UK doesn't mine coal anymore simply imports it, 6.5 million metric tons last year.

Mezo.

In 1913, coal use in UK was 292 million tonnes, in 2016,it was 20 million. Took over 100 years to almost disappear. New ways have been found to power the UK, it sure looks likely new ways to power transportation will happen, sooner more likely than later. Just because electricity may well replace gas, it doesn't mean that adventure, long distance biking will end. It just means that new sources of power will be established. 100 years ago finding petro in rural Brazil, Congo, Louisiana was a chore, soon finding charging stations in those areas will be easy. Today, it is 96 miles from Roswell NM to Vaughn NM, major highway, no gas stations. There is a rest area midway that has electric power. Best not to panic that bike travel will end forever.

Well that trip is easy as if you run out of fuel then any passing alien will give you a lift.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Problem is both times they offered a ride to Jupiter, real bitch getting a ride back(at least that's what I told my wife happened).

You did the right thing there, you can wait for ages before anyone is coming back this way. Also, the service at the McDonalds there is really poor - fortunately Starbucks is far better.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Yeah like importing wood pellets from the USA to again burn, growing straw in the fields of the UK to again burn & still most of the UK's electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels (oil, gas & coal) nothing has changed over the decades & never will until they take a leaf out of the French books & build multiple nuclear power stations.

And remember UK also imports electricity from Ireland, Netherlands & France because it doesn't have the capacity to fully meet its own electricity requirements, and they want you all to go out & buy EV`s ? really?

Its a crock of political BS IMHO.

Mezo.

I think you are somewhat behind the current situation on a number of things. We don’t grow straw - we grow wheat and straw is a byproduct that is then used as a fuel - of course you could take the view that we grow straw in which case wheat is the byproduct.

We don’t burn very much coal nowadays but we do burn gas - this is a change over to decades as we used to burn loads of coal but now very little and no oil at all. Gas is used more than it used to (40.6% of all electricity comes from gas). We are expanding the amount of off-shore wind generation than we have now (13GW) by a factor of four to 50+GW. Nuclear is also on stream at 17%. The intention is that we will be carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest. So the total fossil fuel used in electricity generation is 42.7% - which is, as far as I am aware, less than half.

We do import electricity. So do France (from the UK amongst others). Ireland also imports from the UK. As do the Netherlands. This is because it is an international market that works together.

Now when it comes to EV there is an odd situation as, whilst they are plugged in to suck up juice to charge them up people leave them plugged into the network once they are charged up - in this way they actually add capacity to the network and the system allows the batteries in the car to feed back into the network. So they smooth out the demand on power plants - this is particularly useful with wind generation as that can fluctuate more than other technologies.

Which brings me back to the technology that is likely to be the ultimate answer - geothermal electricity generation. The electricity can be used directly or as a stepping stone to hydrogen production - a technology that has the potential to replace petrol and diesel once it has matured.

As far as being a crock of political BS if you are right and climate change is not real then we will have made sure that we don’t waste a finite resource and we will have stopped polluting the air we breathe. If Greta is right then we will have stopped messing up the environment. Either way, it is the right thing to do.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.