I found this the other day, thought it might be useful for others…

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17 years of destruction for one month of power…

We found an interesting article in the Hexham Currant a while back, which showed how a proposed new mine in Northumberland – while causing years of blasting, noise, dust and general destruction – would feed a coal-fired power station for only 9 days.

That got us thinking.

So we rolled out our maths geek and set her to work using the Government’s energy figures, found in the “Digest of UK Energy Statistics” – or DUKEs for civil servants under 55 – which are few and far between!

And this is what she came back to us with…

[For those of you with an aversion to maths, you can skip down to the "headline conlusions" below the image]

1. Last year, the UK used 52.5 million tonnes of coal to make electricity (DUKEs, 2.7 cell M17).

2. That 52.5 million tonnes produced 129.4 terrawatt hours of electricity (DUKEs, 5.6 cell B261), a very large amount of energy! 129,400,000,000 kWh – like leaving your toaster on for 130,000 years, or leaving 130,000 toasters on for 1 year – whatever. Anyway, it’s a lot.

3. By dividing, the two figures, we see that every 1 TWh of electricity requires 406,000 tonnes of coal to be burnt.

What’s the significance of that I hear you ask?

4. Well,  1 TWh of electricity is roughly equal to the amount of  electricity we use every day in the UK (DUKEs 5.6 cell M261 divided by 365 days in a year, apparently!).

5. Taking those figures, we see that the electricity used in a single day in the UK, is equivalent to 400,000 tonnes of coal being burnt.

5b. Which incidentally, creates around 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 – the same as the annual emissions of Burkina Faso with a population of 13 million – one day in the UK, one year in Burkina Faso! Shit!

So, the headline conclusion - for non-energy geeks – is that a 400,000 tonne opencast mine, would power the UK for only 1 day…

The following proposed mines would power the UK for:

• Halton Lea Gate - 8 hours
• Cavil Head - 11 hours
• Smalley Farm (Lodge House) - 2.5 days
• Minorca - 3 days
• Brenkley - 1 week
• Potland Burn - 5 days
• Ffos-y-fran - 1 month
  

These mines, on average, will blast, dig and extract coal for around 4-6 years… Ffos-y-fran, the largest open cast mine in the UK will operate for 17 years, only 36 metres from the nearest homes… and that’s only enough coal to power the UK for one, single, solitary month.

17 years of blasting, noise, dust and asthma!

That doesn’t seem to make much sense to us.

Whip up an offshore wind farm and you’ve got power for 20 years without destroying local communities. Plus, you haven’t destroyed the global community by causing irreversible climate change. Plus you’ve created more jobs per unit of energy than any fossil fuel. Win-win-win, surely?

Try telling that to a 60-year old energy dinosaur in the Department for Energy!