Demolishing coal-fired power stations delays the transition to 100% renewable energy!
Why? Simply because without those power stations converted to burn renewable-energy biomass as back-up power, the cost and the time taken for the transition to 100% renewable energy will be multiple times greater.
Meanwhile, burning fossil-fuel natural gas as back-up power may keep the lights on but it will bind the world into a fossil-fuelled future for many more years.
So we absolutely need biomass burning for an efficient transition.
Tree-huggers may foolishly rejoice that fewer trees will be felled if there are fewer biomass-burning power stations to burn them in?
Don’t celebrate too soon – massive wild-fires will eventually consume most of the trees that tree-huggers want to hug and those trees will go up in smoke sooner or later.
I am sorry but the harsh reality is that tree-hugging, massive wild-fires and burning fossil-fuel natural gas are not “helping”, but hindering the transition.
So ignoramus politicians who offer to “cushion” the effect of demolishing critical power station infrastructure that we urgently need to save for the transition to 100% renewable energy should have effigies of themselves burned at the stake!
Tree-hugging foolishness, at the highest level!
Fossil-fuel burning tree-hugging hypocrites aren’t lifting a finger to reduce the scale of devastating wild-fires, in Brazil, in the American West, in Australia, or indeed anywhere in this world. Indeed, tree-hugging is making wild-fires worse.
It is the sustainable harvesting of trees that will give forests their best economic value.
A metaphorically “hugged tree”, in Brazil, say, hugged by touchy-feely President Macron at a G7 meeting, is totally worthless to a Brazilian farmer who will ignore the tree-huggers and set fires so that the hugged tree and its neighbours are burnt to a crisp so that the farmer can plant crops and graze cattle, feed his family.
Meanwhile, the hugged and wild-fire burnt trees of the world are of no use whatsoever for back-up power generation at times of low wind and solar power, but the tree-huggers will look the other way as fossil-fuels are burned for back-up power, stoking up the problem of global warming and natural wild fires.
The tree-huggers are the fellow travellers and bed fellows of climate deniers – all hand-wringing, no solutions and no appetite for an open debate. Tree-huggers need their “safe zones” to get away with being dead wrong.
Whereas a “harvested tree” that is turned into wood pellets and sold to biomass power stations that keep the lights on without burning fossil fuel is a source of income for the forester who replants more trees to sustain his source of income and feed his family, creating fire-breaks to contain wild-fires and now the forest thrives. Then we can stop burning fossil fuels and halt global warming in its tracks. Win, win.
See – How to convert old coal-fired power stations for the transition to renewable energy
Scottish Scientist 
The Independent – COP26: Claire Perry O’Neill ‘threatens to sue government’ over dismissal as climate summit chief
“Ex-energy minister sacked after just six months in role heading up UN conference”
The Scottish government should sue her, Claire Perry, for the Tory party industrial vandalism of the decommissioning and demolition of Longannet Power station, Fife, Scotland, vital for renewable energy back-up power burning biomass.
Sue Claire Perry, Nick Hurd, Amber Rudd and Theresa May for their Tory-boy vandalism of Longannet.
I am not sure who can sue the UK government for solid-fuel power stations demolished in England and Wales – Rugeley, Ferrybridge, Cottam, Aberthaw, Eggborough, Fiddlers Ferry etc. that were / are needed for renewable energy back-up power? Perhaps the Local Government Association, or environment organisations – Greenpeace, WWF, FoE etc can sue the UK government?
We can safely predict that there will be much boasting in the lead up to COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, 9-12 November 2020 [edited – now postponed until 1-12 November 2021], that “Scotland now generates 100% of its electricity (or the equivalent thereof) from renewable energy”.
Scotland has about 1/3rd of the land mass of the UK so ought to be planning to generate 1/3rd (or more considering offshore generation) of the UK’s renewable energy.
In a 100% renewable energy grid that means that Scotland will be generating power for 1/3rd of the UK population (1/3 x 66 million = 22 million people) or 4 times more than the population of Scotland.
So the impressive goal to aim for is for Scotland generating 400% of Scotland’s own electricity usage.
So I’m not so impressed with achieving this 100% milestone and don’t feel like boasting. That is something that Scotland should pass at speed without slowing to rubber-neck the milestone itself or to boast.
Anyway, Scotland still has insufficient back-up power at times of low wind generation, even having to import electricity from England on occasion.
Solid-fuel-burning power stations, like Longannet was, are a bit slow to fire up from cold, admittedly, but it is easy enough in principle to manage supply and demand by smoothing with energy storage and power regeneration from pumped storage hydro-electricity, power to gas (making hydrogen by electrolysis), batteries and super-capacitors.
There’s too much unwarranted media and political hyperbole about Scotland and renewable energy. The Scottish and UK governments haven’t got a clue and their clueless advisers are supporting the Carbon, Capture, Storage and Leak fraud which cannot guarantee that any carbon dioxide allegedly “stored” will never leak and worse, CCS-LEAK companies will have business models which encourage them to leak CO2 off the books to boost profits.
So COP26 isn’t going to learn anything from the hosts, the UK. If you want to learn from Scotland’s climate change action world-leading expert – stay home, don’t come to Glasgow COP26 and go online instead and read this blog. You might learn something.
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