase the supply volumes acordingly. Burning Biomas is also seen as a 'cleanish' source of power generation so is not affected by any moves to 'stop burning coal' the Government or industry may trumpet in the press.

 

What does all this mean for rail - well all those 66s are just as capable of hauling trains of wood pellets around as coal - though the wagons are not (but that doesn't prevent bits like bogies being recycled into new Biomas wagons).

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I traveled by rail to the West last Saturday and was taken by surprise by relatively new HHA Freightliner coal wagons at Exeter Riverside Yard - I'm told they are in storage. Then yesterday saw a Merehead - Wootton Bassett stone train and half the train was DBS HTA bogie coal wagons, used for stone traffic given down turn in coal.

Freight liner have sent several HHA bogie hoppers to Booths for scrapping in recent weeks, bogies & brakes recovered for reuse apparently but bodies cut up.

 

All freight companies are using their coal hoppers in aggregates use, either as replacement for older types or as extra capacity (construction is booming again).

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Babble, babble, babble. Germany is going back to coal, India and China never left it, the Russians use it while they export oil and gas for hard currency. Our emissions don't even register on the global scale.

 

The liberal left get a warm fuzzy feeling down their inside leg, a handful of politicians get lucrative rewards from vested interests (although trivial in terms of the rewards to those vested interests) and that's all.

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