North Sea Coal

[Sprotyrover]

You will recall that there was a plan to turn Hatfield into a Coal gasification project approx 10 years ago,it didn't get very far as you literally would have to set fire to the coal seams under the district.
It seems that there is a scheme in the pipeline which will operate in the North Sea off Hartlepool where there is 6 billion tons just a few miles out.
The gas produced is Syngas which is similar to town gas.
The main reason this development is being driven is that there is an estimated 27 trillion tons of Coal in the British sector of the North Sea.
It's an absolutely staggering figure and by all accounts the technology has been developed.I presume that the excess carbo will be pumped in the empty oil fields which also forces the remaining Oil to form into
Economically accessible reservoirs.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

[roversdude]

Hmmm seem to remember the Hatfield scheme relied on technology that had never been proven. I would imagine any payback period would make it unviable anyway.
Having worked at Markham Main I know that coal seams had been proven from Armthorpe out into the North Sea.
Personally I think we need to make sustainable fuel energy the main focus

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

Never be used now given the policies to carbon neutral.

[SydneyRover]

Carbon Capture and Storage has not been successfully developed by anyone as yet bfyp

''Carbon Capture Suffers a Huge Setback as Kemper Plant Suspends Work

It’s the latest U.S. government-supported boondoggle around CCS''

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/carbon-capture-suffers-a-huge-setback-as-kemper-plant-suspends-work#gs.7v4vym

[Sprotyrover]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

Never be used now given the policies to carbon neutral.

That's whatI thought butt I wondered why we have kept quiet about US and Chinese Coal production and Jeremy Corbyn said himself when he visited The Trades and Labour club in town that he personally would bring back Coalmining.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

Never be used now given the policies to carbon neutral.

I meant why burn hydrocarbons, using up a valuable and flexible chemical resource and polluting at the same time.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

Never be used now given the policies to carbon neutral.

That's whatI thought butt I wondered why we have kept quiet about US and Chinese Coal production and Jeremy Corbyn said himself when he visited The Trades and Labour club in town that he personally would bring back Coalmining.

Unlike him to try to appeal to all despite conflicting demands.  He wants to bring it back but be carbon neutral, pretty tricky.

[wilts rover]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

Never be used now given the policies to carbon neutral.

That's whatI thought butt I wondered why we have kept quiet about US and Chinese Coal production and Jeremy Corbyn said himself when he visited The Trades and Labour club in town that he personally would bring back Coalmining.

Unlike him to try to appeal to all despite conflicting demands.  He wants to bring it back but be carbon neutral, pretty tricky.

That was back in 2015 when he ran for the leadership.

In 2019 Labour have been at the forefront of declaring a climate emergency and only last week passed a resolution to campaign on a Green New Deal in the next election.

See, when the facts change people can change their minds....

[i_ateallthepies]

And why in God's name would you do that? Why use up a natural resource when we're at tipping point for sustainable power generation?

Never be used now given the policies to carbon neutral.

That's whatI thought butt I wondered why we have kept quiet about US and Chinese Coal production and Jeremy Corbyn said himself when he visited The Trades and Labour club in town that he personally would bring back Coalmining.

Unlike him to try to appeal to all despite conflicting demands.  He wants to bring it back but be carbon neutral, pretty tricky.

That was back in 2015 when he ran for the leadership.

In 2019 Labour have been at the forefront of declaring a climate emergency and only last week passed a resolution to campaign on a Green New Deal in the next election.

See, when the facts change people can change their minds....

Has global warming only been known about since 2015?  It seems like ages since the greenhouse effect was identified

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Sensible, that wasnt made clear in Sproty's posts.  I wonder what their view on steel is given they called for it to be nationalised.  How would they keep british steel or tata in Wales going by removing the carbon element and at what cost?

[wilts rover]

There will be more detail when Labour publish their manifesto but here is a bit of reading for you:

https://www.labourgnd.uk/

https://www.labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/The-Green-Transformation-.pdf

[selby]

  I would think that the days of anyone reading the labour party manifesto and believing any word that is printed are long gone.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Aye. Cos they're all as bad as each other aren't they Selby.

[Not Now Kato]

  I would think that the days of anyone reading the labour party manifesto and believing any word that is printed are long gone.

The same, if not more, could be said about the Tory manifesto!

[drfchound]

Or the Lib Dem’s, or the Brexit Party, or the SNP, hell, they are all the same.

[Ldr]

If you trust the word of anyone in politics then you dont deserve the vote

[DonnyOsmond]

To be fair some of those mentioned haven't been in power for years or ever to even be judged, i.e. Labour and Brexit Party.

[BillyStubbsTears]

There's some very silly comments in here.

No political party can ever implement all of its manifesto or every aspiration they ever announce. It's childish to think they will.

What you need to do is grow up a bit and look at the sort of country and society they want to move us towards being.

Look at the big picture, not the detail. Otherwise, you're like a kid who's been promised a 99 with sprinkles and strawberry sauce and then moans when the sprinkles are chocolate instead of 100s & 1000s.

[drfchound]

Or people could be like the crowd who believed that the emperor had a new suit of clothes.

[BillyStubbsTears]

That doesn't make any sense as a reply to my post Hound.

The point is that politicians and political parties DO have aspirations to change the fundamental direction of a country and society. It makes far more sense to engage with that than to moan about individual promises not being kept.

In 1979 Thatcher promised she wouldn't increase VAT and said nothing about planning a massive rise in unemployment to try to drive down inflation. On both of those specific issues she was less than truthful. But she DID say that the overall aim of her Government was to reduce the power of the state and the trades unions, to give more power to business and to reduce the take take. On those broader aims, she did more or less what she said she'd do.

Blair and Brown said that they'd broadly keep the societal changes that thatcher had brought, but would have a more active Govt role in redistribtion of wealth and capital investment. Whatever you think of any specific promises they might or might not have kept, they did do that.

Cameron and Osborne said that they would curtail Govt spending to try to get the deficit under control. Again, whatever you think of their specific individual promises, they did give us a decade of suppressed Govt spending, compared to what they inherited. (It didn't work in bringing the deficit down as they said it would, and they f**ked the recovery in the meantime, but that's not what we are talking about.)

It;s frankly childish to say that you can't trust politicians at all. On the BIG picture, they do tend to do what they say they are going to do when elected.

So, if you're properly going to engage with the upcoming election, look at the big picture being painted by the parties for the sort of society they want, not at fiddly details.

[selby]

  Billy when you grow up you will probably vote for another party rather than Labour if you have any family you want to benefit from your hard work.

[Ldr]

Point of order BST, the deficit is reducing, debt is not

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Back on to the more prevalent point, do we not all have a responsibility to think of the environment?  The question though is what price are we prepared to pay? Is it jobs, ie the steel industry? Is it increased costs eg electric cars or less travel etc?

Note I dont have an answer but clearly we need to invest in it, potentially it's the next industrial revolution.

[selby]

  Talking of electric cars, a government report suggests they be fitted with a black box and charged by the mile on the roads instead of fuel duty. Bingo big brother.

[silent majority]

The Climate Change Act 2008 was just the start.

On 27th June this year, BEIS, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy released a statement stating that the 2008 Act was being amended and we would be clear of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the first major economy to do so.

To achieve that action is needed to drive uptake of low carbon heating in the 2020's. What will that mean?

All new homes off the gas grid will have low carbon systems by 2025.

Work will begin to replace the gas grid entirely, mostly utilising hydrogen. Biogas is also a possibility.

So, it doesn't matter how much coal is in the North Sea, and how much of it can be converted to town gas, it won't be touched, at all.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Point of order BST, the deficit is reducing, debt is not

I know.

I said they didn't reduce it as they'd planned.

Osborne said in 2010 that the structural deficit would be eliminated by 2015.

Every sane economist said:
1) Why?
2) You won't do that by curtailing Govt spending. That will depress economic performance and therefore Govt income through taxes.

Guess what? The recovery tanked and the deficit came down far more slowly than planned.

Osborne then extended the deadline to 2020.

Then we had the Brexit vote and the economy tanked again and Hammond extended the date at which we eliminate the structural deficit to 2025.

[Dagenham Rover]

As a kid we went to relations near Hartlepool part of the "holiday" going picking up sea coal off the beaches for them 

[Sprotyrover]

4 new Gas turbines being built at Drax 🤔

[ravenrover]

If any of our posters are from the North East they will be able to confirm that quite a few of the NE collieries closed because of the travelling distance under the N Sea to reach the coal face. Easington I believe were 7-8 miles out it tokk too long to get the miners to the face.