https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/gas-section-4-energy-trends

specifically:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/669705/Gas.pdf



Natural gas has been replacing coal. The larger portion of carbon dioxide reduction in economies transitioning from coal to gas is attributable to the fact that carbon dioxide emissions per TWh of natural gas generated power are less than coal. Wind and solar power are supplemental.

But with regards to global warming natural gas is hardly any more desirable than coal, especially if it supports higher levels of economic activity and the overall increasing use of fossil fuels.

In most parts of the world with limited hydroelectric resources, wind and solar simply wouldn't be viable without nimble natural gas power plants to pick up the load when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. A gas powered economy does not "save the world" even in combination with wind and solar power. A purely renewable energy economy of wind, solar, hydro, etc., would look nothing like the economy many affluent people now enjoy. (Nor would a nuclear powered economy, but that's another discussion...)

The only way to decrease carbon dioxide emissions is to shut down all fossil fuel production as quickly as we can and let the economic cards fall where they may. Obviously this isn't going to happen. The largest industrial projects on earth today involve the extraction and distribution of natural gas. So long as we continue to use fossil fuels, with or without solar and wind power, the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will continue to increase until earth's climate becomes too unstable to support the current global economy.

Here's a more detailed article:

There's a graph showing the TWh generated from each source for each year since 2009. The 2012 and 2017 figures are:

Coal 143 23
Gas 100 134
Nuclear 70 70
Wind 20 49
Biomass 15 31
Other 10 11
Hydro 5 6
Solar 1 12

total 364 336

2012 was a recent peak for coal, and 2012 to 2015 relatively low years for gas. Gas was more in 2016 and 2017, but both those years were still below the 2009-2011 figures for gas.

And it will remain so even with a maximum possible build out of wind and solar.

A natural gas fueled economy, even one with large variable inputs of wind and solar energy, is nothing to celebrate. We still end up in the same place as we would with any other fossil fuel; with rising carbon dioxide levels and dangerous climate changes.

It's not even a matter of slowing down climate change since worldwide consumption of natural gas is increasing.

Those projections are terrifying.

By my own accounting and experience I don't believe wind and solar power are viable without large inputs of natural gas.

To the extent that wind and solar enthusiasts become deliberate or unwitting shills for the growing natural gas industry, I cannot support them.

One coal plant expectantly shuts down and before another coal plant can fill the hole in the grid, the battery pack responds in less than a second. Of course a battery bank wouldn't be able to fill a prolonged outage but I wonder how many power plants are on stand-by just in case. For a coal plant to be on stand-by it would have to be ready to go just waiting for the switch to be flipped. Burning coal and keeping the turbine turning just not making any electricity.

So the question I have for those in the know - would a large scale deployment of batteries further reduce the need for backup coal plants?

In the past three weeks alone, the Hornsdale Power Reserve has smoothed out at least two major energy outages, responding even more quickly than the coal-fired backups that were supposed to provide emergency power.

Tesla’s battery last week kicked in just 0.14 seconds after one of Australia’s biggest plants, the Loy Yang facility in the neighbouring state of Victoria, suffered a sudden, unexplained drop in output, according to the International Business Times. And the week before that, another failure at Loy Yang prompted the Hornsdale battery to respond in as little as four seconds — or less, according to some estimates — beating other plants to the punch. State officials have called the response time “a record,” according to local media.

snip

Fed by wind turbines at the nearby Hornsdale wind farm, the battery stores excess energy that is produced when the demand for electricity isn't peaking. It can power up to 30,000 homes, though only for short periods - meaning that the battery must still be supported by traditional power plants in the event of a long outage.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/tesla-mega-battery-south-australia-outage-reaction-time-hornsdale-power-reserve-a8130986.html

...you get the following:

Source 2017 2022
Coal 23 0
Gas 134 71
Nuclear 70 70
Wind 49 78
Biomass 31 47
Other 11 12
Hydro 6 7
Solar 12 23

total 336 308

Where you preferentially replace fossil fuel production with increased renewable, efficiency and conservation.

...solar energy in the US by the year 2000. He said it in 1976, in the first burst of anti-nuke anti-science wishful thinking bullshit.

I quote:

In June 1976 the Institute considered that with a conservation program far more modest than that contemplated in this article, the likely range of U.S. primary energy demand in the year 2000 would be about roi-126 quads, with the lower end of the range more probable and end-use energy being about 60-65 quads. And, at the further end of the spectrum, projections for 2000 being considered by the "Demand Panel" of a major U.S. National Research Council study, as of mid-1976, ranged as low as about 54 quads of fuels (plus 16 of solar energy).

His high school "C grade" paper lacked references, but the reference to the latter day oil sands consultant's illiterate 1976 fantasy is this: Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken? (Lovins, Foreign Affairs, October 1976, pg. 76)

A quad is close to an exajoule, with a conversion factor of 1.055.

As of 2018, so called "renewable energy," as represented by solar and wind don't produce 10 exajoules on the whole damn planet, never mind the United States.

Whenever we hear a gas related decrease in carbon dioxide output attributed to the failed, irresponsible and useless so called "renewable energy" scam - we see two things: 1) We are going to here more of the half century of "trends and projections" that have been continuous excuses for the climate change disaster that misplaced faith in this garbage has been and 2) that the so called "renewable energy" industry is lipstick on the gas pig.

A pig is a pig.

For most of its modern history, Britain was a coal powered country. Now it's burning gas, which while only "half as bad" as coal, with 500 grams CO2 per kwh instead of 1200 grams of CO2 for coal.

Every generation after this - after the gas has run out - will have to live with the legacy of bleeding and empty fracking fields.

This kind of rhetoric - wishful thinking - may have been excusable in 1976 when fossil fuel consultants like that barely literate asshole Amory Lovins might have been taken seriously, but in 2018, it's a crime against the future.