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6 Major Countries Have Recently Announced Plans To Phase-Out All Coal-Fired Power Plants (electrek.co)
At least 6 major countries, including Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland, have all recently -- several within the past few weeks -- announced the imminent phase-out of all coal-fired power plants. Electrek reports: Earlier this week, Canada, which has already significantly reduced its use of coal to about 7% of its energy generation, announced a phase of the resource by 2030. The country's strong hydropower should keep dominating its energy generation, but the country has also been investing in wind and solar to make up the difference. A week before Canada's announcement, France announced a more aggressive timeline of 2023 for its own phase-out of coal, but it should be more easily achievable since they have already reduced the use of coal to 3% of their electricity generation -- thanks to a strong local nuclear industry. Finland is the latest country to join the group, but it also announced a more aggressive solution of simply banning entirely the use of coal to produce energy by 2030. The country gets about 12% of its electricity from coal, which it has to import. Peter Lund, a researcher at Aalto University and chair of the energy program at the European Academies' Science Advisory Council, told New Scientist: "These moves are important forerunners to enforce the recent positive signals in coal use. The more countries join the coal phase-out club, the better for the climate as this would force the others to follow." As for the U.S., it gets about 33% of its total electricity generation from coal and will likely grow the coal industry rather than phase it out under President-elect Donald Trump.
This is the newest horror film, and the entire world is cast. Europe is moving forward as the geeky scientist who warned us all, and China is the strong-man who takes over when the USA gets killed early on.
If coal isn't readily available what will we put into the christmas stocking of the little shits all over the land?
The coal industry is unlikely to stop shrinking with natural gas prices where they are, especially with less export demand.
Someone had to do it.
How can it "force the others to follow"? Won't it just drive the cost of coal down? Lots of supply & little demand = lower coal prices.
Soon they won't be advertising clean coal anymore they will be advertising cheap coal. Cheaper than any other fuel by far.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Good luck when another Toba hits. Going to really suck when the sun isn't shining so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How did you even manage to double post?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
With reduced demand comes diminished price, and lower price comes less profitability to employ workers to mine it. Brilliant manipulation of the demand side - to the detriment of the magical thinking of the trump-siders.
See, people, the real world is HARD when you actually have to consider facts!
quote: "As for the U.S., it gets about 33% of its total electricity generation from coal and will likely grow the coal industry rather than phase it out under President-elect Donald Trump."
I don't believe it.
The coal business is dying from natural causes in the USA, and I don't think there's anything Trump can possibly do to turn that around. Thanks to the fracking revolution, cheap natural gas is rapidly undercutting and replacing coal, and some existing coal plants are even being converted to gas. Wind turbines have been going up in large numbers -- including here in Texas, where the wholesale price of electricity (dynamically auctioned via computer) has sometimes been pushed to zero. At the same time, the cost of solar panels has plummeted. How is coal going to compete with all that? It just can't.
> "to access cleaner coal"
HAHAHA.... if you are going to try to 1) shill or 2) Troll, at least try to be in the realm of reality. There is no such thing as "cleaner coal". There exists a marketing term "clean coal" to represent coal fired power plants that produce 'slightly less' CO2 gas into the atmosphere (still does nothing about the coal ash that is produced and creates its own environmental issues... but I'll leave that for when I need to slap down the next Coal Mine PR employee)
This kind of effort will simply cause rich countries to buy cleaner fuels and poor countries with inefficient and dirty coal-fired power plants to buy cheaper coals.
Richer countries should keep using efficient and relatively clean coal-fired power plants and invest in poor country's energy infrastructure.
Where is Trump's official energy policy statement? You can't just make shit up because it makes him sound good. Where is the implementation plan?
...but, clean coal.
#MAGA
I should have been more clear, but what I really meant was we aren't shutting down any coal power plants for a while...
I think coal is still used by some individual homes for personal heat but I agree that will continue to shrink, natural gas just makes way more sense for most people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Coal is obsolete due to technological change and is a vastly inferior good. Look it up. Claiming conspiracy as alternate explanation is putting your head in the sand.
This is good news! More for us to use!
OTOH, Trump himself "ignores what Trump actually says he will do".
And, "6 major countries, including Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland..." Since when are Finland, Austria, and Holland "major countries?"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Now and since before there was a USA.
He has a plan. Just wait. You'll see.
And it is completely meaningless as long as the US, India and China continue to pollute at their current levels. Until those three countries cut back on emissions anything the rest of the world does is the equivalent to a fart in a hurricane.
I wonder what a list of minor countries would look like.
Compound lies. There is nothing to respond to because nothing you wrote is accurate. Go back to school. You need it.
I keep hoping that maybe with Reid gone we can get nuclear + renewables going strong here in the USA and dump coal ourselves.
Don't get me wrong--I'm not very optimistic about that--it's more of an unfounded hope.
The rest of the world doesn't care what your Emperor Trump feels like declaring. We're getting rid of coal because we see an obvious benefit to do so. You don't even need to believe in global warming to see why this is a good thing. So go ahead and mine all the coal you want, but don't be surprised when there's no export market for any of it.
You are a shill. Those impacts are well-documented and don't require adjusting the data like your faux global warming needs. Furthermore, the same climate models that predict warming from carbon pollution also show major climate impacts from increased use of wind energy. So you'll accept the climate models when they predict harm from carbon pollution but dismiss them when they show dangers from wind energy. Come back when you have something useful to contribute to the discussion, son.
You're still wrong about everything that you claimed.
Also read this.
If Trump and his cast of Dominionists doesn't manage to start World War 3 and kill us all in nuclear fire, then U.S. Civil War 2: Electric Nignogaloo will get most of us killed anyway, then the Islamic extremists-du-jour will swoop in along with Russia and China and finish the rest of us off, so who gives a shit what his fucking energy policy is going to be?
You need to fucking learn about time series analysis. Data must be stationary to apply probability models to the error. Go learn something idiot.
If Trump isn't going to grow coal use, then how does he plan on getting those 40,000 unemployed coal miners back to their jobs mining coal? It was one of his most-used campaign promises. He even repeated the exact number of jobs he was going to get back over and over.
You are welcome on my lawn.
ahem nuclear?
This is how someone like Trump can get elected. There are actually people who believe what this goof is saying.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nobody's planning to phase out coal. In fact, they've discovered that coal dust sprinkled on breakfast cereals helps build growing children's bodies 12 ways.
But you won't hear about that in your mainstream media. No sir.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We need a new Godwin's Law, but for Trump.
he had to intentally and actively do it.
Canada is not a major country.
If we place the coal under his ego, we could get into the diamond industry.
This is how someone like Trump can get elected. There are actually people who believe what this goof is saying.
Funny. I thought it was because the media decided to lie through their teeth over a candidate and proclaim her to be the second coming, while glossing over the massive amount of corruption she was involved in.
Om, nomnomnom...
Yeah, those coal minors in West Virginia that lost their jobs, the jobs Trump keeps promising to bring back. They obviously don't stand the real problem: coal mining isn't down because of environmental activism, it's down because of lack of demand. Fact is, natural gas power production is both cheaper and much more damaging to the environment.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So, burning lignite for power is the same as burning anthracite as far as emissions?
Fusion will both eliminate the need for dirty energy and relieve the world's helium shortage... any day, real soon now!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Pretty sure Trump promised West Virginia coal miners their jobs back, meaning he's promising to bring coal consumption back to it's historical peak levels, despite the lack of demand. Sad. Disgusting little idiot, isn't he? People are saying he may be brain damaged.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Wind and solar are viable, they just don't lessen the needed amount of fossil fuel capacity needed, because you still need alternate power production for those times when it's dark and the air is still. However, in conjunction with hydro power, wind makes a lot of sense -- which is why hear on the Columbia River, we're building out lots of wind turbines close to the Bonneville Power dam. Solar? Not such a good idea here, it rains all the time. Might be a good idea in Eastern Oregon.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
There isn't much difference. Note: "And despite the many innovative coal combustion technologies being developed, the only practical way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal is to get more energy out of each pound of coal -- to increase the efficiency. But the efficiency of typical coal plants has peaked at about 33 percent, limited mostly by their steam turbines. What doesn't become electricity becomes waste heat."
Well, according to Wikipedia there are 195 countries and the six listed are:
17. Germany
21. France
38. Canada
65. Netherlands
95. Austria
114. Finland
On the one hand, you can count that five out of six are in the upper half and not small island states that don't really do coal anyway. I mean it could be Bahamas, Barbados, Vanuatu, Samoa, Grenada and Tonga which would be considerably less impressive. On the other hand the top ten are about 4.3 billion people so even if the other 185 countries agreed the majority would still use coal. It's definitively still in the "we'll put our money where or mouth is" phase where they try to be practical, large scale examples that it's possible rather than really make a dent in world consumption.
But that's basically the EU led by Germany and France, realistically nobody believes China and India or the other developing nations will stop modernizing to keep emissions down. Population will also rise to 10 billion from an aging population despite the explosive growth is over. So the EU is trying to find a greener way to deliver a high quality way of life, hoping the rest of the world will be more EU-like than US-like. CO2 emissions in US: 16.4, EU: 8.6, World: 4.9, so if the world follows the US example emissions will triple...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The best plan! Put together by the smartest people! Bigly!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If we place the coal under his ego, we could get into the diamond industry.
American blood diamonds.
As someone who would like to see coal die, I am all for a mandate that we only burn "clean" anthracite for power. Remove any subsidies that coal gets so as not to distort the cost of burning (and this is getting off easy for coal since we'll never get a tax on it to stop it from externalizing its pollution costs). The market will work itself out plenty quickly enough.
Catastrophic meltdowns are essentially impossible with modern reactor designs.
the only practical way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal is to get more energy out of each pound of coal
...the efficiency of typical coal plants has peaked at about 33 percent,
That still doesn't address the lignite/anthracite (fuel) difference, it addresses the plant (engine) difference.
Read the article. There isn't one in practice for power generation because of that. There are NO massive improvements possible.
I do have to wonder about the motivations behind posts like these, or the minds of anyone who is swayed by them. Your anti-wind factoids in particular are comical.
Most of those coal jobs aren't coming back because shale gas from fracking is more cost effective than steam-coal. But increased infrastructure spending should increase use of coal for steel production. Hopefully that will be enough to keep the union run coal pension fund solvent enough to avoid a US taxpayer funded bailout.
You are missing the point. It is more efficient to burn some types of coal than others. I acknowledge that the plants are relatively inefficient. The "clean coal" argument is that if you are going to burn coal, burn anthracite rather than other types, such as lignite. Personally, if coal is going to be used as a fuel, I hope it is anthracite.
minor? What kind of fifth-grade copy-editing is this?
...Clean coal is just about the safest and least polluting form of energy available....
Yes, but we're more likely to see a unicorn than 'clean coal.'
In terms of power.
You're no better than the first idiot.
Oil remained the largest primary energy source in Australia, at 38 percent in 2013–14, followed by coal (32 per cent) and natural gas (24 percent). Renewables accounted for 6 per cent of Australia’s energy mix
- Australian Energy Statistics [PDF]
Remove any subsidies that coal gets so as not to distort the cost...
Sure, as soon as renewables have their subsidies, grants, and sweetheart government-backed loan guarantees removed.
Wouldn't want to "distort the cost" now, would we?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Unless he waffles, it won't be building wind turbines so... I dunno.
Someone had to do it.
Same way Hillary promised to, by giving them different jobs.
Surely you didn't just look up countries by population, right?
Oh, of course you did.
*facepalm*
"Old man yells at systemd"
Becomes problematic when he's still an active topic.
Oblig xkcd
Pretty sure Hillary promised the same thing.
That's God Emperor Trump
I don't know how, but it just is. It always is.
I see an obvious side effect: with coal not being used for power generation due to political pressure, its price will fall, and so will the cost of steel production.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Power generation isn't the only use for coal. If you don't want coal, then steel production can be done just as well in the USA, Brazil, China, Japan, and Korea.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No thanks. I'd rather we have public policy that favors low / no carbon energy sources. Believe it or not, we DO get to pick winners in that regard so long as we don't pick WHICH low/no carbon source and don't pick which company is going to do it. But we 100% can decide to incentivize environmentally friendlier options that have longer term viability than pulling it out of the ground. Especially when there exists an entrenched system actively resisting competition and resists the internalization of external costs.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Oh shut up, I'm an ignorant fucking moron
FTFY because you have nothing to retort with but insults and vulgar language, the last refuges of the ignorant and closed-minded when their biases and lies are challenged.
YW
HTH
HAND
Bob, this is your Mother. Please come out of the basement, we need to go over your chore list. And NO, I will not call you Mighty Martian, your father and I have agreed that you are too old to be called that. 43 is too old to be called that.
So, burning lignite for power is the same as burning anthracite as far as emissions?
For most of the historical use of coal, "clean coal" meant coal that was low in sulfur, mercury, dirt, etc.
Now-a-days, "clean coal" is supposed to mean coal that is burned with CO2 reducing technologies such as carbon capture.
"Wind and solar are viable, they just don't lessen the needed amount of fossil fuel capacity needed"
I call bullshit. We could put in HVDC transmission lines (Max distance around 3500km or 83% of the width of the contiguous United States) running from east to west and north to south. Those lines are each longer than a weather system is big, so you ship wind power from windy areas to calm areas that need power, and from sunny daylight areas to dark or cloudy areas that need power.
For the rest of the balancing needed, we could, for example, put in one gigantic hydrogen electrolysis and storage and fuel cell generator facility in the geographic center of the country. It would only be 30% round-trip efficient (energy out compared to energy in) however then you just need to install three times the wind and solar you would otherwise need, and Bob's your Uncle. If you don't want to do that, use a bunch of large compressed air storage facilities http://energystorage.org/advan... running at 70% round-trip energy efficient.
And if you still don't want to do very large storage for some reason, then tap into the enormous geothermal energy rersources under the US. Way more than enough energy for the country's needs there. No GHG emissions.
How about a combination of all these strategies. The technology is there. The price is becoming reasonable, and a small and not too punitive carbon tax would make it economical to build all this new infrastructure fast. We just need to get off our asses and do it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If I had to pay "who's the shill" here it would be you. No power system is entirely clean but coal is well recognized as having higher external costs than almost everything else, even if you exclude carbine dioxide (which you should not.) And its operational costs are nothing to write home about either. Inertia is the only thing keeping the industry going.
Also, JFYI #4 is particularly wrong given most geothermal plants are closed loop, #2 WRT to birds is a solvable problem that is being addressed already (and there is fake news in google results still that lies about the numbers, the numbers are less), and #3 computer models only show this for much more wind power than we require, though localized effects are probable... which is just another reason not to have all your wind turbines in one place, and we don't. Also #1 is hypocritical given what mines do to the environment.
Someone had to do it.
"carbine dioxide". Hehe. It is obviously time for me to go to bed.
Someone had to do it.
I should have been more clear, but what I really meant was we aren't shutting down any coal power plants for a while...
No new coal plants are being built in America. None are being planned, and none are under construction. As existing plants reach the end of their economically useful life, they will be shutdown and replaced with new gas plants. This is all driven by economics, not ideology, and Trump can do little to slow things down, even if he wanted to, and it is unclear if he does. He will have limited funding and limited political capital. Squandering his resources and influence on "saving coal" is about the dumbest thing he could do.
India will build 30 new coal fired plants for every one this bunch shuts down. And, anyway, everyone knows Trump will be assassinated before he gets anywhere near the white house.
More coal for me!
We're not phasing out all carbon, just coal as a source of carbon. This element is available from other sources, such as the wast products from the lumber industry.
They will continue shutting down. Trump doesn't run every industry and he can't mandate that utilities keep older plants online. The lesson on Trump is going to be hardest for his supporters to learn. Every word out of his mouth is a lie.
Still not taken off the glasses with the reversing lenses yet, I see...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
More like "American butt diamonds".
Fuck you and your condescension and the horse you both rode in on, cowardly motherfucker.
Happy now?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You guys are really quite afraid of him, aren't you?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
America has been shutting down coal plants since Obama came to office. However, it NOTHING to do with regulations from him. It had to do with the fact that Nat Gas and wind are MUCH CHEAPER than coal is here. Combine that with all coal plants having to have ZERO mercury emissions.
Coal WAS 33% in 2015. Coal is now down to 27% of America's electricity. and for 2017, should be around 20-24%.
In addition, only idiots will think that trump can bring back coal (yes, he promised, but again, only idiots believe that). WHy is this so? Because coal is TOO EXPENSIVE compared to nat gas and wind. IN addition, with the new nukes that will be on-line and tested in the next 4 years, these will replace MORE of our coal plants.
The real question is less about Western nations, and more about CHina.
China currently gets either 75 or 88% of their electricity from fossil fuel (depends on which chinese gov group gives you information).
They currently have around 1.2TW of coal capabilities, and are building out 35-50 GW of new coal plants EACH YEAR. Even this year, they will do 35 GW.
Around the year, 2030. they will have 1.9-2 TW of coal plant capabilities and only then will they quit building new coal plants.
Even if the ENTIRE west, including Japan and South Korea, shuts down 100% of our coal plants, that is actually less than 1TW. So, China will build out ~3/4 of what the west has. Unless that stops, nothing we do will matter.
The far left has to quit ignoring science and numbers and start hammering on CHina FOR REAL. In addition, so does the entire western gov.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Still not taken off the glasses with the reversing lenses yet, I see...
Oh, so you know all about what my beliefs are by...what?...a crystal ball? Tea leaves? WaPo/HuffPo and the MSM? Your gender-studies professor? Find a safe space and a comfort-dog, cupcake.
*I* don't want to have government involved in picking winners and losers in the private sector. That *is* fascism. Just because the US government and the useful-idiots try to put a smiley-face on it and call it by other names doesn't change what it is. Just like your post is a classic text-book example of projection. Alinsky, much?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
between the far right like you, and the far left like the idiots at 350.org, and both of your ignorance on science, well, earth is in deep trouble.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sell the coal and make it that way?
Why pollute and kill ourselves when Brazil and India are going through Industrialization?
We already sell weaponry to poor shitholes so we have a challenge when we go to war with them a decade later.
We all know your beliefs by your shouty style and arrogant conduct.
Bwaaahahaha!
Oh, wait...you're serious?
Let me laugh even *harder*!
BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAA!
One of the down sides of global warming getting so much press is that people have started to conflate carbon dioxide with pollution. Releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in large quantities is a bad idea, but it's far from the only thing that coal-fired plants pump out in large quantities. In particular, the effects of carbon dioxide are global, whereas most of the other pollutants have a more significant local effect.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah. Frankly, I'd like to see windpower banned from the point of view that it will wreck an electrical grid- just look at Germany. And coal won't ever come back unless natural gas prices go up.
Faroe Islands on track to 93â... electricity production fromon wind and hydro https://youtu.be/oRMj_mR-nBc headd towards 100â... fast via @ Twitter https://twitter.com/TheEinarkist/status/802494053161893888
Actually, please don't. The pollution and warming affects us as well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry bout that seems formatting became all screwy... Maybe the percentage signs ? Anyway https://twitter.com/TheEinarkist/status/802494053161893888 has a link to a video on the subject
Those jobs aren't coming back. Even if the mines come back to full operation they are going to be automated as much as possible. The mine owners don't care about the workers. They were a convenient thing to be used in the election but neither Clinton nor Trump really care about the miners. The best thing they can do is find other work because coal mining as a way of life is over. Even if the environment could take the burning of the burning of the coal, which it can't, the robots are here to take over the jobs.
The only solar farms that kill birds are the ones that reflect sunlight toward a tower, and those are in what, single digits -worldwide-, compared to tens-of-thousands of farms consisting of light absorbing panels? Hell there are 3 'conventional' solar farms within a mile of my own damn house. And if you think a field of panels designed to ABSORB as much sunlight as possible is 'cooking birds' above them, you really have rocks in your head.
There is no such thing as "cleaner coal".
or simply cut and paste from some 3rd rate coal company websites?
do you actually think anyone here is ignorant enough to believe you give a damn about anyone in any impoverished countries?
If you look at it as "population equals energy usage" then he's right.
Of course, people in the USA use a lot more energy than people in Europe or even Canada, so what metric would you use for comparison?
Posting to undo Informative mod point. The WSJ article is an opinion piece in support of clean coal, and the Inside Energy piece doesn't really provide much either way.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that civilization doesn't implode in the next few hundred years. At some point, all fossil fuels, as well as all easily mineable fissionables, will run out. Unless something magical happens, I don't see wind and solar cell systems generating enough power to run factories to replace themselves.
There is one genuinely reliable source of energy, guaranteed not to give out over the next few hundred thousand years: geothermal. It doesn't take a huge temperature differential to pull power out of a heat pump. And if we could design some really good drilling equip, we could use the remaining fossil fuels to dig down to layers whose temperature exceeds 100 C . I'd love to see something along those lines implemented.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Under Trump coal use will not grow, it just will stop shrinking for a while until renewables get more cost effective. Also coal mining will ramp up again to access cleaner coal, so even the U.S. will be continuing to reduce carbon emissions just as we have been for decades now (unlike many other countries).
Some thoughts.
How is this "stop shrinking for a while" happen? Are we going to force other countries to buy US coal? Force US industries to not use other energy sources? Punish the gas industry somehow by kicking them out of the picture?
The coal jobs that are gone, are gone. Unless we are deploying a communist or fascist (in the true sense) government that is. It will take a communist type planned economy to force them back, one which denies the industry the automation that played a huge part in decimating the employment opportunities of the coal industry. It is pretty impressive to watch a stripmine operation these days. Even moreso when you see them move a mountain with just a few people.
Windpower will decline though because wind power is the most idiotic way to generate power, if you think at all about long term viability.
Give your rationale and your cites, not your yahoo comments level conclusion. You figure the wind is going to go somewhere, reducing the "long term viability of windpower?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Because it's cheap, because the government hasn't ruined the electricity markets by deregulating them allowing companies to turn electricity into a cash cow.
New Zealand is a classic example of what not to do to an electricity market, sell all the assets the hard working tax payer payed for, open up the retail market to profit hungry companies. Result is electricity that's probably twice the price it should be and and endless bombardment of advertising and cold calling from companies with complex hard to understand pricing models designed to trick you into switching.
One of the best things about moving to the US is I deal with one power company, and its 10c/kWh. Since they offer generous rebates on hybrid heatpump water heaters and replacing your power guzzling electric furnace with a heatpump Ive upgraded both of those items. The climate in the pacific north west lends it self well to heat pumps. Year round my monthly electricity costs is around $100.
Remove any subsidies that coal gets so as not to distort the cost...
Sure, as soon as renewables have their subsidies, grants, and sweetheart government-backed loan guarantees removed.
Wouldn't want to "distort the cost" now, would we?
Strat
O gheesh, the old subsidies argument. Oil and coal don't want to give up their subsidies either. Look it up.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Electricity, however, may be.
Just as we saw France exporting Nuclear generated electricity to Germany as it switched to renewables, you could possibly see the US export cheaply generated electricity to Canada or Mexico.
Hell - exporting cheap electricity to Mexico may be one way to pay for that wall/fence/barrier thing he wants to build.
TSIA
Still not taken off the glasses with the reversing lenses yet, I see...
Oh, so you know all about what my beliefs are by...what?...a crystal ball? Tea leaves? WaPo/HuffPo and the MSM? Your gender-studies professor?
You just tell us a lot about what your beliefs are from that post, Bluestrat. No need for our precious snowflake self esteem coach to tell us. But do go on.
Find a safe space and a comfort-dog, cupcake.
If that's anything like a corn dog, sign me up!
*I* don't want to have government involved in picking winners and losers in the private sector. That *is* fascism. Just because the US government and the useful-idiots try to put a smiley-face on it and call it by other names doesn't change what it is.
Yes - you do know the definition of fascism. The problem is that if we have a simple market only solution, eventually we just trade money back and forth, and end up victims of countries where technology advances because they fund it.
Another point is that while it is easy to rail against the renewable industry and their presumed abuse of subsidies, you don't see a whole lot of chagrin about the subsidies for Oil and gas.
And to put a rather finer point on it, one of the largest "renewable" subsidies goes to corn based ethanol, which many of us consider not only wasteful, but counter productive.
Check out the numbers, and check out the sources of the numbers.
Or you can just call other people names - that's the exact equivalent and always wins the argument.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If Trump isn't going to grow coal use, then how does he plan on getting those 40,000 unemployed coal miners back to their jobs mining coal? It was one of his most-used campaign promises. He even repeated the exact number of jobs he was going to get back over and over.
My guess is he'll issue a fiat that all of the automation will have to disappear, and they'll go back to picks and shovels and dinky cars pulled by miniature donkeys, like they did it when gawd still loved us.
All sarcasm aside, it's pretty impressive to see what a few people can do. What used to take thousands of men to do in 25 years, and then left to rot, is now accomplished by a small team of men in a couple of years, and re-seeded, and they are gone.
The coal industry is as likely to return to the days of what Il Don promises as farming is to the days of horse drawn plow.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The best thing they can do is find other work because coal mining as a way of life is over.
It is kind of a communist "They owe me a living" argument they use, when reduced to it's essence. My entire life, I changed what I did as the demand for what I was doing changed. My original education was in analog electronics and art (yes art). But as times changed, I changed what I was doing. I didn't demand that the electronics industry remain in the 1970's, or that we refuse to switch from chemical based photography to digital, that non-linear editing be banned, or that as computers came ascendant that I wasn't going to be involved in them. So that's how the photographer/artist became at last assay, a executive level IT assistance guy who was unbullshittable.
So they can either adapt and move on, or they can dream about the glory days of the 1940's. And become useful idiots when someone cynically promises to put them back to work in the only field they demand to be employed in.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Pretty sure Trump promised West Virginia coal miners their jobs back, meaning he's promising to bring coal consumption back to it's historical peak levels, despite the lack of demand.
If he does, it won't be mining coal.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Solar? Not such a good idea here, it rains all the time. Might be a good idea in Eastern Oregon.
Oddly enough, solar pops up in some strange places, like Alaska. Obviously you don't get it in the winter, but it allows them to cut way down on the amount of diesel fuel they need. So they store that during the summer when it's easy to get, and survival during the winter is more assured.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Canada, which has already significantly reduced its use of coal to about 7% of its energy generation, announced a phase of the resource by 2030. The country's strong hydropower should keep dominating its energy generation, but the country has also been investing in wind and solar to make up the difference."
By "the country" I assume they mean the Province of Ontario and in no significant way has wind and solar been used to replace coal. Coal was replaced by natural gas and expanded nuclear generation. Wind and solar have been an unmitigated disaster that has driven electricity rates through the roof due to ridiculous feed in tariff deals paying solar and wind producers up to 10 times the rate per kW-hr other energy sources are paid.
The best part is the idealogues pushing wind and solar, while burdening electricity rate and tax payers with the present and future costs (respectively), are too blind to see the inherent link between cost of power generation and its carbon footprint. If it costs more to produce solar and wind power, it has a bigger footprint. There's no way around it. Much of the money spent on solar and wind goes to big industrial producers with giant manufacturing plants, likely run by coal sourced electricity in China and elsewhere. The rest of the money goes to private solar/wind landowners that use the money to build a bigger house or a bigger boat. I mean, you really don't think all those investors that jumped in head first into the feed-in tariff program, the contractors and developers that walked into my office to get their projects going, building entire warehouses just to put solar panels on the roof, were doing it to reduce carbon emissions did you? They knew a gravy train when they saw it.
Sadly, some people reading this will actually still believe that fantasy and have no idea what I mean between the inherent equivalency between cost and carbon footprint. They'll cart out the tired old "the petroleum industry is subsidized too...". Oh yeah? 90% subsidized like Ontario's FIT program? It makes me laugh.
In the US, the government can't control energy production. Neither the President nor any other government official can declare "You will build a nuclear plant here" or "I want wind generators in the Rockies." These things are done by private industry in cooperation with local governments and public participation.
Many other countries can build such facilities by authoritarian decree. They can move swiftly in response to a perceived need. A democracy can be slow and clumsy because it requires many voices to be heard. Many such facilities require private investment from a wide variety of sources, most of whom expect profits or tax incentives. The complications are endless as environmentalists and others voice their concerns.
In the US almost everything is done by private industry including most of the space program, military weapons, communication networks, health care, etc. Tax dollars are awarded to bidders on some of these projects, and to universities for research, etc. But few government employees are involved. A major role of government is to regulate private industry- food, drugs, standards of safety, etc. They can say 'no' to an unsafe product, but they can't demand that a product be built.
Now consider the recent deep divide in Congress, in the Press, and on Main Street. Nothing got done these past many years. With Republicans now controlling every branch of government, some things will get done in the next few years (but you might not like them).
...omphaloskepsis often...
Err... I know I should not try to argue with someone who has already made up his mind, but there are clean burning, efficient coal power plants with proper filters on their smoke stacks in the world - just not in America. Fly ash is used in the construction industry as a cement extender and for ceiling/wall board.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
He can grow coal by growing steel production. He can grow steel production by putting an anti dumping tax on Chinese steel and putting a steel fence along the Mexican border. That will put lots of miners and rust belt workers back at work.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Ayup, and we all know that gas prices will never again go up, right?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Remember when the USA used to be among the leaders in clean air? I do. We aren't near the top anymore and won't be again with more coal mining and not reducing usage.
Steam turbine engineer here. Coal plant efficiency is limited by material technology and Mr. Carnot. There's only so much that can be done with 1050F high pressure steam and 70F cold sink. Any hotter and the machine would either cost a fortune and/or require economically excessive maintenance. It's not just the machine itself, hundreds of feet of piping also need to contain 1050-1100F steam at up to 3200psi.
Gas turbines sidestep the temperature problem since they are internal combustion engines- the fuel is burned in the engine rather than externally. This allows for higher temperatures since the ultra hot, high pressure air/combustion products are contained to a relatively small area. They also use superalloys ($$$), cool the machine with air or steam ($$$), and make the total Carnot box larger by extracting 'waste heat' from the gas turbine exhaust to make steam which is then fed to a steam turbine.
There are some projects in the USA that were meant to prove coal-to-natural gas technology(Kemper County), but that project has been a boondoggle thanks to poor project management and a union that didn't care if the project is ever completed. Too bad, if it had been built on schedule and proved the technology, maybe a lot of heated conversations about coal could have been avoided.
industry under anyone. Coal is dying because Natural Gas is cheaper. The only reason why power plants are burning coal is that the plants already exist. Nobody is building new ones. As renewable generation grows it will replace coal generation. This is due to the fact that coal is more expensive.
The next wave of innovation is on-grid energy storage. This includes adding large scale battery storage but other techniques exist including pumped hydro. Battery based energy storage is already starting to appear in people's homes.
Therefore, the renewable power can be maximised by time shifting the power generation from the power consumption via use of on-grid energy storage.
On-grid energy storage will reduce the energy generation's swing between peak and troughs and will reduce the overall number of required power stations. This would also help nuclear power because excessive power could be stored so the nuclear power stations can run constantly at a higher generation level.
In other words, on-grid storage would eliminate the need for gas fired power stations.
realistically nobody believes China and India or the other developing nations will stop modernizing to keep emissions down.
China is working hard to shift away from coal too. See http://arstechnica.com/science.... In particular where it says, "Accounting for the fact that 2016 was a leap year with an extra day, they estimate that China’s emissions will drop by about 0.5 percent (largely due to coal use declining nearly two percent)."
They have huge pollution problems, and they know that shifting to cleaner energy sources is necessary to do anything about it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...: "In 2015 China became the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power, at 43 GW installed capacity. China also led the world in the production and use of wind power and smart grid technologies, generating almost as much water, wind, and solar energy as all of France and Germany's power plants combined."
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
You do know that Europe isn't "the rest of the world." Coal will probably be through as a source of energy within 20 to 30 years. Trying to kill it out now is a waste of effort. The best way to kill it is to make renewable energy sources cheaper. When that happens it'll die on it's own.
Why shut down when you could convert to natural gas? That's what my municipal utility did this year with its plant.
Since population does not equal energy usage how about energy production by nation. Canada is #6, Germany #7, France #9, Netherlands #33, Austria #41, and Finland #42.
do you actually think anyone here is ignorant enough to believe you give a damn about anyone in any impoverished countries?
I actually care a lot more than you do because I do not wish to inflict a fascist US upon the world, never mind myself and my fellow Americans. I've also done fund-raisers on my own dime to send aid to impoverished people in other nations. I walk the walk, I don't just talk the talk.
Try again, snowflake.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Not all energy production pollutes in the same way in the same quantities, so that's not really a valid comparison either.
How about simply using the tons of coal burned by each country? That's the current topic isn't it?
Our freak entering the White House has declared that we must burn more coal and allow more pollution to compete in the world markets. Trumpenstein will wipe us out like Godzilla wipes out Tokyo.
CO2 is not a pollutant. Clean cola refers to reduction of Sulphur, Mercury and soot emissions. A Coal plant which emits only CO2 is a clean plant. When will you get it out of your mind that CO2 - the basic food for plants without which plants would not grow and we would all starve to death is not a bad thing. Global Warming even if true is probably not a bad thing. Canada and Siberia will become grain baskets and a warmer world means more rain in the Sahara and India. We could even have a Green Sahara.
Canadian governments fighting Global Warming is the most traitorous Government action I have ever heard of.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Pretty sure Hillary promised the same thing.
Then its official. Trump is brain-damaged.
"His name was James Damore."
Yeah I fucking hate big coastal cities too. Let em learn to swim.
Lots of elements/compounds become pollutants when there is an excess. A good example is phosphorous, an element essential for life, one of the main ingredients in fertilizer (it's the second number), which causes havoc in ecosystems when there is too much.
As for Canada becoming a grain basket, so far the warming is ruining the grain farms due to lack of water. Glaciers are shrinking fast (something that's easy to measure), lack of snowfall to soak the fields, etc. And further north there is a distinct lack of soil and growing season. The climate doesn't do anything to the sunrise/sunset times. There's a reason that the Boreal forests consist of tiny trees, and its not the temperature.
Here in BC, the government has decided to flood the best northern farmland in the mistaken belief that we can make a fortune selling natural gas to the Chinese despite the competition from the USA, Australia (both way ahead on plant existence and already shipping) and Russia (close enough to pipe it instead of shipping by ship).
I don't know much about Siberia but understand it has similar shortages of actual soil and similar issues with growing seasons being limited by sunlight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Another point is that while it is easy to rail against the renewable industry and their presumed abuse of subsidies, you don't see a whole lot of chagrin about the subsidies for Oil and gas.
I don't think either...or any...particular business, industry, etc should get 'subsidies' (tax breaks). That includes corn for ethanol. The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. It does an extremely bad job of it and typically results in the opposite effect they aimed for.
The problem is that if we have a simple market only solution, eventually we just trade money back and forth, and end up victims of countries where technology advances because they fund it.
This is easily disproved by the rise of US technology and industry far outstripping the entire world because of capitalism in the private sector in the space of less than 200 years from the founding of the US. Who was it that landed people on the moon and returned them safely to Earth first? I don't think it was the USSR or communist China.
Or you can just call other people names...
Just calling out the stupid when it's being shoved in my face. Sorry if I expect intellectual honesty and have an extremely low tolerance for BS. This is the real world not some meaningless gender-studies college course. Truth and facts matter here.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I wonder, what make a country major?
The problem is that if we have a simple market only solution, eventually we just trade money back and forth, and end up victims of countries where technology advances because they fund it.
Who was it that landed people on the moon and returned them safely to Earth first? I don't think it was the USSR or communist China.
That was done by small businesses operating out of basements and the entire projects was dreamed up and designed by Ayn Rand. Seriously, if you think that we got to the moon by private enterprise only, you are more deluded than you think everyone else is.
In the capitalism world, profit is the driver, and without profit, nothing happens. Are you asserting that th eindistries that built the components would have done so if they weren't cost plus? Let's chat about the software that got us to the moon, and the corporation that developed that software. Then perhaps we can chat on the corporate profit center that put all the stuff together, tested and launched the candles.
What was teh corporation that designed and researched and developed the first Atomic weapons? All performed by corporations - How much profit did they make? What company was oppenheimer CEO of? Who managed and built the Clinton Engineer works in Tennessee? Hint - it was the university of Chicago.
Because my dear BlueStrat, your needless but intense anger just prompts you to have a digital view of things, and everyone who has the slightest bit of disagreement with you is somehow a communist. Whereas a person might reasonably understand that the government might have a place in developing technology, you determine that they are somehow wanting to install a proletariat of the workers and install a collectivist system. Because we're not.
Because in a real world, not everything can be performed using the profit motive as the driver. Oopsies - sorry I didn't give a trigger alert. I spent my career working with technological issues that were government funded - therefore subsidized - and when we had the technology worked out, it was released to industry, who then built what we were working on, and made the needed profit. If we hadn't done the research, it wouldn't have been done at all. There is no question, as the profit in the work didn't exist in a world where profits must be increased constantly.
So grow up a little bit. It's a good thing to be profit and market driven. But your inherent anger is not good for a person, and will trap you and keep you from reaching your full potential.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
> the basic food for plants without which plants would not grow and we would all starve to death is not a bad thing.
Too much food, or anything for that matter, is a bad thing. We humans need water, but too much of it is called drowning. In the case of Carbon Dioxide, too much is a poison for people. Occupational guidelines are not to exceed 0.5% for extended periods.
People like to assume that "developing nations" must do the SAME as they did..
ie: Fire -> Steam -> Coal -> Oil -> "natural sources" (i.e.: Solar/Wind/Hydro) and/or Nuclear.
Developing nations that have capital and resources (China and India) have the option of skipping "legacy" tech in favor of newer forms of power to leap frog into become giants.. (they don't have any legacy infrastructure or group that are fighting to keep "old tech" so they can go directly to newer/better forms.. If you are starting from scratch, technically speaking with the exception of nuclear (only because the materials used are expensive), they are all relatively the same cost. Solar/Wind/Hydro don't scale as fast/easy as some others.. but they can be cheaper to implement and you can build "micro grids" rather than larger grids.. (with many micro-grids its easy to tie a macro grid on top later).
A lot of economists are banking on China, India and other large developing nations will other tech simply because it doesn't help their long term goals and puts them into the SAME problem the US and others have with Coal/Oil/Gas.. namely legacy tech that now is in competition of newer tech.. (its like buying motorcycle because you are single, but knowing you are dating someone (and will eventually need car, then a larger car).. The Motor cycle is slightly cheaper than the larger car, but if you are smart (knowing the sort of person you are dating) will save a little longer and get the larger car (saving a lot of money in the long term for some short term pain)
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
Coal is far safer than many other forms of energy and it's cheaper than nearly all others (nat gas being currently and possibly temporarily cheaper). Coal can be obtained and stored for long periods with far less complexity and cost, and when trains loaded with coal crash there are not huge explosions like when liberal billionaire Warren Buffet's oil-filled trains crash. Coal is stable.
Cheap and plentiful coal providing cheap and plentiful energy provided the basis for many of America's good-paying middle class manufacturing jobs, which have been eliminated by the millions with the ongoing war on coal. Manufacturing processes like steel processing consume vast amounts of energy, so even small shifts in the price of a unit of energy cause such industries to move to places where energy is cheaper.
You seem to think I'm "angry". Nothing could be further from the truth. I am reminded of a quote from C. S. Lewis that you should deeply think on. It will fit my requirements for a reply admirably.
"I complained that the tone of undergraduate criticism was too often 'that of passionate resentment'. You illustrate this admirably by accusing me of 'Pecksniffian disingenuousness', 'shabby bluff' and 'self-righteousness'. Do not misunderstand. I am not in the least deprecating your insults; I have enjoyed these twenty years l'honneur d'Ãtre une cible and am now pachydermatous. I am not even rebuking your bad manners; I am not Mr Turveydrop and 'gentlemanly deportment' is not a subject I am paid to teach. What shocks me is that students, academics, men of letters, should display what I had thought was an essentially uneducated inability to differentiate between a disputation and a quarrel. The real objection to this sort of thing is that it is all a distraction from the issue. You waste on calling me a liar and hypocrite time you ought to have spent on refuting my position. Even if your main purpose was to gratify resentment, you have gone about it in the wrong way. Any man would much rather be called names than proved wrong."
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
People are saying he may be brain damaged.
I'll take him over the person we know to be brain damaged. Clinton even admitted to having troubles with her memory, failure to understand security protocols and markings, etc. She's been using those excuses to keep her from jail during the investigation of her e-mails. She's also admitted to hitting her head, a serious enough injury that she missed several days of work. Some of her odd behavior lately has been speculated as indications of mental troubles, like her coughing fits, odd head and eye movement, and her collapsing at that 9/11 memorial during her campaign, and inappropriate emotional responses.
Clinton is much more likely to be brain damaged than Trump.
Pretty sure Trump promised West Virginia coal miners their jobs back, meaning he's promising to bring coal consumption back to it's historical peak levels, despite the lack of demand. Sad. Disgusting little idiot, isn't he?
If a person believes that CAGW isn't a thing, that people need jobs, especially in manufacturing, then by creating a regulatory environment to bring those jobs back the demand should increase. Seems fairly logical. Overly optimistic perhaps, but logical.
It's only "disgusting" and "sad" for those that see coal as inherently evil. Since it was coal that provided the power that took humanity through the industrial revolution then, again, burning coal for a new industrial revolution is logical. I've read my history and there were a lot of "disgusting" and "sad" things in the industrial revolution but few would argue that society isn't better off because of it. We also have learned ways to burn coal more cleanly than before, we're not likely to repeat the soot covered world we had before.
I don't like coal, I believe we should replace it with nuclear power. Driving thousands out of jobs and into poverty/welfare by government fiat is not only being a jerk to a lot of people, it hurts the entire economy. We need a smooth transition away from coal, not a ban.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You seem to think I'm "angry". Nothing could be further from the truth.
Perhaps. I read people very well, and you write like a person who is enraged when anyone disagrees with you. I'm not the only one who notices it either, as others have claimed the same. I'm not even bothering to reply to your other statements, because I'm most pleased to ignore them in hopes of pissing you off even more. Pepe'
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So...by subsidizing renewables even more than we're already doing now?
It's great that some countries are phasing out coal, but
A. these aren't the same countries with stacks of coal reserves
B. natural gas production is huge right now, therefore prices are low, therefore it makes sense to convert to natural gas fired plants
C. unfortunately natural gas isn't renewable either...or at least not in a happy friendly no C02 emissions kind of way, it's just a bit less dirty than coal.
It's just technology. It takes time for new stuff to become more affordable. It's a process that eventually will lead to a phasing out of coal. Not today or next year or even next decade but eventually.
I don't know why the Netherlands is in that list, but I do know a new coal plant was opened there last april...
Nope, coal is going to keep shrinking. For energy, natural gas is going to keep moving forward taking down coal. It doesn't have the heavy metal issues, and is reasonably cheap. Plus natural gas can be used for "peaker" power stations to supplement solar and wind-power.
Windpower in geographically appropriate areas is a pretty economical choice. I don't see any long term viability problems, the only real issue with windpower is that maintenance is an ongoing expense, but factored into the power produced, it still makes them once of the cheapest options per KWH
In 2015 China became the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power, at 43 GW installed capacity. China also led the world in the production and use of wind power and smart grid technologies...
While China is one of the largest producers of renewable power, due to their size, they are also the largest producer in many other things, including coal. Take a look at where their energy comes from. Most of it is still fossil fuels. In fact, fossil fuel use has been growing like there's no tomorrow.
It's good that their leaders are willing to talk about climate change (at least more than the incoming US president), but talk is cheap. Let's wait until we see some results.
In an article about coal power, I think this link is a bit more relevant. Note that Canada is the world's #5 producer, but the rest are more than 20 places down. Even then, Canada is only 1/5th of China.
Coal mining and burning should be abolished because it puts NOx, SO2, arsenic, lead, mercury, nickel, vanadium, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, molybdenum, zinc, selenium and radium into the environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
{I didn't even mention CO2.}
The just need to be retrained as solar panel and power pack installers. Their pay will go up.