Britains “First Coal Free Day”

Britains lauded “first coal free day”. Surely a cause for celebration from green energy sources incapable of replicating themselves (ie. green energy can’t create a Wind turbine and it’s blades last 7 years before they’re thrown into a landfill. Due to sporadic nature of Wind energy it also must be backed by a fossil fuel, typically natural gas).

“Wind, biomass, and imported energy were also used.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39675418

Biomass, for those unfamiliar, is when we cut down trees in British colombia, ship them in tug boats then burn them in a furnace in Britain. It is no wonder that bankers and Thatcherites view this as a total victory over the working class.

Not only are they cutting down forests in Canada but these forests have taken thousands of years to develop.

A company that has received billions of pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has found.

Drax runs Britain’s biggest power station, which burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets – which is classed as renewable energy.

The BBC has discovered some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.

The company says it only uses sawdust and waste wood.

Panorama analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and used drone filming to prove its findings. Reporter Joe Crowley also followed a truck from a Drax mill to verify it was picking up whole logs from an area of precious forest.

Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348

While

Burning wood produces more greenhouse gases than burning coal.

The electricity is classed as renewable because new trees are planted to replace the old ones and these new trees should recapture the carbon emitted by burning wood pellets.

ibid

The Thatcherites who created the modern environmental movement insisted coal had to be phased out because it was “uneconomic and subsidy dependent” yet ‘green’ energy receives ludicrous subsidies that is being felt by the average Joe as the economic cost is passed onto the working class. Much of those green subsidies flow into the coffers of wealthy landowners.

Is it subsidies? Or which class receives the subsidies?

If Domestic coal fired electricity returned to England that wealth (and alongside political power in a militant working class and organisations like the National Union of Mineworkers) would swish around the British economy.

The Tory (and labour!) landed interest would rather pour that money into the sea (as they literally have done with burning off of British gas reserves as their weapon against coal) than see it flow through the British work force.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39675418