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The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won't Cut It (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Wind and solar are about to become unstoppable, natural gas and oil production are approaching their peak, and electric cars and batteries for the grid are waiting to take over. This is the world Donald Trump inherited as U.S. president. And yet his energy plan is to cut regulations to resuscitate the one sector that's never coming back: coal. Clean energy installations broke new records worldwide in 2016, and wind and solar are seeing twice as much funding as fossil fuels, according to new data released Tuesday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). That's largely because prices continue to fall. Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity in the world. But with Trump's deregulations plans, what "we're going to see is the age of plenty -- on steroids," BNEF founder Michael Liebreich said. "That's good news economically, except there's one fly in the ointment, and that's climate."
Oh goody, More economic and environmental comments from slashdoter experts :-(
Just as it was a stupid waste of resources to pour billions of dollars into landing a man on the Moon with 1960s technology, the money that was wasted on propping up primitive solar technology may have been better spent on, say, ecological conservation efforts, or re-building the crumbling infrastructure, or improving schooling, or health care, or the search for asteroids, or whatever.
You've seen improvements in solar, but what of the unseen stuff that never got done for lack of resources?
Next time, put a man on the moon after developing satnav tech, rather than the other way around...
It's less than 40% now, but it won't be going anywhere because it's expensive to replace and solar/wind can't make that amount of generation. Natural gas combined cycle plants will be replacing coal eventually.
The article is way wrong. Gas and oil are not at peak production. That claim has been made every year since the 1960s. It's false. O&G production will be around for the next century.
Coal power in the US is dead, but that has much, much less to do with any 'green revolution' and significantly more to do with the large oil companies entering the shale game after OPEC decided to try and destroy the US shale market through supply shenanigans. With their entry and the rapid R&D into efficiency caused by the price drop in oil, they've figured out how to frack for 20-30 dollars per barrel. That being said, coal is still very much alive in China and elsewhere, which means that properly run, coal mining will be around for decades. The issue is that it is unlikely to support nearly as many people.
Coal is dead.
Not necessarily. There are applications for coal other than burning it. The biggest one that comes to mind is activated coal - which can be used to clean up toxins, guide chemical reactions and act as the material between super capacitor plates - all of which are good for the environment. It just depends how it is used. With the demand for batteries in the clean energy sector you could quite easily mass produce super capacitors to fill the gap and have a more robust power grid as a result, without the nasty chemicals of LiIon batteries.
We've a similar thing here in Europe with the fishing industry. Fish stocks are dangerously low, and the EU has reacted by imposing strict quotas - though ones which ecologists keep saying are still not strict enough. This has incurred much anger from the fishing industry, because it's not just an occupation for them - it's a way of life, going back generations, and now they are being driven out of business by what they see as pointless regulations imposed upon them by distant politicians in Brussels.
They don't seem able to accept that there is a good reason for restricting fishing.
Coal accounts for over 40% of electric generation in the US
That was once true, but no longer is . "Coal-fired electricity generators accounted for 25% of operating electricity generating capacity in the United States and generated about 30% of U.S. electricity in 2016." - https://www.eia.gov/electricit... . If you look at this graph you can see that coal has been replaced by natural gas and non-hydro renewables. Since the renewables are only getting cheaper as the technology improves, there is no reason to suspect that their trend will not continue to accelerate upwards.
You're missing the point of a carbon tax. The tax is meant to speed the end of fossil fuel use. And really it's natural gas that killed coal, so you're going after the wrong target.
The current market forces point to a direction of renewables, natural gas, and whatever nuclear remains operational (with no new nuclear plants). That's not a bad plan for the US for right now. However, natural gas in the US is currently 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of any other natural gas in the world. It is exceptionally, and historically cheap. Various people estimate that this low-pricing situation will last between 15 and 100 years. My personal opinion is that it is difficult to make estimates on that kind of timeframe.
Regardless, if natural gas in the US ever approaches the cost of natural gas elsewhere in the world, US consumers would be in for a very rude awakening on their utility bills. My personal opinion is that we should not eliminate these plants entirely. It isn't wrong to let market forces dictate our choices, but we should hedge against unfavorable market changes in the future.
Disclaimer- I'm "in the industry", my customers are roughly 60% gas and 40% coal.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Warning: heartless comment coming:
Perhaps the people in those regions should not have voted for politicians who hollowed out the education system, blocked infrastructure development and generally acted in ways that benefited nobody except coal mine owners.
It's been obvious for a generation that coal was coming to the end of its life. Perhaps they should have looked forward instead of attempting to emulate King Canute.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You mean like this, or perhaps this? Or perhaps this, which has been operating for decades?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You probably missed it because you were only looking for examples of OPEC reducing production. Shale oil used to cost around $80-$100/bbl to extract. As long as the price of oil remained below that price, extracting shale oil was economically unfeasible and oil companies threw just a token amount of money into its R&D just to keep it ready on the back burner. So OPEC was trying to keep the price of oil high, but below that $100/bbl threshold. When the price of oil did drift over $100/bbl, OPEC increased production to try to bring the price back below that threshold, keeping shale oil borderline unfeasible.
I think what OPEC (and everyone else) missed was that you don't just get oil from shale oil. You get natural gas too. And that natural gas is what's turned out to be a bonanza, leading it to surpass coal, and threatening to pass oil as the leading fossil fuel. It's driven further shale oil extraction R&D (I believe its cost is well under $50/bbl now). So at this point OPEC is along for the ride just like everyone else.