Slashdot Mirror
The End of Coal Could Be Closer Than It Looks (bloomberg.com)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report on Monday saying that the world's electrical utilities need to reduce coal consumption by at least 60 percent over the next two decades through 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change that could occur with more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. While that reduction seems out of reach, Bloomberg crunched some numbers and found that "it's possible to meet consumption-cut targets on the current path." From the report: The conventional wisdom is that this isn't possible, as rising demand from emerging economies, led by China and India, overwhelms the switch from fossil fuels in richer countries. That may underestimate the changing economics of energy generation, though. For one thing, it assumes that Asian countries will continue to build new coal-fired plants at a rapid rate, even though renewables are already the cheaper option in India and heading that way in China and Southeast Asia. For another, the falling cost and rising penetration of wind and solar is so recent that we're only just starting to see how they damage the business models of conventional generators. Thanks to the deflation of recent years, renewables already produce energy at a lower cost than thermal power plants. That causes the overall price of wholesale electricity to fall, reducing a conventional plant's revenue per megawatt-hour. When this drops below the generator's operating costs, the only away to avoid losing money is to switch off altogether. As a result, capacity factors -- the share of time when the plant is on and producing electricity -- decline as well, further undermining returns.
The shift from an always-on "baseload" demand profile to a peaks-and-troughs one like this carries its own problems. The act of ramping up and down consumes fuel and causes the physical plant to wear out faster. Absent expensive refurbishments, that could take a decade off the 40- to 50-year life of a coal plant -- and banks will get progressively less likely to fund long-term refurbs as wind and solar further damage the economics of fossil power. Researchers at the Australian National University this year modeled the effect of this sort of scenario on that country's generation mix. Assuming that the cost of renewables continues to evolve in line with current trends, they found the average retirement age of coal plants falls to 30 years from 50 years. As a result, coal-powered generation drops by about 70 percent between 2020 and 2030. "Let's assume the addition of net new generation stops in 2020; that plant life reduces to 30 years from 40 years; and that capacity factors gradually fall from the current 50 percent to 35 percent, still well above the levels of the U.K.'s coal generators in recent years," the report says in closing. "The effect of those operating changes alone reduces coal-fired electricity output in 2030 by about 40 percent relative to the higher scenario. [...] Factor in a price on carbon or other robust government intervention and the decline would be much faster."
The shift from an always-on "baseload" demand profile to a peaks-and-troughs one like this carries its own problems. The act of ramping up and down consumes fuel and causes the physical plant to wear out faster. Absent expensive refurbishments, that could take a decade off the 40- to 50-year life of a coal plant -- and banks will get progressively less likely to fund long-term refurbs as wind and solar further damage the economics of fossil power. Researchers at the Australian National University this year modeled the effect of this sort of scenario on that country's generation mix. Assuming that the cost of renewables continues to evolve in line with current trends, they found the average retirement age of coal plants falls to 30 years from 50 years. As a result, coal-powered generation drops by about 70 percent between 2020 and 2030. "Let's assume the addition of net new generation stops in 2020; that plant life reduces to 30 years from 40 years; and that capacity factors gradually fall from the current 50 percent to 35 percent, still well above the levels of the U.K.'s coal generators in recent years," the report says in closing. "The effect of those operating changes alone reduces coal-fired electricity output in 2030 by about 40 percent relative to the higher scenario. [...] Factor in a price on carbon or other robust government intervention and the decline would be much faster."
China and India are still busily building new coal plants (despite what China sometimes claims), and you'd have to convince them - and their populations - that upward economic mobility is no longer an option.
If India tried a huge cutback, they'd have riots.
If China tried a huge cutback, they'd have a revolution.
I'll be waiting for the inevitable talking points about how the US will never get off coal and natural gas because _strawman_ won't let it.
Here's the reality, the rest of the world is moving off fossil fuels at a quick clip, the US will be left behind if we still allow industry to drive the ship (e.g. having oil company executives making energy policy that enriches themselves instead of the needs of the nation).
Even countries like Germany are having a hard time moving away from coal
Solar doesn't work well in Germany because it is about as cloudy as the Bering Sea. They should import solar from sunny places like Spain.
CO2 is a global problem. Solutions don't have to be localized.
By choosing renewables, China can position itself on the international stage as taking the high road - and then bash the U.S. incessantly, with support from the rest of the world.
The USA is bashed incessantly already, how does this "taking the high road" change anything?
The U.S. will eventually change its mind (as soon as it can change its administration to one that's actually responsible), and then it will have to struggle to catch up.
Catch up to what? Reducing their CO2 output? The USA has already been doing far better on this than many other nations in the world, and they aren't even trying.
The U.S. may well find itself unable to recover, and may even experience energy shortages if it cannot get the renewable tech it needs.
How in the hell would the USA experience energy shortages? The USA already exports coal. If the USA isn't a net exporter of oil by now it will be one soon, same for natural gas. Nuclear power output has been growing even though few nuclear reactors have been built in the last 40 years. Upgrades and improved techniques have allowed for greater and greater output from the existing fleet of nuclear power plants. There's been a rough restart of building new nuclear power reactors but it's fairly certain that this will be resolved shortly and more new power reactors will be coming online soon. The wind industry is doing well. The USA will not run out of energy any time soon, even if nations like China want to get in a trade war.
The end result may be a significant shift of political power among first-world nations.
It's quite possible that there could be a shift in political dominance. What is unlikely to cause such a shift is China getting some kind of monopoly on solar panels.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Um, no.
Baseload exists because electricity demand is fairly predictable. You could draw a line under which the electricity demand never falls below which you could always match with baseload, and you could draw "sine waves" of demand which are fairly predictable and solutions can be found to
It is a lot easier to use baseload overcapacity to do things like pumped hydro to smooth daily demand fluctuations than it is to try and match an unpredictable supply to fluctuating and not completely predictable demand.
All other things equal, a generation source capable of delivering a consistent supply is better than one which is not able to guarantee consistent supply.
DDT was only banned for agricultural use. It is still available for use in mosquito control in countries that need it.
The problem is that overuse of DDT allowed mosquitoes to develop a strong resistance to it. Here's a nice study on that topic, but since you won't bother reading it I will quote "We conducted standard insecticide susceptibility testing across western Kenya and found that the Anopheles gambiae mosquito has acquired high resistance to pyrethroids and DDT"
Put simply, DDT doesn't work well for controlling malaria carrying mosquitoes anymore, and that was not caused by media induced panics about DDT. If anything, the media exposure that lead to banning DDT for all other uses probably prolonged it's usefulness for controlling mosquitoes.