Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
That will not happen here because Richborough Power station will be long gone, sadly along with its coal mines.
So another alternative for this site could be UCG. Underground Coal Gasification.
I have mentioned this before, so sorry for repeating myself but I do see this as a potential energy and employment site for Kent.
http://www.ucgassociation.org/"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Wonders will never cease, "an integrated process which generates more thermal energy than it consumes", so what or where is the inevitable 'cost'?
A low-carbon wood product? Perhaps this is relative to cheap-coal.
Is this not the stuff, wood-pellets, that has been burning away in Essex through last week?
They do say Gary, that the cooling towers are not now structurally sound. (Mandy Rice-Davis again)
100,000 tonnes of biocoal must be equivalent to to a greater weight of wood. How much does a wet fast-growing pine tree weigh? How many hectares do 1,000 trees cover?
It sounds like magic, saved only because of the certain renewable nature of the process.
A tree grows by taking CO2 from the atmosphere [leaving soil nutrition to one side...for now] and turning this into combustible wood....
Really, the sticking point is the low-in-carbon (compared to what?) and the acreage. Then there is Global Warming, how is that to change the growth of such "forestry products"?
All of which is small-beer compared with the phrase, "Green Energy Park". Everything nowadays has to have the name of some comic book Super-Hero.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Tom.
I don't pretend to know much about this, having only read about it the same as you.
They do not mention "trees" only "forestry products". More investigation needed I think. My first thought on that was, they were trying to swerve the green issue but I could be wrong. Anyway, that's another issue.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Dear Gary. Mine were entirely open questions and not in the least aimed (solely) at you. There is ever a yawning gap between what a seller says and a buyer needs to know.
It is useful to be kept up-to-the-minute on such things though. Good on you.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Tom.
Yes, I was aware they were open questions and not aimed at me
.
As the poster, I was just owning up to not knowing much about it but I am investigating further.
So at this time, I am neither for or against it but as I said earlier, too late for Richborough.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Paul Watkins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 9 Nov 2011
- Posts: 2,226
Does not biomass really mean burning [environmentally dressed up description] & the requirement of chimneys?
Watty
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Paul.
It means Chimneys as in Power Station Chimneys, like the ones being demolished at Richborough.
IE, burning wood pellets instead of coal in power stations to produce electrcity.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Paul Watkins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 9 Nov 2011
- Posts: 2,226
Not the point Gary.
The locals are already up in arms over chimneys for waste incineration.
Don't believe the old chimney would meet todays environmental requirements.
Watty
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Paul.
What aren't the locals up in arms over, good job someone let their houses be built on farmland many years ago
Yes, too late for our old chimneys but the Underground Coal Gasification plant could be a winner
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Gary, coal isn't used to make gas any more in Britain. North Sea gas was introduced, being cleaner and safer.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Alex.
There has been several test sites around the UK that have successfully produced gas from coal.
During the past two years the Coal Authority, on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, without much publicity, has issued 18 underground coal gasification (UCG) licences.
Clean Coal Limited has five licences around the coast of Britain and is trying to locate reserves which are off shore and too deep to be mined traditionally.
It is thought up to one billion tonnes of coal could lie beneath the surface.
Channel 4 News
Wednesday 04 January 2012
Rohan Courtney believes that over one billion tons of coal lie beneath Swansea bay.
The man with his eye on Swansea Bay is Rohan Courtney. A veteran of the energy exploration game, he helped to turn a tiny oil company called Tullow Energy into one of Britain's biggest companies, by exploiting neglected energy reserves in Africa and the North Sea.
He believes that over one billion tons of coal lie beneath Swansea bay. Later this year his company will start work on a project to drill into it and burn it.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
1 billion tonnes of coal, that's a lot! Have you an idea of the market value, Gary?
Something similar is lying under Windsor Castle, I calculated, going by the amount of barrels estimated to be lying there, that £12 billion worth of oil lies neatly tucked away under the Castle. As it is a State-owned property, I doubt the house of Windsor can claim any of it.
But the figures involved are certainly going to attract the Treasury's attention, heh heh
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
I think you will find that this much hyped greener, alternative energy is nothing of the sort. It's all spin. All we have to go on is the company's best dressed advertising slogans and pretty pictures with happy smiling workers making the planet clean again like it was before we emerged with eyes blinking from the caves.
Science tells us that you don't get nothing from nothing. There is no such thing as energy being produced for free. Yet environloonies still insist that their pipe dream utopian plans will work and set us all free from the evils of carbon.
Ironically there is test drilling for shale gas going on nearby and hopefully this will prove successful and enrich our energy reserves and bring down the cost of heating our homes. We shall see.
In the meantime for those who still think that wind turbines are the saviour I suggest they read this latest offering from someone who knows what he is talking about:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/9120756/How-much-profit-will-a-turbine-turn.htmlGuest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Alex.
I have no idea of the market value but very high energy and employment value I should think.
PhilipP.
Lots of things are hyped with slogans and pretty pictures, that does not mean the product is not what it states on the packet.
When it comes to global change, I am firmly sat on the fence, as to what is the cause.
I have no idea what is causing Global change in weather etc. but it is a fact that is happening and if you can't see that, then you are not looking.
I could be wrong but it seems to me that anything the "environloonies" are anti on, you are pro for.
You seem to be approving of shale gas extraction but against coal gas extraction?
Personally I think we need to be cautious about both until more test are carried out but neither should be dismissed because the "environloonies" are pro or anti.
Again personally, I would rather see 4 collieries in Kent as opposed to wind turbines. The money wasted on turbines should have been used to develop cleaner ways of using coal, keeping our pits and our coal fired power stations open, solving energy and employment problems.
If Richborough Power station had been developed to burn our coal more friendly and our collieries were still open, how different would life be now, here in this little corner of Kent?
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
I agree, the discontinuation of coal-mining was a wanton act of (social) destruction.
All that seems to have happened with GW is Carbon Credits and that has led to more tax, more cash 'earned' without justification and the further destruction of the under-developed world.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 725- Registered: 7 Oct 2011
- Posts: 1,418
Gary, I'm all for coal fired energy generation. Open up every available coal mine I say. We've got abundant amounts of coal beneath our feet but european gaia worshippers insist that coal is bad and wind is good.
We will be shutting down every single coal fired power station over the next few years because the hippies tell us to do so.
As it stands millions of pounds is being wasted to try to invent clean coal which basically means carbon sequestration or pumping the carbon dioxide from the waste gases into rock beneath our feet.
It is a technology which will fail and should fail because it's a stupid idea.
Gas, coal, shale, nuclear = good.
Wind, tidal, solar, biomass, biofuel = evil.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
biofuel is entirely good. There are simply no ifs and buts about it.
What is destroyed by combustion is re-gifted for re-combustion in a thoroughly natural and totally sustainable way.
It is man and nature working together. The bug-bear is use verses supply. In the short term the squandrous usage and the waste must be addressed. We all must adapt to develop sustainable life-styles;Small Is Beautiful.
It is the species that matters most, yet it is the entirely nebulous concept of money that grabs all out attention.
What better time to adapt in this way than when there is no money?
[I'll risk this next bit...big of me, I know]
It is the addict whose mind is filled with thoughts of that which he lacks. Be it drug or cash.
There IS simply more to life.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
I am not a hippy or "environloony" (love that word Philip) and as I have said I do not know what is causing GW.
As this thread is about Richborough PP and not GW, all that I have to say is, that we all need to act responsibly and if we can make something better then we should.
We have coal reserves and sometime in the future we will have to use them, if we can make it safer then we should make it safer.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
PhilipP
I disagree with tidal = evil.
It is almost entirely constant and free and there must be an easy way to harness that power or is it simply one of those paradoxes, that as most countries have access to this potential energy, no super power could go to war to protect it or to control its cost?
Imagine if we could run cars on water, what global chaos would that cause?
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
#37, I like it Tom!
You don't have to be loony to want renewable energy sources rather than those that will 1) run out 2) cause damage.
