The green future of coal mining
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- Опубликовано: 29 апр 2024
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Coal is by far the dirtiest fossil fuel. But could it have a shot at redemption... through geothermal energy?
Thanks to @theoneandonlysoupemporium for joining me in this video! Definitely check out our collab on his channel about The Simpsons Hit and Run: • Simpsons: Hit & Run Is...
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Also before anyone @s me for still having a gas boiler in my house... yeah. I'd love to have a heat pump but unfortunately we simply couldn't afford it when the old boiler packed up. Right after we'd spent all our money buying the house and getting married. It's on our list when we have money.
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Music by Epidemic Sound: nebula.tv/epidemic
Some stock footage courtesy of Getty.
Edited by Luke Negus.
Is coal mining good, actually? Yes! After you've stopped taking the coal out of the ground at least. Old coal mines could be a key part of the race to net zero in countries with a heritage of coal, being used to provide low carbon energy - geothermal district heating. This video is about how to reduce emissions from heating, using the UK net zero target as a specific example. Geothermal energy, and in particular geothermal heating, can provide low carbon energy to district heating networks. If you like videos from Soup Emporium you will love this video!
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The box! The BOX!
Love your work, soup! I've rewatched your latest simpsons deepdive two times already 😁
I loved it when He said "The Box!" and boxed everyone up!
"electrizidy"
Whenever I see nonsense about the "cost" of clean energy, I always remind myself the magnitude at which dirty energy is subsidized.
FR. think about how much stuff people would stop using or buying if the subsidies were gone
It's seriously maddening the amount of denial of OBVIOUS reasons these people do. I genuinely cannot imagine being that deluded unless I never thought logically about the topic and never even once Googled about it
@@prosandcons-fl2ccGranted it gets real messy, especially some farm subsidies. They essentially hot glue and zip tie the mess that is Modern Capitalism into something that can *kind of* work.
The Ideal solution would be switching to some alternative system that thrives off of Abundance, rather than one that thrives off artificial scarcity and such, but WAY easier said than done.
In the mean time getting rid of the ones that only help the industrialists/lobbying groups, and tuning them to match the needs of people can probably be done.
7 trillion dollars per year
fossil fuel industry also makes 4 trillion dollars per year in profit, interesting
Honestly, it's one of those facts that I catch myself doubting because it's so obvious that I feel if most people haven't noticed or are unconvinced by it I must be wrong somehow.
Heating subsidies are right there on our bills. They're advertised on the radio. I literally sign off on my tenant's heating assistance for the eldery. Around here, that means the assisted are getting subsidized gas.
"its all heating water to spin a turbine?"
"always has been."
Turbines, always with the turbines
The sad thing is that's the best way to do it apparently, because solar and wind kinda blow
@@InfernosReaper wind blows, the sun radiates.
@@RAFMnBgaming and both of them suck
@@InfernosReaper nah that's vacuum energy
"District heating . . ."
Tories: "COMMUNISM DETECTED"
Are any Tories really saying that? Looks like the govt is actually trying a bit in this case...
I can't imagine ever voting Tory in my life, but let's not drive division if it doesn't exist.
US Republicans _and_ US Democrats: "COMMUNISM DETECTED"
TL;DR It can be done wrong; you also can _and need_ to do it right.
Honestly district heating can lead to suboptimal results. I live in Russia and I have such a heating which isn’t in any way tweakable so I need to open windows in the winter and especially at the end of spring, it gets so unbearable and I ended up even needing a skin cream for my hands.
I’m sure it _can_ be done okay, with people being able to change their personal heat output and also pay less when they do so, but I see it can also be done in a way which is hard to remake into such a thing. A pain. So I see why some people can get reluctant aside from silly communism horror storries (I mean Russia is a kind of hell to be in, in many small details and many large details too, but right now and for like two decades it’s not due to communism at all).
I guess it was pushed in communist countries, we also have a district heating network in Budapest, Hungary (formerly eastern bloc USSR puppet state, nowadays Putin's puppet state). But so does Vienna, Austria, which was never forced into communism, and Denmark. I guess it just makes sense.
In other words, communism "causes" district heating, but district heating "doesn't cause" communism.
The only people who respond to things that way are the extreme conservatives.
Extremists of all types are characterized by very narrow minds.
I live in a town that was built by coal mines. There is a lake across from my house that has a drain pipe supposedly connected to one of the shafts. The water that comes out of it is like bathtub water, and no matter how far the temperature drops that part of the lake does not freeze. One day I hope my town would consider installing district heating from the mines. I'm sure it will bring a lot of pride to families who have parents and grandparents that worked in the pit. knowing that they're still heating our homes today.
Update : I did some digging ( no pun intended) and found out that some buildings are actually using this system already. Our sports center and our assisted living facility is heated from our mines! I don't know why this isn't common knowledge.
Maybe _you_ could be the one to bring it up with your local mayor/council! Somebody's got to be the first one, so why not chuck them an email with the suggestion? It can't hurt to try, and might kickstart something amazing ❤
Mine drainage usually isn't a good thing. We have a mine dewatering tunnel built here in the 1800's called The Jeddo Tunnel. It's more or less an environmental nightmare although it's been going on for like 150 years and we are used to it. Not to mention we are above it, so it's more of a problem for those who live downstream lol
The heat conductivity of the soil is very, very low. After some years the water will become cooler.
Why not skipping the green woke nonsense and use gas, oil or coal?
That Pride Factor is what you sell it with.
Don't go with how much can be saved or the likes, as much as we think people in government should care about spending they really don't. They do care about their own reputations, and any politician that can claim to have 'brought back some mining jobs' will have an easier time for re-election. Thus, if you want a Politician to do anything, you have to convince them that people will be proud, and thus... vote for the person who brought that pride.
@@holgernarrog
Why did you not mention Nuclear?
The three sources you name are all... greatly limited.
If you are worried health concerns, don't look at Coal deaths per year.
New coal meta just dropped
I think the thing to realize about these closed-loop geothermal systems is that their benefits are hard to quantify monetarily. They provide low-carbon power, but not intermittently like Wind and Solar. But unlike Wind and Solar, they have very small surface footprints, meaning we're not dedicating large tracts of land to wind and solar farms. More importantly, they provide baseload power without the need for uranium mining or the associated regulatory system required to keep a nuclear power plant safe (because the greatest threat of a nuclear power plant isn't the tech, it's human stupidity).
So we have a tech that 1) provides consistent power; 2) is low-carbon; 3) requires no destructive mining, expensive maintenance, or disposal of dangerous fuels; and 4) takes up very little space (much smaller than a nuke plant and vastly smaller than wind and solar farms). So while yes, it's monetarily expensive, we are paying up front for the benefits.
And there's the challenge with everything that would actually make life better for the majority. We really need a massive investment in stuff like this as well as environmental restoration, regenerative agriculture, water management etc. for a payoff that's going to take years. Not something those in power seem keen on. I hope that changes soon because the price of recovering as the damage gets worse is only going to get higher.
I think you nailed it. When discussing wind and solar, people often forget the land-use issue. (The intermittently issue is bad, but from an environmentalist perspective, land-use is also quite important)
The point about human stupidity is correct, it would literally defy the laws of physics for any reactor operating today to go the way of Chernobyl since none follow its stupid design, nor does anyone follow their stupid operating principles.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Russia still uses 6 PowerPoint with RBMK reactors (the type used at Chernobyl) but they were heavily modified after the accident. Russia is the only country in the world which still operates RBMKs and the vast majority of their reactors are not RBMKs.
Only nitpick - and I preface this by saying I can't compare the size of a geothermal plant to a nuclear one for the same amount of power - but nuclear plants can safely and cheaply be made *much* smaller than they currently are.
Implementation, allow tax credits or long amortized write downs over a long period, that will spur larger up front capital expense and a stable investment income.
@@jeffbenton6183I’m sorry but there really isn’t a land use issue. Wind and Solar power both can be generated on land that is already used otherwise and can continue to be used like that. For example most solar panels are either in top of building, animal pens, highways or sometimes even on top of acres. There’s a similar thing with wind farms, because the turbines can’t be placed too close together anyways or they just wouldn’t really work, they are always placed on acres or on large stretches of off-shore farms. But all in all both kinds of farms barely make any land unusable
Unfortunately it can cause earthquakes and makes farms unusable at times.
Still a good option tho imo
Man, this trusty Adobe Premiere Preset for 'look at this graph' gets me every time
In other words... "Every time I do, it makes me laugh."
"The extreme north" 🫤 Place is south of my entire country... 😅
Oh don't worry it's a silly britishism - we argue about which bits of our country are north and south, as if we have never used a compass or a map
My understanding is that Britain is divided into thirds: the South, the North, and Scotland
Do you live in Svalbard???
@@columbus8myhwthere is also wales and the midlands
@columbus8myhw 😅about right we allso have the Midlands around Birmingham
Wales N.ierland Mann and the Devonshire Cornwall westerlands
More Simpsons references, I only learn via Simpsons references
theres better ways to do it
Same
there's other ways to learn?
I audibly gasped when Soup came out because I really wasn’t expecting him, but y’all’s content scratches the same itch so it makes a ton of sense:)
I think I read one of the problems with an open-system for geothermal is, that these waters often contain a hecking ton of salts and chemicals that can be quite dangerous to equipment, like pipes, pumps etc. So you would have to develop stuff that could withstand these conditions, so it would be better keep a system closed that does not draw in all these chemicals, yet drilling such tubes all the way 5 kilometers into the ground probably risks them being damaged be any kind of underground movement.
Yep, you need to put that water back down there if you don't want the creek or wherever you dump it into to be absolutely lifeless due to the high salinity. The good news about that salinity is that one of the salts is lithium chloride, so it's currently being explored as a lithium mining method in combination with geothermal power in order to produce carbon-neutral battery-grade lithium.
@@hammerth1421 Right, I heard they want to try out such a powerstation / factory setting in Germany in an attempt to get more lithium themselves. Let's just hope they don't drill too deep and cause any earthquakes like it happened in Switzerland a few years ago...or drill even deeper and wake up a Ballrog.
Nice! In Sweden we've decarbonised heating since the 90s, heat pumps (ground and air) and district heating instead of local burning of fuel. Biggest source of heat in district heating is reused heat (heat that would otherwise be lost). There's a lot of low hanging fruit in district heating. :)
But then, you should also watch how much energy housing uses.. Swedens energy use per square meter is one of the lowest in Europe even though we have a lot more winter here.
Love the video and all, but, as an American, I can't help but be amazed by the thought that 75%+ of local authorities' budgets are spent on elderly care. In the US, its rare to find a city that isn't spending more than 50% of its budget toward the police... This is nothing to say of climate change or moving towards renewable energies, but just a tangential observation that I hadn't thought about in a while.
TBF local authorities are in charge of very little and police spending is not one of those. Its mainly bins and potholes.
@@guystrong7218 I don't understand what you mean. The police budgets are determined by cities, no? If not, then what's setting the budgets? At least in California, as far as I'm aware, its up to individual cities to set their police spending.
@@TheDilla Central government are the main source of funding for police - UK is much more centralised system than the US
@@guystrong7218 oh okay that's interesting
Police & Fire are paid for on a regional basis in the UK. It's paid for by your local council rates. Every year you get a statement saying how much has been spent on what. Sheffield City Council near me also has a district heating system which comes from the local waste incinerator.
“The extreme North”
*points to what Scottish people call “The South”* 🤣
Damn could have sworn the geo thermal guy was the spiffing brit at first
I wish I was spiffing Brit levels of cool
I'm sure he'd find a way to cheese it.
This is excellent, engaging, informative, fact based *and* hopeful? That's not everyday, and it seems i really need to subscribe to that soup emporium guy as well, awesome collaboration.
Super interesting, I genuinely didn't know the intricacies of geothermal heating networks - seems like a good idea. Also absolutely loving The Simpsons references.
Installing a PILE of pipes can also be seen as a huge surge of Union Plumber Jobs…
(Also mostly doing freshwater/heat transfer fluid, not sewage)
If you consider the cost of geothermal heat as % of GDP of a nation. You are going to find that the cost is really, really low. But something ,something rich people and big coal companies and so on.
My liberal council owns 100% of a district heat network that works by burning waste (Theoretically. They actually never linked). The issue is not the council's expertise, since they simply contract companies to build and run this, the issue is the lack of regulation. They are more expensive and keep increasing price, and we get half a dozen outages per year with no compensation. They are not regulated like electricity and gas providers, and we are held hostage by a contract that says we can't have another provider. They need to fix this before district heating networks can be successful in the UK.
Monopolies are always unforced errors and self-imposed pain. Ridiculous. Corruption at its finest. No doubt that company paid a pretty penny or greased many palms of your local council to get to be the sole primary provider of your area. It's how it works....
In the US the areas with high geothermal potential are already experiencing severe problems with water availability. Fracking, for whatever reason, uses a lot of water. So water availability for drilling and circulation and steam production is going to be a big hurdle to overcome
Water that is devoted to geothermal could be reused, at least in a closed system if I understood this correctly, ... ( my friends have a closed system with the special fluid which is of course reused again and again) unlike, say, energy generation to heat your shower water from the big dams, which is down due to lack of free water from the sky....ALTHOUGH there are some crazy dam designs which pump the water back up and use it again that I did see - maybe not dooable for Hoover Dam but other places?
Also, there is this flat tailed rodent that is improving groundwater retention in some desert conditions, not so much Hoover Dam but Beaver Dam...
The author gives you an optimistic green woke dream and you answer with reality.
@@holgernarrog Whatever the uses, I don't see how we can go on without massive investment in desalination plants. There simply isn't enough groundwater, runoff and rain to supply projected growth
@@tonydagostino6158 Well, according to NASA 1/4 of the solar irradiation or 1/2 of the solar radiation that hits the earth surface is dissipated by water evaporation back to the higher atmosphere. Till now technology cannot compete with this quantities.
But most of the rain falls on oceans or is flowing in rivers to oceans without being used by our society.
The technology of desalination is improving rapidly. With 50 nukes for 150bn $ (costs in China) total investment perhaps 300 bn$ used for desalination you can make large parts of the Sahara green and feed > a billion poeple.
Thus I do not see the limits of desalination for our society.
Important is...
- To get rid of green amageddon dogma as "climate change".
- To get the costs of nuclear down close to the chinese costs by making a cost - benefit evaluation of the nuclear regulation (regulation, certification requirements, test requirements, documentation requirements).
Most of the water problems were caused by reckless growth of farming districts and suburban expansion. As said in a comment before a closed system is largely self-reliant when it comes to water use.
Also, it gives you an excuse to force the circulation of the mine water, which can become acidic or hazardous if allowed to sit.
15:05 THIS.
Even if it’s not “the best”, it would keep voters happy. The person going “No we’re shutting down your jobs, vote for us!” Vs “Vote for me and you will still have a job in the future to come!”.
I’d also like to see a LCA of all the materials used. A whole lot less e-waste to deal with that Mass-PV Scaling. Granted *Citation Needed* and use of superalloy tubes etc might muddy the water, but yeah. Also storage has to be taken into account.
Great post, extremely well done.
Nitpicking, now: coal is technically only the 3rd worst fossil fuel.
Methane leaks so much that in the short run (88 times more GHE-intensive than CO2) depending on overall fugitive emissions fossil methane is at least 50% worse than coal, and with fossil methane pushing biomethane and landfill methane off the market, it's a lose-lose. Now, you may say coal mining releases a lot of methane, so that it's all a wash. Except coal mining is largely only economically possible because of (leaky) methane recovery. So coal is a feedback of methane, economically.
Then there's bitumen. Bitumen recovery is so energy-intensive that a barrel of syncrude from bitumen takes between 1.4 and five barrels of bitumen burned on site. Plus about 3% of its energy content worth of electric energy. So even though oil is slightly less GHE-intensive than coal when burned, overall bitumen is worse.
Splitting coal into thermal and metallurgical categories, we see that, like some methane is diverted from burning to make plastics and other industrial chemicals (notably, fertilizer), the slag factor of metallurgical coal reduces overall emissions some 43% from forming cementitious materials, reducing overall average emissions of cement making for OPC. So until you get rid of OPC in cement (which would be great, and is very feasible with geopolymers), coal gets the Bronze, bitumen Silver, fossil methane Gold.
Did I mention methane-sourced nitrate fertilizer from methane destroys some soil microbes and leads to NOx emissions in agriculture?
Turns out NOx are also GHGs.. another lose-lose of fossil methane.
But great geothermal essay. Thanks!
Coal also produces methane gas when burned
@@d.thomas6988 Not only when burned. When disturbed in the ground, too.
"Now, you may say coal mining releases a lot of methane, so that it's all a wash. Except coal mining is largely only economically possible because of (leaky) methane recovery. So coal is a feedback of methane, economically. "
Methane's worse, but then in a four horse race (five if you split coal into thermal and metallurgical), and all of them too much for the environment to absorb before the climate crises get significantly worse, may I point out I started by saying it was a nitpick.
We need solutions like enhanced geothermal, not nitpicks like mine.
I'm sure it was "worst compared to the energy source we've studied"
@@xwtek3505 Yeah, but that's a rigged game: any energy generation compared to enhanced geothermal is "worst" in a two-horse race.
Engineer here, the problem is heat "quality", that is how hot the water actually is and the temperature differential with respect to what youre trying to heat. If the water isnt very hot, and if its very close to room temperature, then you need to pump a very large amount of it to get any significant amount of heating. District heating traditionally uses water near waters boiling temperature for this reason, it has to be hot to be efficient. Early systems used steam.
A cursory look into some papers appears to me that these open loop coal mine GSHP's may not even outperform air to air heat pumps coefficient of performance, or at least uts close to it. If it isnt really more energy efficient in the first place, why not just use an air to air heat pump rather than faffing around in old coal mines? Especially considering this doesnt require huge changes to jnfrastructure (time and money).
SO HAPPY that you're making videos still! I watch on nebula and RUclips
A example of geothermal energy for district heating is Schwerin in northern Germany. Their plant went online last year and supplies 2000 households
Commenting for engagement ❤
He's married already ;)
The Lord's work
All hail the mighty algorithm!
In addition to energy production, some companies in germany try to extract lithium from the water, making it a mining operation...
I want to thank you. You're giving me hope and positivity on climate change without hiding the truth.
I didn't think it was possible and it has fone so much good to my mental state. So again : thank you.
I’ve always been mad that no one ever talks about geothermal energy in this convo, like, ever. So thank you!
Gas boilers may be 30kW but they are rather oversized for central heating (although less unreasonably sized for domestic hot water production). 5kW/house or so might be a better estimate of heating demand, leading to a heating demand of 18MW/km^2, so things are still good to go.
One key issue is that the coal mine water will require a heat pump *somewhere* centralised or distributed. Even with a SCOP of 6 there is linkage between the cost of electricity and heat. I'm hoping for a future where heat is decoupled from electricity, so we don't have to upgrade houses (kerching), insulate many heat network pipes (kerching) or upgrade the electrical grid (kerching). If only we had low cost low carbon form of baseload power.
Boston has district heating! Same in Fall River. Just these old radiators in old houses emitting near, and I saw no way to turn them off or up/down
Geothermal energy is amazing 🙋🏻♂️ places like Iceland, New Zealand, Japan, and parts of the USA being examples of good places for them.
Enhanced geothermal makes almost every nation conceivably geothermal nations, in time.
I live near The Geysers complex in California and kept waiting for it to come up lol But I can see why our unique geology isn't the most relevant example for everything the video is exploring
Trouble is the few cant make millions from it.
@@Guitar6ty that's not true.
@@Panetierre_ pray tell?
Distributed heating systems has some problems, we are building a lot in the netherlands.
- Monopoly there is only 1 provider so price is releative high
- Contruction/refurbish opening the road and install the system in each house is not cheap
While this will be a go to as a solution problem is that heating will be more expensive then using gas for a long time so its not really appreaciated by the public at the moment.
Same goes for switzerland. We move on average every three years and almost all of our apartments where heated by the city’s central trash burning generator. Yes you are physically burning trash which doesn’t seem very green but it gets burned very efficiently, barely leaving anything behind. The heat is used to power turbines, the smoke gets carefully cleaned of all particles that then can get buried without the negative consequences landfills have for the environment. No microplastic btw!
Thanks for another great video! I watch your videos whenever I see them being published. See you in the next one!
In my country several cities developed geothermal heating systems in recent years, thanks to existing district heating networks and favorable geology. The largest geothermal heating system in the EU (outside Iceland) started operating last year in Szeged, Hungary. It provides heating to 28,000 households and 400 public buildings thanks to the EU investing €23 million into the project.
Having done some math on different forms of heating for a course, I'm surprised district heating hasn't already taken off in more places! It's great!
Are Lesser North, North, and Extreme North the actual names of regions? That’s very cool.
Fun fact: The Geotermal Gradient is among the highest in some places in the Carpathian Basen on the world, yet, geothermal is not used at all. Yippie.
"Look at this -..-graph", did not see that coming
Best Ground News advertisement I've ever seen. Spreading ideas and information is something you and GN do very well. Thanks for educating us!
I'll check them out
13:11 The volcano erupting the moment he finished his line as if to say “ワシを馬鹿にしておるのか⁉️” is just awesome.
The cost of electricity from provider like PG&E only represents 14% of the cost, the other 86% is due to transition/delivery.
For PG&E it does not matter the cost of power because it represents a very small portion of their clients total cost.
PG&E heads' should decorate tall poles.
Appalachian here. Coal is an evil and my home region and family has been harmed so much for the sake of the rest of the US.
If coal is to come back, we need to reassert ourselves to get diversification alongside mining. No more company towns.
Coal industry never helped the workers. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician. Coal was never for the good of the community just the big owners. Coal should have paid everyone in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting through mountains, trashing your landscape for generations.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect the owners. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician. Coal was never for the good of the community just the big owners. Coal should have paid everyone in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting through mountains, trashing your landscape for generations.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect the owners. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. It was exploitation at it's finest. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician for that matter. Coal was never for the good of the community just the owners. Coal should have paid EVERYONE in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting mountains in two, poisoning your landscape for generations. The poisoning of America has never stopped.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect those at the top. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. It was exploitation at it's finest. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying trash politician. Coal was never for the good of the community, just the owners. Coal should have paid EVERYONE in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting mountains in two, crippling your landscape for generations. The poisoning of America has never stopped since the dawn of the industrial age.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect those at the top. They never gave an F about you guys or the rest of us and that goes the same for both parties.
Why fear radioactive waste that might harm a small area in the distant future when coal is harming the entire globe constantly right now?
Interesting you went up to Mulberry Park, which doesn't (and yep, definitely should have had) have district heating, because there's another estate managed by the same organisation (inherited from Bath City Council housing) which does have some 1980s-ish district heating - the Ballance Street estate on Julian Road. They use gas combined heat and power for it at the moment, though. But the infrastructure's there for supplying and billing for the heat, so it does work. No breakdowns in the 5 years I lived there.
This is one of the best explained videos on one of the most interesting premises ive seen in a while. Kudos! You've earned a sub
Geothermal energy is mainly interesting as a home and building heating because you don't need as much heat. That's 30% of emissions right there. Edit... Hah the video wasn't done. 😊
Simon, I'd like to let you know that my nephew Charles, who is an engineer whose occupation has been (he is now of retirement age) to do studies about products. He is married with children who now have lives of their own. He did his own study on whether to install goethermal for his family house in Laval, a suburb of Montreal. He then installed it himself, and has not used any other home-heating system.
One thing about these coalbeds is they also leak methane, and whilst it hasn't been commercially feasible to capture and utilise most of that methane historically (around 1% of coalved methane in the UK is probably at commercial viability) it absolutely does make sense to capture and use it on site if you already have a powerplant or district heating system in place. That could extend the operational capability, or add flexibility to power output to handle variability/frequency response if we're talking electricity instead of district heating.
Great video. One thing I would argue with was the heat density calculation. 30kW per household is an extremely high estimate. While most houses may have a 30kW boiler, they don't need anywhere near that power. Especially since people could run on weather compensation heating on a lower power than they currently do with their boiler.
Great work again, Simon! Aside from learning how various forms of geothermal can be implemented, my key takeaway from this video was: Top-down policy needs to shift from business as usual to emergency measures immediately because... well.. we're in an emergency. If that is not done adequately, we must force those who influence policy to change their behavior, one way or another (cough cough the Shinzo Abe treatment).
Really liking these recent videos!
Studying environmental and natural resource economics modules at the univeristy of Bath (courseworks due in 4 days, and degree is done in 3 weeks!) And this channel has been fascinating to watch alongside my studies wrapping up. Its deeply encouraging how many ways the issue of sustainable resource production/consumption is interescted by different feilds that can all work together.
Don't fly to Canary for graduation party 😼🍾
Awesome deep dive on this topic Simon, definitely my favourite video of yours so far, loving where you're taking this channel 🙂
Just one nikpik, i think the shadows you get from your face pieces in front of a projector kind of bring down the visual quality of the rest of the video, which is a shame as the rest looks great!
I imagine this would be particularly valuable in places like West Virginia, with an economy very strongly dependent on coal mining. It'll be an important task to bring new jobs in renewable energy to places that might be resistant to change, but employing the skills workers already have would be an easy part of that.
I'm happy to see that the Netherlands already uses a lot of these options in many places
Fantastic video, once again. Huge thanks Simon for spreading awareness and inform people!!!
Thank you for the very informative video! Also, thank you for providing references, I definitely want to check those out! :)
A very excellent meme at 15:41 for presenting a graph. I love it.
Tectonic plates in Europe: your skull
Tectonic plates in south east Asia: The bones in your feet
Italy is in Europe and the plate there is paper thin
Sounds super promising, I did a quick search of "Appalachia geothermal" but in the projects I clicked on a keyword search for "coal" didnt pop up. I guess its good that geothermal projects are in the works, but would need to do more research to see if this district heating/ using abandoned mines concept is being considered here. I guess one question I had was about the flooding of water and whether that could get 'dirty' from the coal mine and then seep into the aquipher? Excellent video btw, it was tuned perfectly to my attention span.
Great and very informative video! I think a mix of long and detailed videos and some shorter ones would be great. I usually watch the videos during breakfast or during a short break. So I either have to schedule time in the evening to not forget your longer videos (and therefore often forget them), or I have to watch them gradually over the period of 1-2 days (which also leads to me forgetting them). You obviously have the stats and know what works and what doesn't. Just wanted to share my opinion
“A bunch of volcanoes in a trench coat, masquerading as a country”
I died 😂😂😂
This was an interesting watch! I hadn't considered new uses for closed, inactive coal mines before.
This is an incredibly high-quality video, @simon clark. You have really outdone yourself.
THORIUM guys!!!
It has literally zero drawbacks and a plethora of benefits
Hearing about geothermal energy honestly makes me so happy. I hear so little about it when it has the potential to provide the remaining few percent of generation we need to decarbonize the grid. And I hadn't even heard of using it for heating! Great stuff!
Everywhere I’ve ever seen district heating, it tended to overheat the buildings and people left their windows open, but if you designed the system to only provide enough heat to get to maybe 16C, it would be highly efficient and allow people to customize their desired temperature with room heaters.
Oh my god, the Simpsons references were absolutely next level. Your videos always teach me something, I really appreciate that!
The ad I saw before the video started was such a coincidence. “Big industry with low emissions”
this was excellent, Simon! keep up the good work you're doing
Blimey, this was incredibly gripping! Thank you so much for a great video, Simon and Soup :)
Now we know what they can do to Centralia, Pennsylvania 🌋
You have cast the Heat Pump spell. Technology Connections need to be referenced.
Three questions: What is the geological impact of running water through the mines for sustained periods of time? How will we efficiently deal with the deposition of minerals in pipes picked up from the walls of mines? And how will a system like this be redundant or capable of providing heating/cooling in the event of pipeline or pump failure?
15:43 I was listening to this video like a podcast so I didn't see what was happening on screen. When I heard "look at this graph" I instantly thought of the "Look at this photograph" meme xD
I’m loving all these videos from you Simon!
Good old UK government. Why pay for something yourself when they can do it for you
I wonder what the water will look like after sitting in a warm coalmine for a few decades and any interesting biology that happens.
Also if divers have to go in there to build and maintain infrastructure, like some mines are kilometers long and very deep.
I love all the Simpsons references. They really made this entertaining to watch. This video is super interesting. Good content. Thanks for making it.
2:49 Nuclear. Job done, next question.
Amazing video as always Simon. Sincerely hope youtube starts treating you better soon
this simpsons references in this are embiggening my soul
the graph of coal usage with china on it is just... why is there so much fuss about the UK opening One coal mine for coking coal. truely just mad times of delusions of grandeur that we're somehow a big polluter when really we could put the economy just that bit more first to enable the green transition, on-shoring steel reduces shipping, allows for cheaper wind turbines, etc
Simon - still missing the value of Tidal power - we are an island. On District Heating - Transport for London (the Underground) has a heat issue, and new tube trains will have air conditioning (more heat in tunnels) - most deep stations have disused lift shafts converted to vent air, however disused City Road station is now Bunhill Heat and Power scheme, but more heat needs to be converted.
11:41 I thought you said evil Technologies Incorporated😂
The UK uses about 4.5 times the electricity that Indonesia does. Indonesia's geothermal capacity is roughly about what the UK demands. Therefore, if Indonesia could reach near 100% of its geothermal capacity, it would have enough energy to supply each individual with 4.5 times more energy than they currently use, constantly. This of course would mean lots of excess energy available, which could create an export industry for Indonesia ensuring income while there is excess.
Oh god i was listening to this podcast style and as soon as i heard "Look at this graph" i had to check and you delivered
Harworth group is the division of British Coal that is developing housing on old coal mining sites, and likely a key organisation that needs to be pressured to ensure all future developments use district heating based off the old coal mine infrastructure
doctor Simon Clarke do you have a video on trucking nowadays? the environmental, social, psychological and even physiological impact of it?
I’m from the uk also and as I’m sure you know Simon we’ve been off coal for about 10 years now I think. But it amazes me how much coal the US still uses for power
Also Simon your videos since the channel being in danger video have been so good! Thanks for the amazing content. I like and comment on every video to support
Fun fact ancient peoples and pioneers in the new world would often dig cellars to keep their food, because so many feet down everything is heavily insulated so heat and cold can be preserved to warm a home or keep your food fresh.
I'm in New England and my grandparents still keep canned goods in a root cellar
AMAZING INFO, RESEARCH AND SKETCH COMMIC . Love it 🎉
21:27 just a heads up, while you do have 30kw boiler, you are not using the entire 30kw, like ever. It's an overkill
Thanks for talking about geothermal energy. I love it so much and I wish more places used it. I feel like no one knows about it, even if it's under their feet. There's a geothermal energy plant in Southampton that powers some of the city centre and no one knows about it, even though it's been there for decades. Great Video.
Rather than calling it waste heat, call it heat harvesting. "Waste" has negative connotations, while harvesting retains the fact that we're already producing it and it simply needs to be collected.