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Power Science

UK Hits Clean Energy Milestone: 50% of Electricity From Low Carbon Sources (theguardian.com) 111

Half of the UK's electricity came from wind turbines, solar panels, wood burning and nuclear reactors between July and September, in a milestone first. From a report on The Guardian: Official figures published on Thursday show low carbon power, which has been supported by the government to meet climate change targets, accounted for 50% of electricity generation in the UK in the third quarter, up from 45.3% the year before. The rise was largely driven by new windfarms and solar farms being connected to the grid, and several major coal power stations closing.
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UK Hits Clean Energy Milestone: 50% of Electricity From Low Carbon Sources

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Burning wood releases a lot of CO2 and should not be considered clean.

    • by Andreas Mayer ( 1486091 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @09:15AM (#53543011) Homepage

      Wood burning can be considered clean in this context because the CO2 that is released was captured from the air in the first place.

      So no additional CO2 is released when burning wood.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by srw ( 38421 )
        And where do you think the carbon in coal and oil came from?
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The problem is that the coal/oil reserves underground came from tens of thousands of years (if not longer) sequestration process. We burn through it in a fraction of that time. So in the long-term it may return to equilibrium, but in the short term we are putting a shit ton more CO2 in the air than would be there otherwise.

          • by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @09:36AM (#53543107)

            Firewood comes from treesthat take decades to grow (if not longer) . We burn through it in a fraction of that time.

            Even then you are assuming that new trees are planted to replace the old ones; in the UK where I am they are not. As it happens I have a large garden by UK standards, about an acre with 25-30 large trees. Three blew down in a storm two years ago; these were ~ 30 ft trees, ~ 15" diameter trunks. I do have a wood burning stove and I have already burned their wood. At the rate trees grow you would need several acres of woodland for every house to achieve a steady state just for heating. Most houses have nothing like that, not even mine, and certainly not in the UK.

            • I'm rather skeptical as well (I'd hate to see wood burning become a long term "solution" to coal), but this should answer some of the questions in your post: http://www.pelletcouncil.org.u... [pelletcouncil.org.uk]

              The source is likely to be biased as it's the uk pellet council, who have a vested interest in the fuel, but it does provide *some* useful information.

              It looks like trees *are* replanted in the UK. It also seems that wood pellets are a tad different from tree wood, so you can't really compare your wood burner to an indu

              • While there is a cycle involved in CO2 sequestration and release that philosophically can be called carbon neutral, there is not doubt that because of Biomass burning there is more CO2 in the atmosphere at any given moment than their would be if that power were generated by a zero carbon source. The CO2 emitted by biomass is no different than the CO2 emitted by natural gas in how it acts after emission. By cutting down carbon sink plant life and burning it we are both releasing sequestered CO2 and destroyin
            • Firewood comes from treesthat take decades to grow (if not longer) . We burn through it in a fraction of that time.

              We can but we don't have to. The trick is to burn it at a net rate no faster than it grows. That is a choice we make. If we burn the wood faster than the sources of it grow then it is no longer carbon neutral.

        • Back when dinosaurs where stomping about there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than now and the world was a lot hotter (good news for giant reptiles obviously). Over millions of year the carbon from this CO2 ended up in fossil fuels (hence the name) and the average amount in the atmosphere went down and it was in this environment that mankind evolved. The name of the game to fight global warming is to keep this fossil carbon in the ground and not in the atmosphere or at least reduce the rate of relea
          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by GLMDesigns ( 2044134 )
            Don't forget that CO2 levels 80 million years were not only good news for reptiles they were fine for mammals as well. Protomammals developed 120mya and mammals 80mya.

            Cretaceous CO2 levels were just fine for mammalian life. In fact in the Paleogene, 10 mya, after the end of the cretaceous period CO2 levels were even higher.

            Moral of the story? High CO2 levels are just fine for life on earth.

            Let's focus our efforts on dioxins, PCBs and other toxic bi-products of industrial activities.
            • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @10:59AM (#53543585) Journal

              Sigh. Of all the moronic talking points the pro-fossil fuel crowd bring up, this is somehow the dumbest and most infuriating. Dumbest because human civilization didn't exist 80 million years ago, and in fact only arose during the climate conditions found in the last 10,000 years or so, and infuriating because once you've adopted this idiotic statement, you've basically admitted we're fucking things up very badly, but are just trying to spin it as a positive "You see, the dinosaurs liked it!!!!"

              I'm going to be charitable and suggest you're just doing a bit of trolling, and aren't in fact one of the most retarded human beings alive.

              • by srw ( 38421 )
                But what makes you think humans are so special? Dinosaurs were here before us. Maybe we're just getting the climate back to a point where the dinosaurs can re-emerge.
              • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

                by GLMDesigns ( 2044134 )
                First of all I didn't adopt it.

                Second of all it is relevant because the hysterical chicken littles out there are talking about the survival of our species. Meanwhile these frauds compare the daily rise in temperature over the last 100 years. That's like comparing a stock chart displaying minute by minute price changes with one that displays yearly ticks.

                Is human activity causing harm. Of course. But saying that a rise of CO2 levels, even a doubling of CO2 levels will cause an extinction level event.
            • However, don't forget that the Sun's habitable zone continues to move further out into space because the Sun's solar output is slowly increasing over millions of years. This triggered the thermal runaway of Venus due to the CO2 greenhouse effect. This means that as time goes by on Earth, the threshold level of the thermal runaway of the CO2 greenhouse effect slowly decreases. This means that for Earth to remain habitable, the CO2 level must be decreased to stay below the threshold. In others words, in the p

              • Very interesting argument.

                I think we're going to arrive at fossil fuel independence sooner rather than later. The graphs point to us being able to supply our needs via solar, geothermal, wind, in a generation or so. We need fossil fuel only for this short period of time.

                I'm more concerned about the particulate pollution and the bi-product of combustion much more than CO2.
            • by Gonoff ( 88518 )

              Moral of the story? High CO2 levels are just fine for life on earth.

              Not so good for humans who increasingly want to live in vast concrete, steel and glass deserts.

              Not so good for those deserts that will be flooded when the sea rises to levels not seen for millenia (or longer).

              Not so good for the vast mega farms needed to support humanity as they are flattened by the stormier and unpredictable weather,

              • Oceans rise and fall.

                Coastlines ebb and flow

                People build homes and cities in deltas and then wonder why nature works against them? Hello? They should look up the definition of a delta.

                Even if there were no people, and no industrial activity, the oceans would rise and fall and the coastlines would ebb and flow.
            • Did you actually read my comment all the way through? Didn't you notice the bit where I said "...or at least reduce the rate of release to one where society can adapt to the changes"? Of course mankind could exist on an earth with the same climate as the dinosaurs liked, the problem is getting there from here at a price we can afford.

              Simple example. Suppose that sea levels were 10m higher than they are today. There would still be enough dry land for mankind (consider that huge areas of the world aren
            • by dbIII ( 701233 )
              Those levels would be bad news for modern farmers though.
              Of course you knew that but are just recycling a "talking point" dreamed up by a teenage political intern some years back who was far more clueless than you would have been even at the same age. You don't have to be that lazy.
        • And where do you think the carbon in coal and oil came from?

          They came from plants and animals that died millions of years ago. That carbon has essentially been taken out of circulation. By digging it up and burning it we are adding it back to the ecosystem. Burning wood is roughly carbon neutral if you are not burning it faster than the wood grows because it just circulates carbon already in the ecosystem.

        • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @10:56AM (#53543555) Journal

          The difference being that burning wood is burning carbon that is still actively part of the carbon cycle, whereas burning coal and oil releases CO2 that was removed from the carbon cycle millions of years ago, and in fact is releasing millions of years worth of sequestered CO2 in the space of a few centuries.

          Conversely, this is why claims of "greening up" due to higher CO2 PPM in the atmosphere isn't solving the increased emissions problem; simply because the vast majority of plants release the CO2 they've captured relatively quickly after they have absorbed it.

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          I think we can safely ignore carbon that was sequestered before Class Mammalia emerged in the fossil record when we're discussing the impact of environmental conditions on H. sapiens.

      • Wood burning can be considered clean in this context because the CO2 that is released was captured from the air in the first place.

        So no additional CO2 is released when burning wood.

        What? Greenhouse gasses are fungible. It doesn't matter if the carbon was captured recently or (as with coal) in the distant past.

        The only way this logic makes sense is if those trees were planted by humans for the primary purpose of burning.

        • by Tx ( 96709 )

          The only way this logic makes sense is if those trees were planted by humans for the primary purpose of burning.

          Look up the Drax biomass generators [independent.co.uk];

          The wood pellets used as biomass fuel at Drax are made from low-grade wood such as forest thinnings, tree tops and branches, as well as residue from sawmills and agricultural waste such as straw and seed husks.
          [...]
          If you burn wood pellets from the waste cuttings of the timber industry in a converted coal-fired power station, it should be possible to produce electricity that is largely carbon-neutral, provided the carbon of wood fuel is replaced by the carbon of growing t

          • what matters is that the wood is replaced at the same rate that it is used

            You can artificially tie together those two things and call it "carbon-neutral", sure. And you could also plant trees after burning coal (let's say on a small scale) or running your car and claim that coal and gasoline are carbon-neutral as well.

            This is missing the point. We're almost certainly not going to be able to grow enough trees or other plants fast enough to recapture all of the carbon we release through all of our hydrocarbon combustion. The ability to do this with wood burning is a consequen

            • As far as Drax goes I'm astonished that they're trying it on a large scale. I strongly suspect it wouldn't work if widely applied for reasons already stated, and thus this is just a greenwashing scheme, but I'd need to hunt down their specific claims and technical data first.
            • by Tx ( 96709 )

              You can artificially tie together those two things and call it "carbon-neutral", sure. And you could also plant trees after burning coal (let's say on a small scale) or running your car and claim that coal and gasoline are carbon-neutral as well.

              There's nothing artificial about it. If x tons of carbon is locked up in a managed forest, and you burn and plant wood from that forest at such a rate than x tons of carbon continues to be locked up in that forest, then that usage is, both by definition and absolute and incontrovertible weight of fact, carbon neutral. That's what the term means; no net change in the amount of carbon released.

              And yes, you could do the same with coal and oil, as long as the trees you plant are new growth, are never cut down,

              • And yes, you could do the same with coal and oil, as long as the trees you plant are new growth, are never cut down, and never counted against any other carbon usage; that is the whole concept of "offsetting". However that is much harder to keep track of, and in my opinion not a great idea.

                I disagree that the accounting is going to be any better in practice. I mean yes, if you could have a single managed forest designated for a single power plant and they weren't allowed to use any other wood, that would be easy, but you know it's never going to work like that. Wood will be bought on the free market. Trees will have to be harvested and replanted everywhere or else there will be inefficiencies, shortages caused by forest fires or hurricanes or drought, etc.

                In the end, the measure of enfor

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          You're misssing the point in a spectacular way. We don't care about where the CO2 comes from, but we *do* about the net impact of the system on the concentration of CO2 over the course of our lifetimes.

          Biofuels create a closed fuel cycle in which CO2 is continually sequestered and released in balance on a biological timescale. Fossil fuels form a system in which the CO2 is balanced on a geological timescale.

          Yes, it is true that in a hundred million years switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel won't make a

          • Sounds like you write their marketing pamphlets.

            There are two SEPARATE actions here: the burning of a hydrocarbon, and the planting of trees to capture carbon from the atmosphere. "Closed fuel cycle" is nonsense; the CO2 captured by the plants isn't the same CO2 molecules released into the atmosphere, nor is it captured at the same time the other CO2 is emitted. Yes, atmospheric CO2 is pretty much fungible... and that's my entire point.

            If I burn X amount of wood, leading to one metric ton of CO2 ente
            • the fact that burning wood makes it easier to plant more trees

              By this, I meant cutting down more trees obviously clears more land for planting, land which might be more accessible or otherwise economical. This is the only "cycle" present in this system: the cycle of using the same plot of land over and over. Which might be handy, sure, but that doesn't mean burning coal and planting the same number of trees in a different spot wouldn't accomplish the same thing.

            • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @12:22PM (#53544131) Homepage Journal

              If I burn X amount of coal or gasoline, leading to one metric ton of CO2 entering the atmosphere, and then plant enough trees to recapture one metric ton of CO2... that is no less carbon neutral than the above.

              Sure, if you did plant enough trees. But in fact globally forest extent is shrinking and nobody is talking about offsetting coal with re-forestation. That's because coal wouldn't be economically competitive if you had to pay for the cost of offsetting the pollution it emits. It's barely hanging on as is.

              You can argue for anything if you imagined that we did things that (a) we aren't doing and (b) we aren't doing because they aren't economically practical.

              Timescales don't matter.

              Economists and financial analysts would beg to differ. So would chemists, physicists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Time is literally the most important factor there is in just about every calculation we make. There's a big difference between a 4% ROI in a month and a 4% ROI in a decade. There's a big difference between a 4 degree warming in a century and a 4 degree warming in ten thousand years.

              It used to be believed that gas equilibrium with the oceans would prevent any increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. That's why the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, which was proposed in the 1890s, wasn't believed by most scientists prior to the International Geophysical Year in 1958. In that year the oceanographer Roger Revelle demonstrated that the rate at which the oceans could absorb CO2 was physically limited. In other words the timescale of natural carbon sequestration was too long to prevent an increase in atmospheric CO2.

              • Economists and financial analysts would beg to differ. So would chemists, physicists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists.

                You're just free associating important-sounding words. For the purposes of the specific question of whether planting trees can make wood burning and/or coal burning carbon-neutral, it wouldn't matter if coal was created yesterday by the coal fairy.

                If you're arguing that wood burning is small scale enough for this trick to "work" and coal is too large scale, I agree except that I still insist that the accounting is artificial. Which isn't to say it's useless, just that it cannot be used to fairly say tha

                • by hey! ( 33014 )

                  You're just free associating important-sounding words.

                  I expect the irony escapes you there, but no. I am arguing that time and economics matter. I suppose if you insist on ignoring time and money as part of your calculations there's nothing anyone can do to stop you, butin he real world cost constraints limit what can actually get done, and there is such a thing as doing something so slowly it makes no practical difference.

                  I don't particularly favor burning wood, simply because if we are going to go the biomass route we should choose plants that fix carbon

                  • Naturally burning trees that take a century or more to grow to maturity isn't much better than burning coal -- because the timescale is longer than the expected lifetime of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere.

                    That's not even... that has nothing to do with anything. The time frames that matter are the same: the time it takes us to plant new trees and have them grow to recapture carbon. That's it.

                    You're trying to turn everything into a cycle, when you should be thinking in transactions. Carbon neutrality matters in a transactional sense: planting Y trees for X pounds of a given hydrocarboned burned. That's it. Unless and until we start running out of space to plant trees, that is *all* you need to be thinki

                    • by hey! ( 33014 )

                      You have no understanding of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. Equillibria do not function instantaneously.

                      Until you understand more physics (and economics) there really isn't any point in arguing with you.

                    • You have no understanding of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. Equillibria do not function instantaneously.

                      Until you understand more physics (and economics) there really isn't any point in arguing with you.

                      Lofty bullshit. There is no actual long-term equilibrium. The universe is headed towards heat death, assuming something else like the big rip doesn't get us first.

                      The conversation is thus about effective equilibria on shorter timescales, and you've chosen to retreat behind nonsensical pseudo-intellectualism than actually offer any real-world explanation of how the burning of coal + planting trees is any less carbon-neutral than the burning of trees + planting more trees.

                      If timeframes were actually imp

              • Sad that this tripe got modded up.

                There's a big difference between a 4% ROI in a month and a 4% ROI in a decade. There's a big difference between a 4 degree warming in a century and a 4 degree warming in ten thousand years. [Emphasis mine]

                This has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of planting trees to offset the carbon emissions of burning coal vs. planting trees to offset the carbon emissions of burning trees. It doesn't matter where the coal came from or how long it took to be created. Only the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere matter, along with their rate of decrease/increase. The trees that grow to offset coal carbon don't grow any slower than the trees used to offset tree carbon. A

        • What? Greenhouse gasses are fungible. It doesn't matter if the carbon was captured recently or (as with coal) in the distant past.

          The only way this logic makes sense is if those trees were planted by humans for the primary purpose of burning.

          No, the only thing that matters is what ultimately happens to those trees.

          Unless you're harvesting them then carefully warehousing all of the wood indefinitely so that it never rots, the CO2 is going to get released. Whether it's by burning or fungal digestion is irrelevant.

          That makes the burning carbon neutral relative to what would have happened anyway.

          • You're saying most of these trees will die, decay and release the majority of their CO2 on a timescale likely to matter regarding global warming (the next hundred years or so) ? I'm not altogether sure I believe that.

            If these are going to be human-planted trees primarily for wood burning purposes, this point is moot anyway. In our comparative scenario with coal, we could choose to plant long-lived and/or decay-resistant trees for our carbon offset, preferably in areas precisely like the UK (plenty of r
            • That was the best defense of the concept "wood is intrinsically carbon-neutral" argument I've heard yet, by the way, and to the extent that trees will release most of their carbon atmospherically (a fact I haven't yet verified) during the decay process, it's a decent enough point... when talking about longer timescales.
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Wood burning is not clean because it emits particulates. From a carbon standpoint it depends on what you are burning and especially what you replace it with.

      If you burn bamboo from a bamboo plantation the carbon you emit will be offset within a year or two by carbon fixed in newly grown bamboo. If you burn giant sequoias and turn the grove you harvested them from into a parking lot, then that's a lot like burning coal.

      • by dbIII ( 701233 )

        Wood burning is not clean because it emits particulates

        I'm pretty sure they either have electrostatic precipitators or bag filters on something of the scale we are talking about. I'd say try another tack if you want to find problems with the project.
        I see it as a waste of new wood. It's not as if they are burning branches, old pallet timber or whatever. It's different to the other biomass burning plants around the world that burn things like the waste left after sugar cane crushing.

    • Burning wood releases a lot of CO2 and should not be considered clean.

      You are correct, at least to a point. If not done correctly burning wood can produce soot just like coal. Depending on the quality of the land it can spread heavy metals into the air. If burning wood is such a good idea then I know of a place in the Ukraine with a lot of trees, near a place called Chernobyl I think. The CO2 released is just time delayed by a few years from what it took out of the air if we burn it. We have better uses for wood than energy though.

      I remember someone that believed CAGW wa

      • Actually burning wood is a lot worse than burning high grade coal. It's dirty as heck. It's even worse than burning lignite.

  • As worldwide energy use increases, energy should get more expensive, prompting us to look for ways to use energy more efficiently and bring alternative sources online.

    It's a self-correcting loop, but only as long as there is no market manipulation, such as massive pet industry subsidies or restrictive legislation that prevents new methods of generation from coming online to the grid.

  • Wind/solar (Score:4, Informative)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @09:20AM (#53543043) Homepage Journal
    Um, no. According to the article the main driver was Natural Gas and Nuclear. Solar/Wind barely budged. Another mdsolar deceptive article.
    • Re:Wind/solar (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @10:48AM (#53543499)

      Um, no. According to the article the main driver was Natural Gas and Nuclear. Solar/Wind barely budged. Another mdsolar deceptive article.

      About 25% of Q3 power was from renewables. From the source document, about 4.5% was solar, 11% wind, 8% Biomass. Q3 is the best quarter for solar annually, it drops off significantly in the winter, so that annual averages are less than Q3. Wind production tends to be lower than average during Q3.

      What is most interesting is that although the percentage increased, total consumption decreases significantly, allowing them to reduce coal burning. Natural Gas increased the most and Renewable's and Nuclear's percentages of the total increased more than their actual production percentages did.

      https://t.co/WcF82BuKIu [t.co]

    • by wbr1 ( 2538558 )
      It mentions nukes almost favorably. Can't be mdsolar...
    • Um, no. According to the article the main driver was Natural Gas and Nuclear. Solar/Wind barely budged. Another mdsolar deceptive article.

      How can gas be a main driver of low carbon energy sources reaching 50% if it isn't considered part of that 50% by the government statistics that are being reported?

  • But not hidrocarbons, people forget that in western europe and the us it was common to have acid rains.
    Now for some time every coal fired power station has to have a scrubber for it sulfur and particulate emissions.
    That is expensive to operate, specially if competing fuels have little or no sulfur content, or generate very little particulate emissions.
    The problem that the coal industry has is that it is a very dirty fuel, it has a massive direct impact as we are seeing in China.
    Because, most people are
  • ugh; solar farms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Friday December 23, 2016 @12:49PM (#53544313) Journal
    Please, for the love of god, would you ppl QUIT DOING SOLAR FARMS. Building this over land is about as stupid as it gets. Do it over parking lots or roofs. Those sites convert light into heat. Lands convert light into sugars. If you are worried about AGW, then you need to reduce the FUCKING HEAT. If you are not worried about it, then quit subsidizing solar.
    Fucking idiots.
    • Please, for the love of god, would you ppl QUIT DOING SOLAR FARMS. Building this over land is about as stupid as it gets. Do it over parking lots or roofs. Those sites convert light into heat. Lands convert light into sugars. If you are worried about AGW, then you need to reduce the FUCKING HEAT. If you are not worried about it, then quit subsidizing solar.

      I've often wondered if we could put solar panels along the highways here in the US. There's a lot of places where the median between lanes is 40 feet or so, and a lot of those stretches have guard rails on both sides. Some stretches have 40 feet or more of guarded dales along the sides, up to a chain link fence.

      I once estimated that to supply the entire country's electrical needs (simple, back-of-the-envelope thing without taking into account peak load and other issues) we'd need solar panels along about 5,

      • Is there any reason we shouldn't just be planting solar panels along highways?

        I'm not saying it is a bad idea but some issues need to be addressed.

        Solar panels don't take in all the light, they are flat surfaces that can reflect a good portion of the light that hits them. If placed poorly they can blind drivers from the sunlight. If placed over the roads then the roads cannot benefit from the sunlight that make vehicles, debris, and other hazards more visible. In cold weather the sun would not melt off ice and snow. Even in sub-freezing air temperatures a dark asphalt or concrete

      • over the highways makes more sense.
        However, if the median is say rocks, or concrete, then by all means go for it. After all, animals really do not live there to any great degree.
        BUT, doing an automated install on parking lots really makes a lot of sense. It can be set up so that the cars are under the panels. That protects them from the elements. In addition, light->heat now becomes light->electricity.
        Interestingly, I am going to guess that asphalt gives off a lot of chemicals as it heats up. Th
  • Wow, look at that. Someone saying something good about nuclear power for once. Of course they will if it let's them hit a milestone like this. I thought nuclear was expensive, dangerous, and if you look at it wrong it will explode and melt your face off.

    Here's the milestone I see, nuclear power is being recognized for what it is, carbon free, inexpensive, plentiful, and safe. This is a big deal to me because it is so rare to see anyone say anything good about nuclear power. With this announcement they may not say explicitly that nuclear power is safe and cheap but it is implied, at least they recognize it as carbon free.

    I've done the math and it would be exceedingly difficult for any nation, especially one as small as the UK, to be energy independent without nuclear power. I've read some rather crazy claims that we can put solar panels in Africa to power the UK but at the same time we cannot build nuclear power in the UK. Well, if nuclear power is too dangerous to put in the UK then put them out in the African desert and run the wires to the UK, that way you'd get your energy night and day and not have to worry about looking at it wrong and it exploding in your face.

  • It's easy to get to "good numbers" by just shutting down all the bad stuff. Unfortunately, that basically leaves us with 50% of Not Enough.

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