What should be the UK's future energy sources?
    ----------------------------------------------
             Originally written 20xx

I'm a lower-case greenie, and my answer is: more coal!

When I was at school in the 1980s we were told there was enough
coal in the ground to last another 300 years. In a chemistry
lesson we did an energy planning exercise to decide how the
future eneergy mix should be planned.

For electricity, we should have about 25%-33% nuclear for
continuous base load, 70-odd% coal for the heavy lifting,
a scattering of gas for instant-startup load spikes. Where
it is economical, site-specific solar for site-specific
usages, eg powering parking ticket machines.

Town and cities should be converting waste to energy,
electricity and local heating. It's madness to dump
useful compact energy sources (rubbish) in the ground
instead of using it.

Other than a few for load spikes, using gas for electrity
generation is madness. Converting gas to heat to convert
to motion to convert to electricity to then send along a
lossy transmission network, to then convert back to heat
again. Madness! Gas should be used exclusively for end-user
heating, only one energy conversion point.

(I suppose with appropriate technology gas-powered transport
would be a suitable use, but I prefer vehicles that don't
need pressure vessels to contain their fuel.)

People complain about dirty coal. Ok then, use clean coal.
Highly pulverised high pressure particulate coal gas, and
don't just throw away the "waste", that's by-products.
Use the heat by-products for local heating. Scrub the
vapour output and collect the by-products. To use the
heat byproducts for local heating the power plant will
have to be near enough to habitations to transport the
heat effectively, but so what, locals can either have
cheap heat from the local power station, or go cold.

But of course, it won't happen because it's sensible,
and "politics" directs energy policy, not engineering.
I'm sure than if this was the 1930s we'd never get
the National Grid built, and there'd be more than a
dozen socket outlet, power and frequency standards
across the country.

JGH