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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 :-(
Coal is dead. Helping coal MINERS makes sense, but trying to resurrect something that is dying because of market forces (and good riddance) is the most retarded incarnation of "conservatism" since trickle down economics.
less coal burning means less mercury in fish.
But Trump allowed coal miners to dump their crap into water, polluting it and of course, the fish down stream.
And while the rich coal mine owners line their pockets with more money, the communities that they destroyed have to buy bottled water.
Privatize the profits and socialize the costs - including the health costs to the people.
Yeah. Capitalism. Yeah. Trump. Making America Great again....more like throwing it back decades.
Coal is a shit fuel, it's outdated, old, inefficient and should just die. It's not cheap, either. It only SEEMS cheap because the costs are being subsidized by the rest of us.
and coal is going to die, why the worry and fret about coal deregulation (as opposed to subsidies)?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Trump knows there is no future in coal and it's not coming back. He's basically keeping a campaign promise. People in coal mining country were told by Hillary Clinton what they didn't want to hear, namely that there was no future in coal and, in a much quieter voice that apparently nobody heard, that they'd supposedly be retrained for new jobs. Trump simply told coal miners that their problems were somebody else's fault and he would remove restrictions on coal. In the short term it will probably save enough jobs for the over 50 crowd that they can retire from the mines, but there's no future for younger people in the field and Trump knows it. He's not going to say it out loud as the coal miners prefer to live in the delusion that they can turn back the clock here and they voted Republican and he wants their votes in the future, but I'm sure he knows it.
With climate change, there's more energy in the atmosphere than before, so pulling a tiny amount out with wind turbines will help, not hurt. That said, the sort of wind power being installed now can't be taking more than a fraction of a rounding error of energy out of the atmosphere so it's only theoretical.
Coal accounts for over 40% of electric generation in the US. Solar is less than 1% and wind is about 5%. Coal is not going anywhere.
1) It produces more radioactivity than all other energy sources, including Nuclear power. (A small percentage of coal is thorium, which settles around wherever you burn the coal.)
2) It takes more work to mine it than all other sources (including uranium - though it does require less processing).
3) It takes more work to ship it from it's source to the plant than all other energy types.
4) It produces more carbon pollution than all other sources. Coal is basically pure carbon plus some nasty impurities. Oil and gas are Carbon + Hydrogen + some other stuff. Carbon burns to Carbon Dioxide (or worse, monoxide). Hydrogen burns nice and clean, turning into water.
5) Coal contains trace amounts of mercury, which when burned makes it's way into the atmosphere, then rains down into the oceans. Nasty stuff. No other energy source has this problem.
6) Coal mining has some nasty problems, including black lung disease and sometimes starts underground fires we literally can NOT put out.
No sane person mines coal for energy if they have any other energy source. All others are safer and better. Burning oil, gas, or wood are all better. Nuclear is better. Tidal, wind, solar, hydro, are all better.
Coal mining should only be used after you have burned all your forests up, mined all your uraninum, pumped all your natural gas and oil, and the sun has gone out.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Coal isn't coming back. It's something that sounded good to Trump's fans on the campaign trail, that's all. The coal industry employs fewer people than freaking Arby's. Fixing the coal industry would be like using a teaspoon to bail out a sinking Titanic. Middle America has far bigger problems that the dwindling coal industry.
Only reason why it's an issue at all is because it sounded good on the campaign trail for Trump's supporters. It's dog whistle politics, not an actual energy plan. To everyone else it sounds like Trump is saying "Coal is the future and will meet our energy needs cheaply and effectively!" Which it absolutely won't. But to his fans, it sounds like this: "Rust belt and former mining communities will get their jobs back and be prosperous again!" Sadly, it doesn't actually mean that either. Deregulate all you want, wind and solar are still going to be cheaper.
I feel bad for those folks in coal country counting on this guy to fix things for them. He isn't going to. He isn't able to. It'll be pretty bitter when they realize that.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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 world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Your understanding of these things seems to be rooted in the 1970s. What you said used to be true, back then - but it's not today. The technology is improving rapidly, as is our ability to store and distribute that energy.
It's like the old notions about electric cars. All the prototype ones from 20 years ago were terrible on so many levels, in terms of power, range, recharge time, etc, not to mention cost. But as we're seeing now, that's changing radically. Go look at Tesla for instance. We may not yet be at the day where electric is 100% better in all areas, but it's now only a matter of when, not if.
The governor is a billionaire coal barron, and he's doing his best to revive coal as well. One major problem is that natural gas has taken over and the coal market just isn't there now. Aside from that, the cost to mine coal is way higher than it is for natural gas. To mine coal, you have to hire hundreds of miners, buy or lease really expensive equipment, dig a hole a couple of miles into the ground, then transport the product via truck or rail car to the buyer. To get natural gas, you drill a hole in the ground, insert a pipe, and connect it to other pipes.
Then, you have to factor in foreign competition. I used to work in IT for a coal company at the beginning of my career (mid '90s), and in spite of doing $160 million in business per year, we went bankrupt. It was cheaper then to mine coal in China and ship it to our local power plants than it was to mine it locally. I'm not sure that the coal market it to that point yet, but I expect to return to those days. Coal truck drivers here were making over $70k per year while their foreign counterparts were doing that for a fraction of the money.
Ironically, my office is in what used to be the headquarters for Columbia Gas Transmission in Charleston, WV, but that was bought out last year by TransCanada and several people were laid off. However, I don't work in the gas industry.
You correctly arrived at one response, that nothing you do now will change the inevitable failure of coal.
You incorrectly think that market failures for growing new energy are unusual. The major thing that kept renewables down for so long was access to capital. When most nations and corporations started investing capital in renewables, costs dropped. It's how capitalism works.
As to your own rates, that's probably because you haven't taken control of your own energy production, and built your own renewables, like a true capitalist would. You probably depend on Big Government for your energy supply for the most part.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
As a strong supporter of renewable, as the economics of renewable continue to shift to make carbon unaffordable, then hell yes we should eventually tax renewables. Once renewables are at full scale and entrenched they should indeed pay their full cost to society just like an auto plant, internet company or a barber shop should. We are not quite there yet and each renewable technology is at different levels of economic and technological maturity so phasing in taxes and removing supports should be done in an thoughtful way.
Young disrupting technologies will often find ways around the existing tax structures. That is well and good in the short term, but long term they need to payback for their disruption and yes, that very much includes helping paying for the transition of coal workers to new opportunities. The renewable entrepreneurs who have benefited by this disruption also have a moral responsibility to help provide their resources and abilities to help these disrupted communities and displaced workers build a better future.
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.
There is so much more coal, natural gas and oil for us to mine. Just because it's there doesn't mean we should mine it. Technology has made us too good at surveying and finding coal and oil fields. If we wait until we run out before we stop, we have perhaps hundreds of years to go. And there are going to be dire consequences, if we try to continue mining and burning coal and oil in large amounts for that long.
Now is the time to wrap up our use of some of these old energy sources and to invest in new energy sources. There are lots of proven options, and the technology around them keeps getting cheaper. It will be engineers and tech companies that are making the big bucks in the energy industry and not mine operators. (coal miners never made big bucks, I would say they got the shaft but that's an insensitive pun)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
Another solution are distributed batteries at each substation. This has the dual advantage of helping with small transients on a branch and, when scaled out, adding substantial reserve capacity for the grid as a whole. The value to the grid in transient mitigation is cheaper than adding more transmission capability so the grid level storage is a free benefit.
Perhaps the best way of handling renewables is Demand Response. Many functions can be shifted as power becomes more plentiful, such as cooling can be moved from real time (daytime) to making ice at night when it is cooler (and more energy efficient anyway as the outside air is cooler) and then that ice can be used during the day to cool a building.
You mean like this, or perhaps this? Or perhaps this, which has been operating for decades?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
From the DoE:
Major energy sources and percent shares of U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in 2016:
Natural gas = 33.8%
Coal = 30.4%
Nuclear = 19.7%
Renewables (total) = 14.9%
Hydropower = 6.5%
Wind = 5.6%
Biomass = 1.5%
Solar = 0.9%
Geothermal = 0.4%
Petroleum = 0.6%
Other gases = 0.3%
Other nonrenewable sources = 0.3%
Pumped storage hydroelectricity = -0.2%
So, wind + solar = 6.5%
Coal + natural gas + nuclear = 83.9%
Winner = not renewables
If coal's been on the decline it's only because the Obama administration demonized it and because we had a happy accident of finding an abundance of natural gas. Wind and solar would be nowhere without massive government subsidies.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting on those fusion reactors.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This article is fake news, Solar and wind are not cheap nor can they replace coal. They do not provide a base load. COal is cheap compared to solar and wind, is more abundant, does provide base load and can provide far more energy than solar or wind. Solar and wind cannot provide more than small fraction of coal. Scarcity produces higher prices, ergo, it is not cheap. It has low energy density as well, hence you can generate the same amount of energy with far smaller coal power plants, the equivalent solar and wind would involve massive infrastructure.
The only reason coal has declines is because of suppressive regulations. If the regulations are removed, then coal will become much more affordable and win in the market. Solar and wind cannot win in the market, because they are expensive.
that solar is environmentally friendly is also a myth. The massive amount of used solar panels is a huge environmental disaster in the making and the materials that they are made from are very rare, making photovoltaic nonsustainable. Due to low energy density of wind, there also exists massive material usage due to the large number of wind generators.
Coal has been made disproportionately more expensive over the last several years by government fiat, not market forces. Burdensome regulation and carbon taxes have made it so. Until recently I worked for TVA (mostly nuclear plants but some coal, hydro, and combined-cycle turbines). Several coal plants were shut down well ahead of schedule simply because Obama-era regulations made them unprofitable to run. Remember, candidate-Obama promised to destroy coal. He certainly worked hard enough at it.
If coal is allowed to float without government interference it will be quite a bit cheaper than renewables and much more abundant. Windmills only spin when the wind is blowing. Solar only works when the sun is out and your panels aren't covered in snow. Coal runs 24x7, rain or shine, windy or calm, hot or cold.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Were you paid to write that? Because it's not true and any honest person would acknowledge that unsubsidised renewable energy source are being installed now, even in oil rich countries like Dubai.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
LOL, what a n00b.
Unlike you, I work in a green building powered by 99.8 percent green power. My bus runs on green electricity. My house runs on green electricity. My new energy efficient appliances use 1/4th the energy my old house did and my lights are all LEDs. I own 6 solar panels. I even pay extra to ensure low income families in my city get green energy. And my utility bill is tiny.
Adapt.
The world has already downmodded fossil fuels. Your day is over. Renewables won.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Should 1.6% of the population of California have more say in the national government than 100% of the population of Wyoming? Should 2.4% of the population of Texas be able to negate the voice of 100% of Vermont?
"US" stands for "United States" Both the legislative branch of government and the national election system were created to provide a balance so that high population states could not impose their will on low population states via the U.S. government.
If you want California to be free of that annoying U.S. Constitution, SECEDE!
www.yescalifornia.org
This flawed argument ignores the incontrovertible fact that allowing coal to continue to provide energy on equal terms with other energy supplies rather than pressuring the market to switch to less environmentally damaging sources of energy would do real and substantial harm to us all. The bottom line is: the less energy produced from burning coal and supplied instead from less polluting resources, the better off the world is.
So in fact, there is a need for it to have the crap regulated out of it in a context where it can be replaced with (considerably) less polluting energy sources, which is exactly where we are today.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For coal, this doesn't really matter - it still loses. To pick up where renewables leave off, you want natural gas (or even petroleum) turbines that can quickly be brought on and off line. Coal and nuclear are not really suited to this.
The power industry makes the distinction between "base load" and "peak load" generation sources. Coal and nuclear are best for base load, running 100% capacity as much as possible. Combined-cycle turbines are best for peak load since they can be economically throttled.
The issue is both peak and base load demands are increasing. Turbines make great peak load sources but are poor for base load. TVA -- my former employer -- took coal plants offline due to Obama-era regulations making them impossible or unprofitable to operate (or both). They made up for the lost generating capacity by running their turbines as if they were base load generators. The result? Huge increases in turbine maintenance costs, more frequent maintenance outages, and more unplanned outages.
If the goal is to kill coal you have to replace it with something. Nuclear is a non-starter for most people because of their hysterical, irrational fear of it. Natural gas is cheap but, as stated above, it's not the best candidate for peak load generation. Nothing in the solar or wind column can come close to substituting for any current base load generation technology.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Coal has only been cheap because it has been allowed to pollute the air and water at no cost. If coal had to actually pay for the cost of the damage to health and the environment, it would be a lot more expensive (and scarce).
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Coal has been made disproportionately more expensive over the last several years by government fiat, not market forces.
Citation desperately needed. The linked article shows many forces pushing down the value of coal, all we have for your claims is your word.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It has nothing to do with power. Electric arc furnaces work fine, but unless steel is recycled it has to be made anew from iron ore, and that requires carbon, either by the way of a blast furnace and coke (which is made from coal) or direct reduction, which requires either coal syngas or natural gas.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Sarcasm aside, that is exactly why coal jobs are not coming back. Coal production is in fact very close to an all-time high in the United States-- we're mining about 900 million tons a year, more coal now than we did in 1990 (or any year before then).
But we're doing it with machinery now, not with coal miners. Even if coal production increases, the jobs ain't coming back.
Graph: http://www.insidenergy.com/wp-...
To the extent that America is involved, it is mainly a device to reduce American exports of oil, by replacing American exports with cheaper Canadian exports.
The commenters here aren't to be blamed. Blame msmash and the other Slashdot editors for putting these shitty submissions on the front page multiple times every day.... So when a quarter of each day's front page submissions are about "climate change" in some way, then of course climate change is what we'll be stuck discussing.
I counted the headlines before this one, and out of the 50 posts in the last two days, exactly one ("China To Boost Non-Fossil Fuel Use To 20 Percent By 2030 (reuters.com)") was related to climate. Another one, ("The EPA Won't Be Shutting Down Its Open Data Website After All (mashable.com)") could be considered slightly somewhat peripherally related.
So, that's--at most--two out of fifty: four percent. Your claim "a quarter of each day's front page submissions are about "climate change"" is bullshit.
Not really, HVDC is able to move huge amounts of energy at a high efficiency. Interrupting the current in the case of faults however was a limiting factor.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Coal is only cheap when you ignore the environmental damage it does. Even disregarding the CO2 issue. Once you factor in all the measures you need to take to protect the environment from the radioactive waste, the sulphur and other nice byproducts of burning coal, well, it's not that cheap anymore.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
So you're saying that bluefoxlucid is full of shit and all his fancy math was for nothing as he built his foundation on the wrong plot of land? Lets see if he can extricate himself from the logical trap he so deftly laid for himself.
Only I can judge you.
Indeed, renewables are drastically lighter on the planet than fossil fuels. I am a staunch environmentalist and I believe that renewable are such a wonderful and productive thing that they can provide more than just clean energy. Their economic power can help build our economy AND pay for many needs in our society. All human activity is going to have indirect (externalized) costs. National security, police roads, small pollination impacts, education for the workers who design and run the facility and many other costs of keeping a society need to have their fair share borne by all manufacturers who see the benefits of a civil society. . Yes, this is much much smaller for renewables than fossil fuels, but once an industry has been give a little incubation room and is flourishing it is time for it to pay its own way. That will be in the next decade or so for solar and wind. Regrettably, this tax normalization was NOT done on oil. Oil still receives massive tax subsidies. It is safe to say that somewhere in the last 157 years since oil was first discovered in Pennsylvania oil has somehow learned to stand on their own two feet and no longer needs to feed at the public trough. So oil really needs a big tax to make-up all the hand-outs they have received in the last century and a half.
Wind accounted for 5.6% of power generation in 2016.
Solar accounted for 0.9%.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs...
I'm sure, on a more local level (like Texas), Wind accounts for a more significant portion per-capita. As does solar in areas with lots of sunshine (like Nevada and Hawaii).
But considering that Nuclear, which is essentially stagnant or post-peak due to the way the market's been poisoned against it, is producing over three times the power that Wind and Solar do on an AGGREGATE basis.
And that Coal and Hydro (which is post-peak) EACH produce about five times what Wind and Solar (again aggregate) do.
I'd say calling Wind and Solar "unstoppable" at this point is putting the cart WELL before the horse...as in "What's that out there on the horizon?"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If coal wants to live by market forces then it should have to pay for its pollution. If it wasn't for the subsidy of not having to pay for negative externalities, coal would go bust tomorrow.