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Coal Market Set To Collapse Worldwide By 2040 As Solar, Wind Dominate (bloomberg.com)
Jess Shankleman reports via Bloomberg: Solar power, once so costly it only made economic sense in spaceships, is becoming cheap enough that it will push coal and even natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. That's the conclusion of a Bloomberg New Energy Finance outlook for how fuel and electricity markets will evolve by 2040. The research group estimated solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants in Germany and the U.S. and by 2021 will do so in quick-growing markets such as China and India. The scenario suggests green energy is taking root more quickly than most experts anticipate. It would mean that global carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels may decline after 2026, a contrast with the International Energy Agency's central forecast, which sees emissions rising steadily for decades to come.
The report also found that through 2040:
-China and India represent the biggest markets for new power generation, drawing $4 trillion, or about 39 percent all investment in the industry.
-The cost of offshore wind farms, until recently the most expensive mainstream renewable technology, will slide 71 percent, making turbines based at sea another competitive form of generation.
-At least $239 billion will be invested in lithium-ion batteries, making energy storage devices a practical way to keep homes and power grids supplied efficiently and spreading the use of electric cars.
-Natural gas will reap $804 billion, bringing 16 percent more generation capacity and making the fuel central to balancing a grid that's increasingly dependent on power flowing from intermittent sources, like wind and solar.
The report also found that through 2040:
-China and India represent the biggest markets for new power generation, drawing $4 trillion, or about 39 percent all investment in the industry.
-The cost of offshore wind farms, until recently the most expensive mainstream renewable technology, will slide 71 percent, making turbines based at sea another competitive form of generation.
-At least $239 billion will be invested in lithium-ion batteries, making energy storage devices a practical way to keep homes and power grids supplied efficiently and spreading the use of electric cars.
-Natural gas will reap $804 billion, bringing 16 percent more generation capacity and making the fuel central to balancing a grid that's increasingly dependent on power flowing from intermittent sources, like wind and solar.
Gods but that Dino sludge and other fuels in the ground for us. If he didn't want us to use them, they wouldn't be there.
Because the verified warming trend will suddenly stop because we're slightly ahead of schedule to stop producing as much CO2 and other gases as we thought. It's like watching movies about spacecraft who, when they cut off their engines, magically come to a stop in space.
Same principle.
I can understand lithium ion batteries for portables and maybe for a home, but grid scale batteries will likely be flow batteries or other such tech. Why because they are big and stationary. You don't need particularly compact or space efficient batteries on that scale. It is more important to be durable, low toxicity, and inexpensive (relatively).
The US will be the number one coal producers, and coal consumers because no one else would be using it. The US will continue to try to delay green energy so the coal industry can get its money instead of advancing with the rest of the world. Capitalism is causing our country to fall into a 2nd world status and maybe even 3rd world if we do not watch it.
If techs didn't disagree with each other, then Microsoft would rule the world.
The rate of increase for CO2 is in decline. CO2 is not in decline and it will take hundreds of years for it to decline.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Well, this is the first I have heard this. The things to be considered are that coal fired plants are generally operated for 40 or 50 years. So, is the cost of solar cheaper than continuing to use the coal plants that exist? No. What is going to happen if they are correct is the construction of new coal plants will slow and stop by 2026. The remaining coal plants will continue to operate for some time.
Further, even if the CO2 emissions are lower than was originally predicted, no where in the article did it suggest that will happen quick enough to prevent some of the bad side effects of all the carbon released into the atmosphere. You seem to assume, because coal use will slow down the that everything will be hunky dory. I suspect that is wishful thinking on your part.
Just wait until other countries start putting a carbon tax on US products produced with dirty fossil fuels.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
All of the models that indicate signifincant warming are predicated on the continued rise of CO2 emissions.
Yet that is madness, The quickening rise in Solar power and electric cars mean that CO2 levels will be in decline by the end of this decade, never mind the ones after.
The push for renewables is precisely to avoid a climate catastrophe. The models are based on CO2 rise because, thus far, that's exactly what the trend has been.
Arguing that we don't need renewables because renewables will save us is circular reasoning.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Fortunately, there are strong economic forces now favoring renewable energy. Trump's push for fossil fuels will give them a temporary reprieve (and add more CO2 to the atmosphere along the way) but the fossil companies should be able to see the writing on the wall. Coal is dead. Oil is next.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Pumping water uphill? That would technically be a flow battery right?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There are also some cool designs using molten salt. This plant "...has achieved continuous production, operating 24 hours per day for 36 consecutive days, a result which no other solar plant has attained so far." Pretty neat! And one advantage of molten salt (and perhaps flow batteries, too?) is that unlike, say, lithium ion, the energy can't really come out all at once explosively -- you'd get essentially a lava flow rather than an explosion, AFAIK.
...by drawing a straightish line on a graph.
Yes, it would be somewhat moronic to draw a straightish line on this graph. Something exponential-ish (or logistic, or...) would be much more sensible.
And "nighttime solar" is already a thing (though they don't call it that). This plant generated electricity for 36 days straight, 24 hours/day.
All forms of energy have problems, it's just a matter of which problems you prioritize. Storage is an engineering (=money) problem, coal an environmental problem, etc.
Solar and wind work in low % of overall generation. It doesn't work at high % of total generation. Same with net metering at home installs.
People will keep saying this until it does work in high % of total generation, and then they'll find something else to complain about.
Not that the problems with solar aren't real, but the people working to solve those problems are real also, and sooner or later (and more likely sooner, given the amount of effort being invested), they will solve them.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
.... causing our country to fall into a 2nd world status and maybe even 3rd world if we do not watch it.
You really shouldn't use terms you don't understand.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-First-World-Second-World-and-Third-World-countries
There was absolutely no mention of nuclear power in this article. Is not China and India investing in that technology too?
It would be great if solar could in fact be cheaper than coal in 20 years or so but I've already been told for 20 years that solar will be cheaper than coal in 20 years. I stopped believing these claims a long time ago. Solar has a lot of issues that merely lowering the price of the panels will not solve.
I do believe that wind can get their prices down to where it could compete with other energy sources. Like solar though it has problems of being intermittent. I hear claims that batteries and other storage systems can address this but I ask, what stops people from charging these batteries with cheap and reliable coal or nuclear? Batteries can follow load changes better then coal or nuclear can, so use those for peak load and forget about wind or natural gas.
One thing that puts a limit on the costs between wind and nuclear, wind takes ten times the steel and concrete of nuclear per megawatt of installed capacity. People ask, where is all that concrete? All I you are steel towers and a three big blades turning about. The answer is that the concrete is in the anchor that holds up that tower. If we can assume that the concrete anchors fatigue in 50 years or so, just like it would in a nuclear reactor, then we will need a continuous recycling of concrete to keep up with even an unchanging demand for electricity. If you need X tons of concrete for a gigawatt nuclear power plant then you will need 10X tons for a gigawatt of wind power.
Making concrete has a carbon footprint associated with it. That means that nuclear not only can have a smaller carbon footprint than wind but already does. Future nuclear reactors will likely require less concrete and steel than it does now with advancements in technology. So wind is already behind and the competition is not standing still.
So, it's great that we can look forward to cheap wind and solar in a decade or three. What should we do until then? We can keep burning coal. We can shutdown large sectors of our economy, which would likely delay this new wind and solar advancement. Or we can use nuclear power.
I believe that nuclear power is the only logical choice today. When or if wind and solar catch up then we can switch to that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Nuclear already collapsed. Notwithstanding the technical merits, humans cannot be trusted to manage it effectively.
They've already got the vehicle to do it and the US has withdrawn from the group so if they go forward we won't even be able to negotiate or even attend the meetings. All they would need to do is reconvene the Paris working group and assess tariffs against non participating countries, as there's only 3 nonparticipating countries it would be trivial for the rest of the world to apply export tariffs to those countries.
And because we pulled out of the treaty we wouldn't even be able to attend the meeting. But that's what happens when you elect narcissistic ego maniacs whose entire decision process is dominated by how it can help him. He cares so little about this country it's astounding.
Specifically which part? Do you dispute the current numbers (energy sources through today), the model(s) used for extrapolating, or...?
With non-renewable resources, on the one hand we have increasing technological ability, while on the other hand the difficulty for extraction goes up with time as the low-hanging fruit is preferentially depleted (there are of course special cases). Contrast this to renewable sources, where the former is true -- increasing technology drives prices down -- but the latter isn't really applicable (barring a scenario where we cover every inch of the globe with solar panels, which would produce way more power than we currently consume).
You are ignorant of what's going on in the energy market, your clue should be that your own assessment is in contravention of the wall street press. Storage is there, it's already viable and it's already cheaper than gas. They just executed a 20 year purchase agreement for a solar + storage contract (IIRC it was in Texas) at less than 4cents kwh. That's cheaper than any other source of generation and guarantees 24/7 power.
This isn't even with the big drop in battery prices that's expected as the major battery factories come on line. In case you aren't aware the Tesla gigafactory is one of about 30 similarly sized factories being built right this minute around the world. Batteries prices are projected to fall below the price threshold that they will disrupt entirely the idea of base load. Wall streets been moving money toward this as the trend has intensified, it's been all over the wall street news since 2008 and it's accelerating every year.
Unlike you these people are betting real money on this, billions of dollars are flowing to renewables because of this massive shift in energy production pricing and has been since 2008.
I agree that we should be doing more nuclear.
But for my state anyway, wind production in Texas, not counting government subsidies, runs from $36 to $51 per megawatt-hour while an average national cost for coal-fired electricity ranges from $65 to $150 per MWh and for gas, depending on the type of plant, from $52/MWh to $218/MWh.
China and India are the biggest markets for just about everything. That includes nuclear power. It seems odd that an article that wants to sing the praises of how wind and solar are going to power the world that they'd not even mention that nuclear power already powers a good sized portion of it, more than what wind and solar do now, and nearly as much as coal.
I see this as just another example of bias in the news. Bloomberg is an organization with a far left bias and nuclear is seen as some sort of threat or something. Like some evil entity that is only alluded to with words like "he who must not be named" or something. If they left out nuclear power in this piece then I have to wonder if it is because wind and solar don't look so great by comparison. They'll mention coal because coal is no real threat, but nuclear cannot even be mentioned once.
What we do see is that China and India are taking a true "all the above" strategy on energy since they have active development of nuclear energy. Unlike the USA which has an "all the above... except nuclear" strategy. I believe this attitude will change in time. But will it be soon enough? Until wind and solar is cheaper than coal we will be burning coal. We know nuclear is cheaper than coal, and as green as solar. Obama and friends held back the industry for a decade. We could have saved a lot of carbon in that time.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's great if you have a hill to pump the water up to. Out here on the Great Plains we don't have many hills.
An odd thing happened some time in my youth. We call this area the "wind corridor" now. Before that we called it "tornado alley". I don't think that change in nomenclature was because there was any real change in the weather patterns around here. It's hard to sell windmills in "tornado alley" but they sound great for a place called the "wind corridor". Too bad we don't have any hills so we have a place to pump some water to the top and store that wind energy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So all of these projects did/are doing "absolutely nothing for the environment"? (We've given them a few bucks related to the Paris Agreement.)
You're of course free to call it "politically-motivated bullshit," but when literally all but handful (two? three?) of countries *in the world* have signed it, the agreement -- for better or worse -- just doesn't seem that political to me...
When alarm is scientifically justified, alarmism is moral.
While your second point is quite valid, the estimated economic viability of a coal (or any other plant) could well change depending on a number of external factors. If coal demand drops, some mines will close which could make the transport economics of a particular plant less favorable. If grid demand drops because of on site power generation the even the maintenance / financing costs of a coal burner may not make much sense.
In many places you have to at least partially clean up your mess - which is another cost. It may be cheaper to convert the plant into a natural gas peaker.
It's complicated.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Market forces and simple exhaustion of supply will greatly reduce the use of coal to make electricity.
Bullcrap. There is no "exhaustion of supply". America, China, India, and Europe all have enough coal to last for centuries. Coal is dirt cheap and in many areas of the world it will continue to be the most cost effective source of power, as long as the emissions are ignored. Coal needs to die, and market forces alone are not going to accomplish that.
When alarm is scientifically justified, alarmism is moral.
Much past climate alarmism was not justified, and now that credibility has been eroded, many people are no longer listening.
Scientists should stick to the facts, and avoid becoming policy advocates.
Much past climate alarmism was not justified, and now that credibility has been eroded, many people are no longer listening.
While I'm not a fan of "alarmism," I'd be interested in seeing your citation for "much past climate alarmism was not justified." Specifically what "past climate alarmism" are you referring to, who said it, when, what exactly did they say, and in what way was it shown not to be justified?
And, show me some actual sources, please. I'd like to see something more than just parroting some blog saying "past climate alarmism wasn't justified."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Alarmism or not, did you really think we could just keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with no consequence? Reducing our effects on the planet is always a good idea, regardless of politics.
36 days?!? That there is absolutely viable and we should do it everywhere.
Sorry, I am kinda stoned. But that is nothing to write home about. I got better uptime with Windows ME.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You mean like effectively abandoning nuclear power development?
Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as wind or solar but the world effectively stopped building nuclear power plants 40 years ago. Had they not stopped then perhaps we could have shut down a lot of aging nuclear power plants by now because we'd have the electrical capacity to replace them.
As it is now we can expect many nuclear power plants to still be in service 80 years after they were built, triple their intended life span. If we should see another Fukushima style incident then we'll get a bunch of people in a panic, plans for new nuclear reactors will get set back by a decade, and we'll keep burning coal.
Yep, if people had listened 30 years ago it is possible we'd be living in a nuclear powered world. Safe from the nonsense in the Middle East. Safe from nuclear reactors stretched beyond their limits. Safe from global warming.
We lost a lot of experienced nuclear engineers and technicians in that time. They're all retired, senile, or dead now. It's going to take a long time to get that back.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
However, Ben Franklin's quote that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" did exist 30 years ago. Alas, large groups of humans have never been very good at learning things.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
Banks are never going to fund it. Power companies are never going to fund it. It's only going to happen with socialism. You do get that right? You are the last person I'd expect to be pushing socialism.
Maybe you should think before you cheer for something inherently opposed to what you believe.
No.
In every part of the world where people still live in reality, there is an understanding that climate change is happening because that's where all our observations and data point.
In bumfuck stupid conservative 'merica, true fucking morons who are so fucking stupid they think smart people are bad, but that their worthless, uninformed, uneducated, inbred opinion is somehow good... well, there's a lot of loudmouth fucking idiots who continuie to have their heads up their ass and listen to the people who would lose money if we did something to prevent climate change from disrupting the world. They basically are too stupid to give a fuck about the human species. The fact that their head-up-ass anti-science position has spread is because we have a lot of people in 'merica who are fucking stupid, and prefer themselves to remain that way.
Just telling it like it is.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Coal is only too cheap because the cost of the CO2 release isn't yet included. When you factor that into the price it gets quite expensive.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
India just scrapped plans for 15 coal plants and went with solar instead. The report is way behind on cost of solar power. Solar is already below cost of coal in India and China.
Just saying it like it are.
Problem with nuclear is that it is getting too expensive. It can, maybe, do 5 cents per kWh for new installations, but uncertainties are huge. Solar can now, as today, do it at 20 cents, and it is rapidly declining. If it is cheaper than nuclear withing twenty years, building a nuclear plant today is "negative" investment.
And there will not be any "future" nuclear reactors, nobody can invest that amount of money to unknwon technology (unknown as "will it be cheap enough").
See Olkiluoto 3, see Tokamak ("future"?), see *any* current nuclear reactor being build (Toshiba announced $6 billion losses in USA this year), they all are too expensive to make sense.
Nuclear is passé.
A new Ice age, naturally occuring, was predicted to start about the years 3000 to 5000, far away from the 2040 you claim.
If we had continued with putting that much dust and particles into the atmosphere as we did in the 1920ies to 1960ies, the layer of particles would have shielded a part of the sun light, cooling the Earth. Luckily we started putting filters in exhausts and chimneys, moved away from heating appartements with coal and wood, and thus seriously decreased the numbers of pneumonia, lung cancer and other diseases of the respiratory apparatus. As a side effect, we limited the probability of a global cooling.
Tesla is a mega manufacturer of a single battery technology. They will continue to tell you that their battery can do everything and is ideal in every circumstance. The existence of their product at grid scale doesn't necessarily mean it's the best one. Kind of like my nextdoor neighbour who owns a Dodge Ram (I live in a dense European city) who drives around for 15min after he gets home looking for two parking spots next to each other because he doesn't fit in a single spot. He has this car which is great for the purpose it's built, but not so good as a daily commuter.
Flow batteries are larger than Lithium by a factor of 2 currently. This is not relevant in grid scale applications. What is relevant:
- 100% depth of discharge.
- Hugely increased cycle count.
- End of cycle count means one cheap component needs to be replaced: the membrane.
- Estimated 20yr life span is much higher than lithium.
- No cooling required.
- Non-flammable, non-toxic.
- Expansion is as simple as dropping a container of liquid next to the existing battery and connecting a hose.
Lithium battery grid storage can be installed and provide energy for about 1.5 cents/kWh
The most conservative estimate for Tesla's grid storage solution which is the cheapest on the market includes daily cycling over 15 yrs is $0.15/kWh for wholesale cost of a Powerwall (double for retail), and $0.08/kWh for grid scale solution.
Vanadium flow batteries had that cost several years ago already due to their much longer life times and much deeper cycle capability. UET estimates they'll have grid storage available for under $0.05/kWh by the end of the year.
Speaking of because someone has something available it must be good: Redflow ZCell is a lovely little flow cell you can buy for your home. You can replace the Tesla Powerwall with it in a couple of years when the Powerwall is dead. The ZCell costs about 1.5x more and lasts nearly 3 times longer.
One can see that this report is complete bullshit, as it does not address the aspect of storage.
Nuclear power produces constant load. Coal and gas power plants can produce on demand. Together they require only a minimum storage capacity to balance daily consumption patterns. Solar and Wind power however are produced with enormous random fluctuations and can only exist if there is capacity to regulate and/or store electricity is large amounts.
This capacity does not exist, and considering how long does it take to plan and resolve all legal issues for large pump storage facilities, it will never be built in any significant amounts. The article does not calculate this cost at all, therefore it's ripe for garbage bin.
Nuclear has already been priced out by renewables + storage.
China has cancelled most of its new nuclear, its just finishing stuff that was already in the pipeline.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'd be interested in seeing your citation for "much past climate alarmism was not justified."
The 2007 IPCC Report contains numerous wildly inaccurate statements.
My question-- the part you failed to quote--said "who said it, when, what exactly did they say, and in what way was it shown not to be justified?"
You didn't answer my question. You asserted that the IPCC synthesis report was "alarmism" with "numerous inaccurate statements," but didn't point out a single inaccurate statement.
So, I repeat: what specifically was inaccurate, and how and when was it shown not to be justified?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That's great if you have a hill to pump the water up to. Out here on the Great Plains we don't have many hills.
New plan: use excess electricity to power robots to make some hills. Then pump water up hills.
Maybe you don't have hills, but any elevation difference works. Maybe there's some underground caverns you can use instead. An exhausted oil reservoir perhaps.
Hydro-electric produces constantly, although not available to every part of the world. Geothermal constantly, but its practical cost varies widely depending on the geological activity in a region. Solar produces during the day, when demand is at peak. Wind can produce at night, but is only able to supplement a wider grid. Storage systems are already in production and on the market, and will continue to be developed. So how can you say that in 20+ years that there won't be storage systems?
The future is this:
* variety of energy sources. With different combinations for different regions.
* some regions will be zero nuclear, others will find nuclear power to be a practical option for high energy demands.
* non-renewable energy will be regulated into oblivion. Hardly an issue as costs for renewable energy continue to fall.
* households will use less energy than they did 20 years ago or even today. Efficient lighting, efficient heating & cooling, laptops instead of desktop PCs, and solar panels on homes because they last longer than roof shingles and pay for themselves
* energy costs for the end user will continue to rise. even though renewable energy is cheap and requires little capital to do on a small scale, the distribution of power is expensive on a large scale.
Tenewable may never be as cheap as fossil fuels were 30-50 years ago when we put all this power infrastructure in place. But that is in the past, and we can't go back to that.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Speaking of because someone has something available it must be good: Redflow ZCell is a lovely little flow cell you can buy for your home. You can replace the Tesla Powerwall with it in a couple of years when the Powerwall is dead. The ZCell costs about 1.5x more and lasts nearly 3 times longer.
Your numbers appear to be obsolete. And also specific to Australia. ZCell's cost ~$17,000AUD installed for 10 kWh with a 10 year warranty and isn't available in the US. Telsa Powerwall 2's now cost $8,200USD installed for 13.5 kWh with the same 10 year warranty. Both products support 100% discharge of their nameplate capacity. The Tesla does it by overprovisioning cells. The ZCell does it inherently to the tech.
ZCell depended on a longevity advantage for their cost competitiveness with lithium. That advantage has evaporated. Tesla many-cell powerpacks are holding up far better than anyone anticipated. Even Tesla.