Slashdot Mirror
Italy Proposes Phasing Out Coal Power Plants By 2025 (reuters.com)
Italy is the next country to phase out coal. According to Reuters, the country has set its sights on phasing out coal power plants by 2025. From the report: Italy's biggest utility Enel has said it will not invest in new coal-fired power plants. The new energy strategy, still under discussion, aims to reach the goal of 27 percent of gross overall energy consumption from renewable sources by 2030, the document showed. The strategy, which should be approved by the government at the beginning of November, is also looking to speed up the introduction of vehicles powered by alternative fuels. It aims to raise the number of electric charging stations to 19,000 by 2020.
They are trying to prevent the end of the world. Probably spooked by heat waves this year. Remember that coal has received a lot public funding also.
Your post assumes that there is a free market in place. If there is not, and energy is centrally-planned, then any change in the mix would need to come from the central planner rather than the non-existent or limited market.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If solar and wind are as cheap without subsidies as recent stories claim, why do countries need to set targets like this? If renewables are really that cheap, shouldn't the free markets phase out coal power without government regulation? Countries setting targets like this and regulating the sources of energy seems to suggest that the claims made about renewables are false. Why else would the government need to intervene?
a) Depending on circumstances they might not be as cheap, but when you factor in CO2 it's a worthwhile investment.
b) Even if it it's cheaper for new infrastructure it still probably costs more to phase out some old infrastructure.
b) Renewables are cheap enough that initiatives like this are feasible.
I stole this Sig
Uh, so they have capacity to meet demand as they phase out coal power? Do you also ask why airlines don't hire blind pilots?
How is your free market cult going to stop climate change?
If solar and wind are as cheap without subsidies as recent stories claim, why do countries need to set targets like this?...Why else would the government need to intervene?
In case the Italians vote in a disaster like Trump who starts saying things like "Beieve me, we're going to revive the coal industry like you've never seen!" They will at least have some legal precedent in place to help stave off the lunacy.
I have a neighbor who has four pit bulls. Notice I say "has" not "owns". Her adult son, who lives in the same town, is a dog fancier but can't be bothered to feed them, clean up after them, or pay for veterinary care. He just buys dogs and then dumps them on his mom, and comes over to play with them when he feels like.
This is an example of what economists call "externalized costs". The son doesn't pay the food or vet costs, so he acts like they don't exist,
Externalized costs are why the market won't eliminate coal on its own. According to a recent Scientific American article, coal particulates kill as many Americans annually as car accidents. And given the nature of the illnesses caused, that's a lot of cost, not even putting a price on human longevity or quality of life,
If all the costs of pollution were part of the purchase decision, the market would make an objectively optimal choice about continuing to use coal. But the costs are paid by someone else, so as far as the parties to the transaction are concerned they don't exist.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
they'll be burning natural gas from North Africa.
That is still way better than burning coal.
Who said wind is cheaper? Quote please?
Wind and solar are cheaper than coal in Australia.
Wind is cheaper than coal in India.
Wind directly competes with coal on price.
News Flash: Wind is not cheaper than coal.
Rarely have I seen a comment so stuffed with half truths, myths and outright nonsense.
https://energytransition.org/2013/02/the-german-coal-myth/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_phase-out
How can Germany have "failed on the claim to abandon coal" when German hard coal subsidies aren't scheduled to stop until 2018 and total coal generation isn't scheduled to end until 2030 at the earliest?
Please understand I'm not responding to you. I understand that you have an agenda, and renewables aren't part of it. I'm commenting here simply so people honestly interested in what's happening in the European energy sector have convenient access to information more accurate and less agenda-driven than yours.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Well, that's blindseer, you know. To say that he has an agenda is not quite the right description - if nuclear power had a dick, he would suck it day and night.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
virtue signaling
Well, it seems like the (unironic, not quoted) use of "virtue signalling" has mostly taken over as "SJW" as the most effective indicator that the user of it is a raging idiot.
The nice thing about "virtue signalling" is that you can accuse anything of being virtue signalling and it's impossible to deny.
For example: the parent post is simply virtue signalling. It's utterly content free, except for waving a big fat virtue flag saying "I'm attacking the right people see how virtuous I am".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's not a huge amount. Several countries have similar levels of nuclear and gas power generation. France has that sort of level just from nuclear - although this is unusually large. Other European countries do generate most of their power from gas and nuclear though.
We should be thanking Germany. Not only did they prove that this was feasible and not economically crippling as some had predicted, but they encouraged other countries to follow suit. It's actually possible that large parts of Europe might be coal, nuclear and largely combustion engine free within my lifetime. Likely, even.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You misspelled 'America'.
No sig today...
And since they want to switch to electric vehicles, they'll effectively be "vehicles powered by natural gas burned at very high efficiencies". Which is not in any way a bad thing. Combined cycle NG plants can reach 60% efficiency or so; a typical ICE peaks at 35-40% and averages 20-25%, and releases much more pollution per unit energy - and emits it right where people are breathing it in rather than "at altitude, generally outside of cities".
That said, let me be the first to question Italy's seriousness on the electric vehicle front. While Europe is up to 1,6% market penetration on average, with Norway in first place at around 1/3rd market penetration, Italy has a measly 0,1% market penetration - the worst in the developed world. Even Iceland buys nearly as many electric cars per month now as Italy (the latter having 12% of the population of the entire EU, the former having a third of a million people). Italy is an embarrassment when it comes to electric vehicles, not a role model. We'll see if they actually do anything to change this.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
You can also fit devices to chimneys to capture the pollutants which are too costly/heavy to be fitted to ICE cars so you can release fewer pollutants in the first place, as well as doing so in a better place. And they can be subject to closer monitoring.
I really don't know anything about Italy's power system. But from what I know of Europe, I'd be absolutely floored to find out it was a free market. If I had to guess I'd say it was either a state-owned company or well-connected private monopoly that couldn't care less what it pays for power because it passes the generation fees along to the consumer.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It seems that a big part of how people are using the term "virtue signaling" is to mean something like "engaging in support of values or goals I don't care about." Unfortunately, this abuse of the term is making it much less useful to discuss actual virtue signaling; the term actually arises from the study of religious communities where people would engage in public behavior that was obviously very stringent about the rules. In fact, the term could be used in a useful context for discussing environmental issues but almost never is: if for example you make a big deal about how you turn off the lights when you leave a room, but you drive a car regularly and use you a clothes dryer all the time rather than let your clothes dry on a rack or the like, there's a real chance that you are engaging in virtue signaling (or you don't understand to even an order of magnitude how much energy different things use and don't care enough to find out which sounds a lot like virtue signaling also). Yes, every little bit helps, but the big things help more.
I had a conversation a few days ago where someone more or less proudly talked about how they were so careful to turn off lights; I attempted to tell them that if they cared about their energy use, there were a lot of other things they could do. They were completely incredulous that anyone could do any of them (e.g. not own a car, even though my wife and I don't own a car in the same city that this person lives in and it works fine), and got a little irate. When I mentioned that about half the things on the list were things that we actually did, they got very upset. My conclusion is that the person cared more about signaling "I save energy" then actually saving energy. And one when someone out-signaled them, got upset. Part of their mind seemed to have trouble with the idea that one could be taking a course of action to be genuinely helpful in an optimal fashion.
Everyone else can and is doing it. Italy has no excuse. When Iceland is nearly outpacing Italy in total (not per capita) numbers, that doesn't reflect well on Italy.
Furthermore, there is not "unknown battery lifespan". Ignoring that accelerated aging tests have been done, the Roadster was delivered nearly a decade ago and there are Model Ss with with hundreds of thousands of miles / many hundreds of thousands of kilometers on their packs. The "it's unknown" excuse just doesn't fly anymore. It's known, and degradation is minimal. The typical curve is about 4% in the first year, then it greatly slows with time; year five total degradation is about 6-7%.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Oh, and as for your first claim:
This is wrong on many levels.
1) The basic premise itself is wrong. If you have fewer people, yes that means less demand, but it also means correspondingly less resources to make the change.
2) Iceland is a much more challenging case than Italy. Both Italy and Iceland are mountainous, but Iceland - in addition to having a worse climate - also has a far lower population density.
3) Infrastructure in Iceland isn't better than in Italy. Take Tesla, for example. Italy has five Tesla stores, 2 Tesla service centres, and 23 supercharging stations (soon to be 35) covering the whole of the country. Iceland? 0, 0 and 0. Iceland doesn't even have any kind of charging stations at all - even slow chargers - covering large chunks of the Ring Road, the main road around the country. Just a couple months ago chargers only went a third of the way around.
I'll repeat: Italy has no excuse. They're not a role model when it comes to EVs; they're being lapped at the track by everyone else and making up excuses for why it's not their fault.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Italy doesn't have nuclear, is actually illegal.
They'll just buy electricity made by nuclear power from France. Italy will be using nuclear power regardless. They have been for a long time now and their reliance on nuclear power will only increase as France builds more nuclear reactors and Italy shuts down their coal plants. Kind of like how Germany has been buying so much electricity from France to make up for their failure to provide for their electrical demand after shutting down their coal plants.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.