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2015's Electricity Retirements: 80 Percent Coal Plants (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo writes: In the US, electricity demand is growing very slowly, which means that capacity additions don't have to exceed retirements by much in order to keep the grid functioning. Tracking the comings and goings from the electric grid can help provide a picture of the country's changing energy mix. The Energy Information Administration, which provides data on the US' electric grid, says 18GW of capacity were retired this past year, more than 80 percent of it coal-fired. More than 27GW of utility-scale projects will replace that this year. Note that much of the new generating hardware is wind and solar, but the plants being replaced often had low capacity factors due to their age and high pollutant output.
Natural gas does make a good backup for wind and solar, though, because gas plants can come online quickly when the wind drops.
Why did you feel the need for so much rationalization? Why don't you just thank us for helping you pay your power bill?
Lots of energy sources get subsidies, but only with renewables to individuals get the money directly. And for comparison's sake, renewables get many times the subsidy of conventional sources if you calculate it on a per MWH basis. Its not even close. No energy has ever gotten subsidized as heavily as renewables.
http://www.popsci.com/science/...
2013 Solar Panels Now Make More Electricity Than They Use
And by 2020, the solar industry will have completely "paid back" the energy it took to produce the world's panels.
Also--- "rare" earth metals are "rare" at the current low prices. but there are vast quantities available at only slightly higher cost levels. One mine in california has more rare earth than all of china but it's shut down right now because the cost to extract means it isn't profitable right now (partially because of higher labor costs in the U.S. than china which will correct itself by 2045).
Some are stripmined- valid point. Some are conflict materials- a valid point you didn't make.
But that's a case of business externalizing their costs on society.
The future really is solar. Enough solar power to satisfy the globes needs would like like a a half dozen to a dozen little dots scattered around the globe. But even more exciting is decentralized solar power which is
a) Less likely to be stolen/destroyed by bandits.
b) Extends lighted hours (for education and business) far into the night.
c) Can drive laptops, wi-fi, fans, and small food cooler/heaters (for insulin and similar items more than for sodas).
And solar just keeps getting cheaper. Like the space program, solar power investment has a huge payoff for the startup cost the government funded.
And it has an interesting feedback loop with fossil fuels. It reduces their use by just a tiny amount- but that's enough to significantly drop the prices of fossil fuels because the price of all fossil fuel is set by the cost of the most expensive fossil fuel.
If it costs $90 to get out the last barrel, the $10 a barrel is sold for $90. If you destroy demand for oil over $60 a barrel, then all oil will be sold at $60.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.