Half of Scotland's Energy Consumption Came From Renewables Last Year (heraldscotland.com) 218
An anonymous reader quotes an article on Herald Scotland: Scotland has met a key target for renewable energy consumption, according to official figures. Statistics published by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change show 57.7% of Scottish electricity consumption came from renewables in 2015 -- 7.7% ahead of the 50% target. The SNP welcomed the figures and pledged to bring forward plans to go further if re-elected in May. Deputy First Minister and SNP campaign director John Swinney said: "The SNP have long championed green energy and these new figures show the huge progress we have made - but we are determined to go even further.
Wrong title (Score:5, Informative)
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Scotland does not have indigenous demand sufficient to consume its electricity generation; about 35% of its electricity generation is exported to England. About 2% of electricity demand is imported from England during periods of low wind generation.
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Half of Scotland's electricity production came from renewables.
The consumption came from deep fat fryers and the Irn Bru factory, obviously.
Re:Wrong title (Score:4, Insightful)
Which doesn't count because...?
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They are building artificial tidal lagoons for it now. It affects the environment, but not as much as the coal or nuclear or gas that it replaces. Doesn't have to be huge either, just enough to smooth out other forms of energy like wind. They have a lot of wind up there, especially off-shore.
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In general, there are three objections to bragging about hydro:
1. It's old-ass technology, and will only impress people with it's sheer scale - not with your ability to make it.
2. It's environmentally destructive, so way to go you just flooded one environment and destroyed a river system.
3. It isn't available everywhere, so good for you but it does us no good.
If Scotland implemented solar, now that would be impressive. All of those green plants must live on something.
Re:Wrong title (Score:5, Insightful)
And fossil fuels aren't "old-ass technology"?
Not nearly as environmentally destructive as fossil fuels. Have you have been to coal country? Have you seen what coal mines do to the land?
That's really a stretch. Some places have sunshine. Some have geothermal. Some have wind. Nobody is saying everywhere has to have hydro power, but if you have it, yes, it's a renewable resource and yes, it limits the amount of fossil fuels you have to dig up and burn.
So there's absolutely no reason that hydro energy shouldn't be considered an important part of the basket of renewables.
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p>Not nearly as environmentally destructive as fossil fuels. Have you have been to coal country? Have you seen what coal mines do to the land?
Ooh, ooh, that reminds me, I've yet to get any takers on showing just what coal mining does to an area. In the earlier days, before socialist regulations, a company would come into an area, rip it to shreads, - next comes the awesome part! They'd declare bankruptcy, and (usually a relative) would start a new company. It was so sweet! Profit!
Then again, the land they ruined is not good for much of anything any more. The fishermen don't come to fish in the vinegar ph streams any more. No one seems to wan
Re: Wrong title (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention, 4) pumped hydro storage is the perfect complement for all that excess wind power they've got so much of - and they're increasingly taking advantage of that fortuitous combination.
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While that's certainly true, the downstream reservoir need not be nearly as large as the upstream one, depending on the situation. And even without any pumping, hydro's relatively quick response allows it to reduce its output to when the wind picks up, providing some of the same reserve-capacity benefits.
As it turns out, Scotland already has about 740MW of pumped-storage hydro [wikipedia.org] capacity, with another 1200MW proposed.
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I'm not going to disagree with you. But don't expect people to get excited about 1930s-era high-tech. It's superior to coal, for sure - but it does have some pretty significant drawbacks. The biggest one, despite you calling it a stretch, is availability. Hydro has largely been built everywhere feasible. It is important, yes, but it's also built-out and is doomed to an increasingly small share of the energy market.
It does make an interesting battery, though.
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Well, part of innovation is moving the bar of what's feasible.
http://www.alternative-energy-... [alternativ...-news.info]
The only reason I know about this stuff is that my wife is a mathematician who models waves. I proofread the papers she collaborates on and let me tell you, people are working on some pretty interesting ways of getting hydroelectric power from the ocean. And there is a LOT of ocean.
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OK, while it technically is still "hydro", that is definitely not what I was referring to.
I wish them luck. We have some engineers at work who used to work at a wave power company. I grew up on the seashore and worked at a corrosion laboratory. I wish anyone luck who can make anything even remotely mechanical work in a marine environment, let alone keeping it economical to do so. I'm flat-out amazed that shipping works at all :)
Economical power from waves and tides would indeed be groundbreaking.
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In places where you can do a lot of hydro we are already doing a lot of hydro, since it is just about the cheapest electricity you can get. But many places are really tapped out now.
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That article doesn't name a single state that does not recognize hydro as renewable.
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Something to brag about (Score:2)
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Incredible, huh? Even in the US they are shutting down - though that's because of natural gas. But hey, baby steps.
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The main reason Longannet coal fired power station shut down was because of energy distribution politics where Scottish energy producers are charged £millions to attach to the National Grid [nationalgrid.com] whereas suppliers in neighbouring (but much less green energy producing per capita) England are subsidized to attach to the grid. Newspaper articles here [thecourier.co.uk] and here [scottishenergynews.com].
Some are saying it's part of a general fight back by the United Kingdom for having the audacity to have a referendum to leave the UK. We're seeing it a
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One impressive pilot installation has the heat difference between solar heated hot water and cold water from underground working as a heat pump and generating some electricity. It only works if there are flooded mine tunnels below but it turns out that most of the heavily populated areas in Scotland do have flooded mine tunnels below.
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Anything effective will be an object of ridicule by the environmental lobby.
The instant wind and solar work they'll come up with a reason to not like them either.
Everything believed to be ineffective is the solution. The engineers and scientists keep causing problems for these halfwits by making the impractical practical. And thus the goal posts move.
Nuclear was great until it worked.
Natural gas was great until it worked.
Hydro was great until they feared we'd just be satisfied with that.
And as to wind and s
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If Scotland implemented solar, now that would be impressive. All of those green plants must live on something.
The plants flourish in the frequent rain. And daylight, which they get. But sunlight is a much rarer thing. From looking out the window we're not going to get any in Edinburgh today through the unbroken grey sky. It was like this yesterday and it will probably be like this tomorrow. Sometimes it feels like it is always like this.
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Because it's too successful and thus not an effective strawman.
See also the focus on charging at windmills as photovoltaic panels in the home have become popular. Apparently we should only be choosing methods of energy generation that are pretty - how is that for a really weird line of attack?
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Re:Wrong title (Score:5, Informative)
Not true - hydro is only really used as giant batteries for sudden ramp up and ramp down of electricity demand. Most of it is wind. Wave and tidal power play a fair role too though.
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Giant batteries charged by the evap/precip cycle. Green.
There's pumped storage, of course, but that's not nearly as common as it could be. Now that is the equivalent of a battery.
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No, charged by pumping water up hill during low power demand periods. It's *way* more efficient than most other types of battery.
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Base load is an artifact of having to do something with all that heat you have to pump into thermal units at night to have them ready to u
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Wrong there is only two pumped storage hydro schemes in Scotland at the moment. Cruachan and Foyers. Though another one has been approved for Coire Glas.
There are dozens of other smaller hydro schemes in Scotland that produce continuous power. Scotland has got a significant proportion (around 1/4 to 1/3) of its power from hydroelectric for decades.
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No, no one uses hydro as base load. You use it to fill in moments where demand suddenly surges, because all you need to do to start generating is open a sluice gate. You then pump the water back up hill during low demand periods.
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A lot of places do but they have a LOT of water behind those dams. Look for enormous catchments headed with snow covered mountains.
Mostly wind (Score:5, Informative)
And most of those renewables is hydro....
No, as it turns out, most of those renewables are wind.
Here are some earlier articles that give a bit more information:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/wind-power-providing-almost-half-of-scotland-s-energy-supply-1-4023886
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-35160271
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c4ef7ed8-a8c8-11e5-843e-626928909745.html
Re: Wrong title (Score:2)
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Scotland has 1.54 GW of installed hydro, and 5.59 GW of wind generators. Even accounting for capacity factors, hydro is clearly not the source of "most" of Scotland's renewable power.
It's also worth noting that a good pumped hydro setup makes an excellent way to balance and store the excess from their wind & wave generation.
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You need to brush up on your energy math. Hydro typically has a capacity factor of 85 to 90 % which makes the hydro contribution around. 1.54*0.875 = 1.3GW. The capacity factor for onshore wind is said to be around 0.3 (which may be generous in practice.) which works out to 0.3*5.59. =1.65GW. Scotland exports a substantial amount of electricity to England and one suspects that much of that is wind power. (Which will probably be double counted by the English as THEIR renewable power).
50% is about right
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All Scotland needs to do to get 100% of it's electricity and loads more besides is build a dyke across the Pentland Firth. Unfortunately we are dicking around putting turbines in the stream and are only going to get 1-2GW max. Would be 10 times that with a dyke.
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ALSO read dumb arse.
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That's not exactly true. Scottish GDP per capita [bbc.co.uk] is higher than England and, as an average only beaten by the London area. As part of the union politics; Scottish finances are supressed because Scotland has to pay 10% of all capex expenditure on London projects that are labelled as "UK Infrastructure" (HS2 railway, London tube, london sewer system) whereas English tax payers pay £0 for Scottish capex projects. This is because large scale infrastructure is seen as beneficial to Scots (but not the o
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But let's be honest, Scotland is benefiting from English tax money that gives them enormous benefits for their own population and infrastructure. They are basically using English income because their own system cannot pay for itself.
You seem to be reading only propaganda. Presumably you also completely and unquestionably believe that EU membership costs the UK 55 million a day because the Daily Mail said so.
Need to get to 100% Quick... (Score:2)
North Sea oil production peaked in 2000 and will be gone within the next 20 years [heraldscotland.com]
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Considering that Scotland produces very little electricity from oil that is not an issue. Most of there electricity from non-renewable sources comes from coal and nuclear.
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That's what they said 20 years ago about today re: oil.
As technology advances we'll always find new ways to get at oil. Even if it's grinding up seagulls for whatever surface oil has stuck to feathers.
In reality there is no "peak oil", eventually solar will get good enough to replace many uses of oil, and the stigma against nuclear energy will fade much as children grow up to no longer be scared of monsters in the closet.
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As technology advances we'll always find new ways to get at oil.
We are using oil faster than we are finding new sources, a temporary blip in shale oil notwithstanding.
In reality there is no "peak oil", eventually solar will get good enough to replace many uses of oil,
While I'm a big fan of solar, we're still a long way away. Solar is not even close to being a viable substitute for transportation fuel right now, and we'll need to move quickly if we want to get there before hitting peak oil.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
We are using oil faster than we are finding new sources
Irrelevant, because at some point LONG before we run out of relatively easy to extract oil, we'll be using mostly solar and nuclear power in various ways (wind energy being an idiotic idea that comes and goes in brief waves).
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Irrelevant, because at some point LONG before we run out of relatively easy to extract oil,we'll be using mostly solar and nuclear power in various ways
If not for shale oil, we'd be running out of easy oil right now. And shale oil has fairly dramatic per-well depletion rates so it's not going to help for very long. Like I said, electric is not anywhere near being a viable replacement.
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There is a peak for every non renewable resource at a certain cost.
Once alternatives are found for that non-renewable resource then demand for it at the higher prices will collapse.
There is plenty of gold available at $10,000 per oz. But we'll probably never mine it.
Alternative energy and electric cars are collapsing the maximum price of oil. There may be lots of oil available at $200 a barrel-- but we may never collect it.
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There is, but it's about liquid oil - not tar, shale, gas or whatever.
People like to take a technical term about a bump on a graph of oil production over time and stick that label on their own personal strawmen and then use that to ridicule people who are actually using it as a technical term.
If you want say there is no "peak energy", then fine, but liquid oil is getting harder to find and extract over time so the statements from 20 years ago still hold, so please don't get
You underestimate technical advance (Score:2)
liquid oil is getting harder to find and extract over time
Are you sure? It seems like the technology to find and extract said oil is improving quite rapidly.
Also oil companies are sitting on a lot of deposits they already had found but just didn't have the technology to access before, so as the tech improves you have reserves to tap you do't even have to find.
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Yes. I'm in the resource exploration industry. Over the last few years we've been reprocessing a lot of seismic data from as far back as the 1970s to apply a bit more computer power than was worth it at the time to see what was missed. Some stuff was never format shifted so there's hundreds of boxes of tape on reels around the place.
Normally because the technology was expensive to develop, hence "harder" above.
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"As technology advances we'll always find new ways to get at oil. Even if it's grinding up seagulls for whatever surface oil has stuck to feathers"
Eventually it'll take the same or more energy to extract and refine oil than can be recovered from it. At that point the oil era is over.
Sure, I guess ... (Score:2, Funny)
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Where "half" is less than 18% (probably 8%) (Score:2, Insightful)
Sharp readers will notice that the summary contradicts the headline, then makes a meaningless calculation, dividing apples by oranges.
First, as is typical of green fluff pieces, they conflate energy with electricity. Electricity accounts for about 35% of Ireland's energy usage. If renewables provided half of the -electricity-, that would be 17% of the -energy-.
Secondly, they've improperly conflated consumption with production. You could produce terawatts of energy in the summer and use to heat molten salt
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One other thing they don't account for in the article or summary is actual imports and exports. They are part of the UK grid system, and sometimes when local renewable generation percentage is high it does not always happen at a time of high local usage. Overall, the total UK percentage b
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people wanted to continue to use more energy, but couldn't do so with the same paycheck.
That is complete bollocks.
Price increases are far far far less than the cost of a pint of Guiness in the next best pub.
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Sharp readers would notice that the article is about Scotland, not Ireland.
Are you seriously suggesting that, after electricity demand dropped 15%, the suppliers did
I'm saying that wrecking your car will reduce CO2 (Score:3)
> Are you seriously suggesting that, after electricity demand dropped 15%, the suppliers did not reduce electricity generation?
No, I'm saying that smashing your car will reduce your C02 footprint. HOWEVER, it will also leave you without transportation, and any judgement about policies should recognize that cost.
Let's try this again. It's about the difference between energy demand (what people need/want/used to have) versus what they got after the market was artificially limited.
Pretend the government shu
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Did you consider that perhaps people can change their habits so that they need less energy? You assume a fixed demand, but as energy prices rise, it becomes more cost effective to spend money on things like home insulation.
Real demand is not a fixed number, it changes in response to price fluctuations. Your scenario where the "natural consumption" is unchanged when prices change is unrealistic.
Also, Ireland?
Yes, you CAN walk. I'm Scotch Irish :) (Score:2)
> Did you consider that perhaps people can change their habits so that they need less energy?
If I smash your car, you CAN walk, and it'll reduce CO2, so let's do that. Yes, people will find a way to survive a 15%-20% power cut, but ignoring that cost is error. Half of energy usage is transportation, so when energy is less affordable, that actually means people go fewer places - some skip their summer vacation, etc.
You say people can buy more insulation. Okay, let's pretend that doubling all of the ins
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The story is about Scotland, not Ireland. Are the numbers you looked up for Ireland or Scotland?
Roughly the same for both. www.eia.gov (Score:2)
I don't recall which I looked at before, but for both countries the majority of their energy isn't electricity.
Specifically, both are similar in that they use significant energy for heating, whereas some countries don't. Details for each can be found at www.eaia.gov.
Because they are neighbors geographically, they're working within the same parameters as far as the availability of geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, etc. Within that envelope, they can trade reliability and cost for "political greeness" in roughl
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Really sharp readers would have noticed that the summary is talking about Scotland, not Ireland.
Wikipedia has details on this (Score:3, Informative)
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Nuclear is not renewable - once the isotopes are gone, they're gone.
It is carbon-free though, which is what they really care about.
Less than 6 million people (Score:2)
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California hopes to have 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2030. If Scotland has already achieved this then it is likely California lacks ambition.
Here in California, we shit ambition and wipe with the non-believers. Just take a look at our proposed high speed rail line! Nobody said we had the money to make anything happen, though. But anyway, wind farms kill birds, so PETA will fights those. We're out of water, so hydro is no go. Solar? The hippies up north will cry if we trap the spirit of mother Gaia for our selfish needs. Wave generators? Save the whales! Nukes? Jesus Christ, haven't you been listening? And thus it always goes around here. So much
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It's also extremely windy, extremely empty (that's one of its highlights), has only concentrated centres of population (so you don't have to transport stuff very far to serve a lot of people), and approves huge fields of on-shore and off-shore wind turbines (several high profile projects there).
There's probably exactly 0% solar, to be honest.
Outside the major cities, up in the Highlands, you will literally struggle to find a petrol station and/or a pub that has an Internet connection at all. But you'll pas
But what of the carbon output? What of costs? (Score:2)
Without some measure of the carbon output this metric is relatively meaningless. Imagine two countries with a goal to reduce their carbon emissions. Both start with nearly all of their electricity from coal.
The first nation replaces half of the coal plants with windmills, hydro electric dams, solar panels, and geothermal. They see their carbon footprint cut in half.
The second nation converts all the coal plants to burn natural gas. They also see their carbon footprint cut in half. At the same time thei
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...and they don't have bird killing windmills and solar panels.
If your photovoltaic panels are killing birds, you probably wired grid power to the frames. Don't do that.
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Birds confuse the shiny panels for water and collide with them thinking they'd get a soft slash instead. They tend to injure themselves and cannot take off again.
When shiny these panels can confuse them in many ways leading them to collide with them, making them think the sun isn't where it should be, and if in large expanses the panels can concentrate the sun and set them on fire. No, I am not confusing them with solar concentrators, the photovoltaic panels can do this too.
A certain kind of photovoltaic
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What do you do to follow demand? It's not a square wave, it's a curve. You need little units to fill in the gaps and nuclear doesn't do those well at the moment. :)
Don't just think in boolean - get real
Energy monocultures suck and are usually only promoted by salesfolk and deluded fanboys.
If you wish to a
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What do you do to follow demand? It's not a square wave, it's a curve. You need little units to fill in the gaps and nuclear doesn't do those well at the moment.
Nothing prevents a nuclear power plant from load following except the current use of steam turbines. Use a Brayton cycle turbine and that problem goes away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Don't just think in boolean - get real :)
We can have equipment to compensate for the reactive power factor too.
Energy monocultures suck and are usually only promoted by salesfolk and deluded fanboys.
I propose a nation powered only by nuclear power only as a thought experiment. While I do believe that a nation could derive all utility power from nuclear reactors I also realize that doing so is not likely practical. I also believe that a nation l
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If you can teleport the steam directly from the reactor core to the turbines, indeed, but instead of going into the realms of SF I suggest you look up "thermal fatigue" to find out THE REASON WHY load following is rarely done with thermal power stations. It's often desirable to be able to use the generating unit next week after all.
Oh dear.
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Please read what I wrote above and try again. The clue is the question "What do you do to follow demand" - nothing to do with the solved problem of power factor.
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I know what you meant. I was aiming for some engineering humor.
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Heating, fertilizer and a very handy precursor for a lot of petrochemical products. If you want hydrogen (or ammonia afterwards) it's still the easiest way to get it.
Maybe Diesel-powered wind mills... (Score:2)
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That must be really poor if half of your energy production is consumed by your renewables. We finally know the truth that renewables consume energy... Or the editor doesn't know how to write a title!
Or perhaps you are just going out of your way to misunderstand? Hopefully this is meant as a joke.
Another link (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Story is lacking in any real details (Score:4, Insightful)
How is nuclear a renewable? You still needed fissile materials, and those are pulled out of the ground just like fossil fuels.
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I'm not calling this story out for half-truths, but I'm not sure about this article. Renewables to me suggest nuclear, wind, solar, thermal, and tidal power. I'm pretty sure they're not big nuclear fans in Scotland and I don't think solar would work well (since they're so far north). So is 57% of electricity production really coming from wind, therma and tidal power?
Yes: wind. [wikipedia.org]
That would be a HUGE story,
Well, it made a slashdot headline.
but I don't think that's realistically possible.
Scotland turns out to be windy.
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Scotland turns out to be windy.
Its because of our diet.
Thank you.
Re:All Energy Is Renewable (Score:5, Informative)
All Energy Is Conserved (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, thermodynamics tells that ALL the energy is not renewable... entropy and stuff...
To the contrary. The first law of thermodynamics [gsu.edu] tells us that all energy is conserved. You don't have to ever worry about energy conservation: the laws of physics guarantee it will happen.
Usable energy... now, that's a different case.
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If you look at the even bigger picture, all energy is non-renewable, unless you can decrease entropy.
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Little good it does you if part of the process is "now wait a few million years..."
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No, Denmark is also *only* at about 50% - 60% right now.
But yes, in times of excess production it sells power to its neighbours, like every nation in europe.
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