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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).
This ignores the possibility of coal subsidies shoring up the aforementioned losses. Laws could mandate coal even if economically unfeasible, leading to higher regional prices. Also, energy prices could go up if there were a major war involving India, China or the US. Not terribly likely in the next 10 years but you never know.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Here's a link to the current state of energy consumption worldwide. As you can see fossil fuels are growing, and recyclables are not keeping up with increased demand, never mind making inroads into the fossil fuel demand
https://gailtheactuary.files.w...
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.
Well coal's future may be uncertain but wishful thinking on the internet will likely outlive us all.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
Globally, coal is even more alive. "Think the Big Banks Have Abandoned Coal? Think Again." Even a solar magazine admits: "China to add 259 GW of coal capacity, satellite imagery shows." For reference, 259 GW is more than twice the amount of power capacity that mighty Texas has FROM ALL SOURCES.
Now Asia - which accounts for close to 80% of total global coal usage - is increasingly turning to the U.S. to supply coal. We are still the world's third largest coal producer. The U.S. supplies both types, met coal to produce steel and steam coal to produce electricity. "U.S. coal exports increased by 61% in 2017 as exports to Asia more than doubled."
The U.S. has a 360-year supply of coal to bolster our expanding export market. The trade war with the U.S. however, could have China looking to expand domestic supply, and the country's coal production caps have been found to be "technically infeasible."
The fact is that both China (65%) and India (75%) are hugely dependent upon coal-based electricity, which will be needed in even bigger quantities to lift their low Human Development Index closer to those in the West, where universal electricity access has more people living better and longer. Can you really blame them? "The Statistical Connection Between Electricity and Human Development."
Solar works great in Germany. In fact Germany is fifth in installed solar capacity. Not sure what you are talking about. But Germany still loves their coal. That is why they have been increasing their carbon output.
includes government subsidies. It may cost more to keep a coal plant running, but not if the feds give them tax incentives to keep burning the coal so that people in W Virginia who work in the mines will keep voting for Republicans.
Solar works great in Germany. In fact Germany is fifth in installed solar capacity.
But it doesn't, it's highly inefficient. The reason they produce as much as they do, is because rooftops everywhere are pretty much covered with PV cells. The cost to recoup the initial costs are over a period of 20-30 years(the pv panel life is around 25 years). This is pretty much the same as in Canada for instance, and one of the reasons why "green energy" like windmills and solar make next to no sense since they have to be heavily subsidized by the government to break even.
Om, nomnomnom...
Nuclear cannot do peaking. Rest can. Hydrodynamic storage has been tried in Germany, and failed for the purpose you state, which is why Germany dismantled most of its hydro "energy storage" plants even as it was building up wind.
they've literally got 50 times the population but they're only adding twice as much coal capacity?
/. crowd because we're in our 40s and 50s and, well, dying. But if you're in your 20s it's a blink of the eye.
And like the article says, solar and wind are _already_ cheaper than coal. That's without factoring in the health costs from breathing the dirty air.
Power plants are big projects that take years to build. So yeah, you're gonna see coal for a while while it works its way out of the system. Maybe another 10 years or so. That seems like a long time to the
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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. China can also exploit its enormous head start, both for profit and for strategic leverage - including inserting espionage equipment into renewable devices sold to the the U.S.
It may well take the U.S. a decade or more to catch up, including still more deficit spending. 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. The end result may be a significant shift of political power among first-world nations.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Transmission shouldn't be an issue at all. It's the placement of HVDC conversion stations and the building of transmission towers that's the problem in Europe's case. The amount of regulation, red tape, environmental impact studies, court challenges, and so on are the only things slowing these things down.
Om, nomnomnom...
We're 40 years on from the pollution crisis media induced panic and all of those 'in the next 5 years' predictions haven't come true.....
In those 40 years we have phased out leaded petrol, leaded paint, chlorofluorocarbons, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to name just a few. We are still seeing the effects of these, despite them being banned for decades.
So the "crisis" has been reduced, but not eliminated. And it has been reduced because we did something about it, not because the media induced a panic. If anything, the media raised awareness so that we would act.
sustainable living
is because rooftops everywhere are pretty much covered with PV cells.
It is not even 1% of rooftops that are covered with solar cells, probably not even a half a percent.
The cost to recoup the initial costs are over a period of 20-30 years(the pv panel life is around 25 years).
No idea about the already existing plants.
However, if I invest now 10,000 into a roof top solar plant with battery storage and join a virtual power plant for reserve power/balancing power, I will earn over a course of 20 years 10,000. Earn! Not safe in costs, but earn!
Your idea about costs of solar panels are completely outdated.
(the pv panel life is around 25 years) ... but that stops around 80% original peak capacity.
The warranty is 30 years. They basically live for ever. No idea where this retarded "panel life is _" comes from. If it does not get destroyed by hail (and for that you need a big bunch of hail) ripped from the roof by an Orkan (that are our Hurricanes) burned or has rotting connections because of a bad day during manufactoring: they hold for ever. Sure they degrade
This is reposted and repeated on /. so often since 10 or more years: it should be common knowledge by now.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You can simply use the renewable to save fossil fuel and have overcapacity.
You get very expensive electricity that way of course.
Riiiiiight. Are you angelosphere's other account, and will tell me that Germany controls wind next?
Wholesale prices are dropping though because of the frequent oversupply ... so consumers get fucked, industry becomes more competitive.
From a mercantilist point of view it kinda works, though the EU doesn't really need a mercantilist Germany at this point in time.
Nuclear cannot do peaking ...
That is not even a formally correct english sentence.
Yes, they can. Actually they do all the time. Nuclear power plants in germany run at peak performance, or close to it, at about 95% peak
You see: when you realise what base load means: that a base load power plant is running at its peak. Then stupid catch phrases like "can't do peak", make no sense at all.
You probably meant: load following .... that in the end depends on the design of the reactor. The existing german ones are not designed for load following.
which is why Germany dismantled most of its hydro "energy storage" plants ... ...
You read to much Bloomberg
Care to point out which pumped storage plant Germany is dismantling?
Or did yo mix it up with nuke plants, those we are dismantling
dismantling ... its hydro "energy storage" plants even as it was building up wind.
But you do know that most pumped storage is in the middle high german areas and the high german areas while the new wind plants are all off shore in the northern sea? So: to build up a pumped storage plant to "cover" for an off shore wind park, we also would need transport grid capacity. Makes much more sense to sell/transport it to Norway. Oh ... that is actually what we do. Surprise surprise.
Hint: there never was a single pumped storage plant build or even planned to accommodate the expansion of wind power.
Stop playing energy expert, moron. Or especially "I know everything about germans energy infrastructure". You know nothing.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We are nowhere near the lower bound of resource use for solar.
Solar will get cheap enough that you simply roll it out in the desert without any frames, staking it to the ground ... maybe put pillow inflated with polymer foam under it if it can be made very very cheaply to angle it, but if not, ehh. It won't be consuming steel or glass at all at that point. Just a tiny bit of silicon and plastics (3M Ultra Barrier film last 25+ years).
We are nowhere near the lower bound of resource use for solar.
Are you willing to bet the survival of the human race on that? I'm not.
As it is right now, today, nuclear power uses far less raw material for the same energy than solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal. As it is right now, today, nuclear power produces less CO2 per energy produced than any other energy source we know of. As it is right now, today, nuclear power is the safest energy source we have. If there is a great demand that we lower CO2, with least impact on lives and the environment, and deploy this as quickly as possible, then we have no option other than nuclear power.
While we wait for this technological breakthrough on reducing the resource needs of solar power we can reduce our CO2 production by building some nuclear power plants. If the need to reduce our CO2 can wait for the development of better solar collectors then I have to wonder just how much of a threat CO2 truly poses to humanity. Whenever nuclear power is brought up here on Slashdot there's always some wiseacre that says something better will come in 5 or 10 years. Well, we just had a report from the IPCC posted on Slashdot that we don't have 10 years to wait on this. So, what should we do?
I have an idea, let's build some nuclear power plants. Lot's of them.
I know another wiseacre is already typing a response on how the nuclear waste is going to be a problem. Well, I heard that we'll have that problem solved in 10 years with a new technology that can turn all that waste into valuable radioactive isotopes that NASA and other scientific agencies are just begging to get enough of for performing their experiments and exploring the universe. Just you wait. Until then we can pile up the waste like we've been doing and when we have the technology to process this waste into something valuable then the problems will all be solved. We will have saved humanity and produced vital materials for science.
I'm not saying we should deploy nuclear to the exclusion of wind and solar, only that without also deploying nuclear power we will not be able to reduce our CO2 production in the time frame dictated by the IPCC.
Which is it? Can we wait for some new solar technology or not? If we can wait then let's wait. If we can't wait then nuclear power will have to be part of the solution.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
and that "blog" is a reputable source? no, its just personal opinion - a waste of time
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Trump doesn't go down. That would involve focusing on someone else's pleasure. Plus, who in their right mind would ever let his mouth near their genitals?
Yes. I and I comprehend enough to note that I read one of the dumbest claims I've had to read so far. Considering that our local wind wizard, angelosphere, recently decided to claim that nuclear is suitable for peaking, that's quite a stretch too. Because he went full retard as usual.
And you managed to outdo him, with your claim that the "only" HVDC deployment issues are about regulation, rather than costs. Those things are extremely expensive to deploy, and that has nothing to do with regulations, and everything to do with technological complexity of any such deployment.
Regulatory challenges may be significant on some small part of the planet. Overall, their problem, especially in Germany which desperately needs them to ship Baltic offshore wind energy to industrial centres in Bavaria is costs. Government is 100% behind this deployment, and has been ever since Energiewende started. But costs are simply too much even for German government to bear, so the roll out is slow as funding becomes available over time.
Why?
Coal is expensive, requiring hundreds of trillions in subsidies each year to be economic.
You could build a lot of solar for just one year's subsidies, at far better output per unit cost.
Why should we ask competitors to get an edge? Why not do so ourselves first and use that to force them to follow?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The IPCC is making objectively false claims about nuclear energy, and discouraging an effective and proven low carbon technology is inconsistent with their supposed goals. By adopting an ideological position, they call into question the credibility of their scientific claims as well, and risk damaging the cause. Pollution and environmental impact alone should be reason enough to phase out fossil fuels, but this lays a foundation for doubt of climate science, and an excuse for inaction. Similarly, advocates of renewables focus on promoting capacity and sales numbers, rather than energy produced and carbon abated, which are both small.
Attacking Nuclear As Dangerous, New IPCC Climate Change Report Promotes Land-Intensive Renewables
The costs are becoming competitive with other energy sources. The Netherlands already have a very dense transmission network so this is not that much of an issue. In the case of offshore wind, the government subsidized the transmission line to 4 huge new wind parks, but the parks themselves will receive zero subsidies: a first. And there were plenty of bidders for them.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
AC are a problem on slashdot. Didn't know there's a problem with Anonymous Cowards all over Asia.
aaaaaaa
Retrofit a coal plant into a nuke plant ? Yeah right.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
aaaaaaa
Germany outsources a lot of hydrodynamic storage to Norway.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And I've heard that we'll have a power plant running on unicorn farts in 10 years. Seems like a more realistic solution to me.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Baseload is a concept that exists only because of coal power plants (and later nukes) that cannot follow load (well, French nuclear power plants sort of can, but that makes them quite inefficient and somewhat unreliable, with an availability of 70% or so). Without these the whole base load concept will cease to exist.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Can not happen since too many ppl consider it ok for 3rd world and China, to add new coal plants. China is ADDing, not just replacing, more new coal to China alone, than the America has by 2030. And they are adding to china/3rd world more than the entire west has has. U less we stop adding new coal, we lose. BTW, replacing old coal with new coal plants that burn less coal or new Nat gas plants, work as well. Ideally, we would replace with AE along with nukes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
U have it backkwards. Baseload came about because it was observed that we have a floor amount of electricity that is used. As such, it became cheap to design, add, and run 'baseload' power plants. And it still remains the cheapest to do so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
You know BlindSeer, every time I read your posts I think "that BS is amazing".
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Oops, here's the link: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de...
Here's a link that speaks to that
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12o...
In a nutshell, absent extreme temps in either direction, today's panels degrade very, very little over 20 years.
At or near the equator, UV will kill them at about 1-2% a year.
In very cold wet climates, snowload and wind degrade them about the same.
That doesn't make them a panacea of course. Non-distributability is the main problem. A tough not to crack.
When I hiked across the northern UK in 2014, the insanity of substituting small renewables for baseload sources of power was never more apparent.
Every small village we passed through in Cumbria and Yorkshire was fighting its own NIMBY battle over its installation of two or three wind turbines. Many of the villages being in designated national parkland made the NIMBY problem worse still. At Drax in Yorkshire, the world's largest coal generating plant had just been converted, with great fanfare, to burn wood. Same vast clouds of smoke as before, only a little less carbon, but the conversion technically made Drax a renewable facility under EU standards. Hut Yorkshire doesn't have any wood, it having been logged clear centuries ago. So the wood is imported from the southern US in a fleet of diesel freighters, all so that Drax could make an empty claim of being a renewable.
Our hike started at a point near Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing facility on the Irish Sea. The UK could have avoided the whole renewables mess by adding a few gigawatts of generating capacity at that place where the nuclear bullet had already been bitten. No need for wind turbines scattered all over the pristine viewshed, no need to have the old coal plant burn wood to make it a fake renewable. The footprint of nuclear is so small that it disappears into the landscape.
The same sort of unimaginative, bean-counting fuckheads at TEPCO were responsible for Fukushima Daiichi.
Correction: its lack of safety...
The media induces panics all the time. Remember in 2011 they scaremongered about nuclear power? Germany got rid of its nuclear plants and is digging for coal. The media induced a panic about DDT and millions have died of malaria as a result. Fear mongering is standard practice for the media and they won't stop because they don't bear the costs of their malfeasance.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It works great. They have fifth largest installed capacity on the planet. So not sure why "it is too cloudy" means it doesn't work well. Are you not supposed to install solar if you get clouds in your country? I wasn't aware.
Coal is expensive, requiring hundreds of trillions in subsidies each year to be economic.
This is pretty silly, jd. Where did you get such a crazy number?
Look up the global GDP and you will realize why it makes no sense.
the pv panel life is around 25 years
And my butter needs to be refrigerated immediately. Just because it says so on the package doesn't make it true. There have been case studies where they bought up used solar panels that had in active use for 20 years only to find out 80%+ of the solar cells were still over 95% of their original rated power output. From what I've read, this is the rule, not the exception.
What does make things a misleading is that solar panels are only as strong as the weakest cell in the series group. A single poorly performing cell can cause the rest of the panel perform poorly. Just find and replace the bad cell and back to brand-new.
Don't throw out your panels, refurbish them.
Not really. Baseload came about because coal power plants could not follow the load - it took hours to alter a coal power plant output so if possible it was always running at whatever output it was designed for. Since coal power plants have been the most common power plants for over a century, all electrical power infrastructure is built around them and their limitations.
In other words, if the most common power plant type is only able to provide a constant output, it is inevitable that the electical power generation is split into base and peak load power plants.
In countries that get their electricity mostly from hydroelectric power, that can easily follow the load, this discussion doesn't even exist.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Reminds me of electric car batteries. "You will need to buy a new battery every 3 years!" they said, ignoring he 8 year warranty...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
China and India are still busily building new coal plants
China and India are building new coal plants to meet rapidly growing demand for power.
According to the article, this is in the process of changing because solar is becoming the lower cost alternative.
Wow, it seems like some people want to mod down viable solutions to climate change. What is wrong with converting decommissioned Nuclear reactors to Gas?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If you want to reduce coal consumption, the best, most cost effective, and politically acceptable solution, is better ACs.
ACs are about as good as they can get right now, especially in developing countries. ...
But the increasing demand can only be accounted for by new AC installations. Anything old would be existing and already part of the load prior to the increase in demand that's prompting new powerplant construction.
Actually, since electrical power from solar arrays is becoming extremely low cost during the daytime, replacing air conditioning would be a great way to reduce carbon footprint, if you run it only during the daytime.
Turns out that thermal storage is relatively simple in the range of temperatures used by air conditioning: water has an enormous heat capacity, and is cheap. Cool the water during the day, use the stored thermal mass to cool during the night.
(And water has significantly more thermal capacity if you use the phase change to ice.)
This does, however, only make sense if you have either time-dependent electrical rate (if electricity isn't cheaper during the day, no incentive to buy a thermal-storage Air Conditioner), or else your residence/office building is cooling with its own solar panels.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We were smarter in the 1950's
IQ-wise, no question.
Turns out not. IQ-wise, we are much smarter now. They have to continuously recalibrate IQ tests to keep the average at 100. (Google the Flynn Effect)
Coal is used for many reasons. Look at Germany: it is turning to coal from nuclear. Do you think this report is going to have Germany do an about-face on closing its nuclear plants by 2022? I don't. For some countries, coal is a secure source of power. They do have coal and they do not have natural gas, for example. The technology for obtaining coal is low and practical for many developing and undeveloped countries. Non-hydro renewables and nuclear are not. Also, non-hydro renewables are not 24/7 power, and the grid needs that.
Coal is estimated by the International Energy Agency to shrink 0.1% a year through 2050. So yeah, it is trending down, but not by an amount that means anything. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a...
1) Contraction - globally environments are in a phase of reduction
2) Impact - edge conditions are the first responders stripping models through innovation
3) Stress - thrashes modes of use down to survival conditions
4) Failure - Law of Diminishing Returns for those caught in the crux
It not only spells doom for big UTILITIES but general everyday work that impacts jobs, change to part-time gig work who feel the thrash; which tolls will be taken in the future. Innovation doesn't lead people out of the crux
The media induces panics all the time. Remember in 2011 they scaremongered about nuclear power? Germany got rid of its nuclear plants and is digging for coal. The media induced a panic about DDT and millions have died of malaria as a result. Fear mongering is standard practice for the media and they won't stop because they don't bear the costs of their malfeasance.
Umm, what panic? Is panic some dog whistle for "I do not like this news, so we must suppress it"?
First, your desire apparently needed classifying Fukushima images and reporting as top secret. Deal with it, not many people are going to see reactor buildings blowing up and think - I want one of those in my town. And DDT is not some sort of majick gift from God. It is a pesticide, and as such, suffers from the same problems of resistance as other pesticides. And while you are lamenting the "millions" of dark skinned people who died because of the media (care for giving the citations presenting the evidence of multiple millions dead because of removing DDT?)
Here's some reading material https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It is just another pesticide, and mosquitos were turning resistant to it in the mid 1950's.
But I mean it's the fucking media, amirite?
Any panic is on your end, for reading things that don't fit your narrative and that you want censored.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Fukushima-Daiishi induced a panic about nuclear power in 2011, not the media. Or are you suggesting the media should have not covered the event?
Nuclear power is in decline because of economics. In most of the world, combined cycle natural gas power plants have had better economics than nuclear for some time. More recently, the same can be said of solar and wind. In the US, nuclear is particularly expensive, mostly because of corruption in the industry and regulatory bodies. Corruption goes hand-in-hand with large centralized projects, whether it is power generation or software development.
The media induced a panic about DDT
In all fairness though. DDT is a horrible chemical and shouldn't be used in places where people or animals are expected to exists in. I get your point though, people's knee jerks can bring about the end of something before a useful alternative is found. But to be devil's advocate, companies don't seem to ever want to find/use a useful alternative by themselves. It always seems like to get change to happen, it's always got to be this nanny nagging "oh no the world will end" kind of style. That's not true everywhere, granted, but for a lot of industries it doesn't seem like they want to advance until they're forced to do so. Especially in the coal industry.
This is pretty silly, jd. Where did you get such a crazy number?
Perhaps it's an estimated cost to clean up the pollution from coal power. However, that cost is actually infinite, since coal plants are distributing radioactive isotopes and soot across the planet and we physically can't clean that up. Therefore, coal is effectively receiving $INFINITY in subsidies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hydro is pot luck. You either have it, in which case you can use it to follow load, or you don't, and your options (assuming you require them to be zero or low carbon) are to use sources that are not quite dispatchable.
So the hierarchy in terms of convenience is:
- Dispatchable (hydro, battery storage, gas turbine)
- Base load (coal, nuclear)
- Intermittent (solar and wind)
It's a lot easier to use baseload + batteries/pumped hydro to achieve dispatchability than to combine an intermittent source with storage as you can't be sure how much you might need to store on account of not being able to rely on any "baseload" generation.
China's coal consumption appears to be rising at a rapid rate in 2018, erasing several years of low growth and environmental restraint.
In the first five months of the year, China used 870 million metric tons of "thermal" coal, a 12-percent increase from a year earlier, the government's top planning agency said on June 21.
Until China quits ADDING new coal plants and refrains from using more coal, it will only go up.
The entire west, will not burn 12% less. America MIGHT burn 12% less coal (though trump is trying to reverse that), but I doubt it. We still have more coal plants to shut down first. The biggest is the navajo plant. Once that is shut down, it will drop America's coal use down some 1-2%.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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).
Energy policy in the US is preventing more widespread adoption of alternative energy sources, period.
1. Less than one percent of US energy is produced by oil, so while "oil company executives making energy policy" is an accurate statement, it is somewhat misleading when it comes to how US politics is influenced by the energy sector.
2. Thirty-two percent of energy production in the US is powered by natural gas. Another thirty percent is powered by coal. Yes, US energy policy at the national level is being set by an ex-petroleum industry person, but at the state and city level, energy policy is being influenced primarily by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is a conservative political action group that focuses on getting legislation passed at the local level.
3. ALEC was created by Charles and David Koch decades ago, and is steadily funded by them and other conservative business people. The Koch brothers derive most of their wealth from --- you guessed it -- coal and natural gas. ALEC-backed legislation has killed or severely curtailed alternative energy initiatives in dozens of states and municipalities. For what it's worth, right here in sunny Az, a Koch-backed trio of people on the Az corporation commission effectively killed private roof-top solar in Arizona by drastically altering the rates at which Arizona utilities would pay for energy placed back on the grid by private citizens, going from full retail to less than half of wholesale. New roof-top solar installations by private citizens went from over 40 a month to zero that same month, April 2015.
All politics is local, and the Koch brothers know this. That is why they pour millions and millions of their private wealth into ALEC -- to get legislation passed locally that protects their business interests nationally.
Wind and solar are intermitant. You have to build coal and nuclear plants that you can bring online in cases of emergency. As battey technolgy improves those plants will be needed less and less but you still need them available and ready at the flick of a switch.
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.
On Wikipedia, this kind of begging prose is shot down in flames with one short word and four brace characters. For all its problems, what a godsend.
That's why you go to science. In the case of CFC's, it was predictable in the 80's that without an outright ban we would no longer have an ozone layer. It's predictable that without a ban on DDT birds like the bald eagle would be severely threatened or extinct. There's a prevailing hypothesis out there that generations of leaded gasoline plus the availability of drugs lead to the crime waves of the 1980's. But it wasn't media-induced panic over lead in gasoline that removed it. It was ground level ozone from smog that was making people sick. Catalytic converters removed the smog provided the gasoline was unleaded. It is observable that ground level ozone levels have decreased sharply since the introduction of the catalytic converter, and anyone with two eyes can see there is less smog.
One can easily prove that nuclear power can be dangerous scientifically. Placing a nuclear power plant next to the ocean in an earthquake-prone zone with backup diesel generators in the basement had very predictable results. Coal is filthy and has a major health impact, but when it goes wrong it doesn't prevent habitation for hundreds or thousands of years. Building nuclear power plants in any area of population density is a bad idea. And it has to stay that way for decades, which requires stable political leadership regarding denying building permits. This is a very hard thing to accomplish given the greedy corrupt nature of politicians.
Scare mongering on DDT eh?
For my part I'd rather have Bald Eagles and Peregrine falcons these days and continue sending mosquito nets to areas where malaria is endemic. It's not a perfect solution, but things rarely are.
-Darkelf
It's cheaper, because coal is cheaper. They are designed to run all night, because their is demand all night and it's cheaper to build the plant that way.
You have no understanding. Just clueless. I've spent decades modeling the grid for a living. My software runs on dispatch floors, giving the grid operator short term forecasts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In practice, nukes that follow load have unreasonably high operation and maintenance costs.
It has been tried, but isn't at all desirable. Costs are already high, you want to divide them by the maximum total, not raise them by throttling the equipment.
Nukes are going to be priced out of the market soon enough.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is pretty silly, jd. Where did you get such a crazy number?
Perhaps it's an estimated cost to clean up the pollution from coal power. However, that cost is actually infinite, since coal plants are distributing radioactive isotopes and soot across the planet and we physically can't clean that up. Therefore, coal is effectively receiving $INFINITY in subsidies.
Estimated total cost isn't the same thing as annual subsidies.
Welfare costs ~$1T annually. The cost until the end of time is $INFINITY.
My German extended family covered their roofs with solar.
Not only because it is subsidized and it sort of makes financial sense, but because Russia was holding them hostage via their gas supply.
Some of them also converted their home heat to _wood_ for the same reason.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
thank you.
Sadly, Caffeinated Bacon/Crimson Tsunami just loves to troll here with loads of lies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you just remove all the massive systemic subsidies, quotas, tax exemptions, tax depreciation, and subsidies for fossil fuels, coal becomes outrageously expensive, even without having coal plants pay for the pollution (negative externalities) and deaths (kids) it causes.
Do that.
Renewables are already cheaper. It's 2018, not 1978.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Good point. Let's look at one example, the proposed LNG shipping terminal in BC, which literally:
1. pays zero carbon tax, while being the largest provincial GHG emitter.
2. pays no impact fees, while other energy sources have to pay them.
3. receives grants to hire workers in the north, an artificial subsidy for housing and pay that other energy sources don't get.
So, you are correct that natural gas shipped to China and India would be subsidized, just like coal is.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
The flaw in this is there aren't that many places where you can do pumped hydro easily. You need a mountain with two lakes on it or similar terrain where your upper reservoir would run through a narrow channel. There's not many places where you have close to that structure naturally that aren't already being used for hydro.
So, you either spend a fortune building it, or you spend that same fortune buying a giant battery facility with essentially the same capacity.
Anything projected as taking place after the current politicians are dead is propaganda, not just in China. See also: Banning IC cars etc.
As you say, in 30 years, they're 'worn out' anyhow. Optimistically, they will reuse the transmission line.
Over their life, for all thermal power but nukes, the cost of the plant is tiny (about 2%) vs the cost of the fuel.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm pro-nuclear, as long as it's done correctly. The problem is, overall, nuclear is not done correctly.
The only way that nuclear will ever work is if the following problems are solved:
1. Construction and adoption headwinds and legal challenges. Good luck with that.
2. Massively improved oversight and management that positively disallows the kind of corner cutting and reactive-rather-than-proactive safety issues we've seen in the current history of nuclear power. And I'm not just talking about Fukushima - there's plenty of minor issues to point to with aging nuclear plants. Just for one example, as I can actually cite sources unlike your post: Vermont Yankee having a cooling tower collapse from corroded bolts and rotted lumber, as well as several groundwater tritium leaks that went on for months with denial of any contaminated or leaking pipes. Things like this only reinforce public sentiment against nuclear power (problem #1), and work against the nuclear industry's long-term viability in favor of short-term stop-loss corporate horseshit.
3. Disposition and disposal of waste products. You vaguely dismiss this issue with some odd and completely unsubstantiated claims including a citation of NASA that has no backing or reference whatsoever. The reality is this: the United States has no commercial waste reprocessing facilities at all, and it would take massive infrastructure spend to get them, which won't happen until #1 is solved. It's a shame too, as upwards of 95% of "spent" fuel is actually still useable fuel, mixed with neutron-absorbing waste that prevents reaction. However, any reprocessing activity is using essentially the same techniques as extraction of weapons materials, so it must be closely monitored and has been banned in the US due to "leadership by example" in the very noble efforts to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation. In addition, even though Federal law requires it under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the US Government has not been able to provide a repository for the nuclear waste from commercial reactors due to intractable political concerns (See: problem #1). Therefore any new reactors we cannot build today (again, #1) will necessarily also be places to store and secure highly radioactive material (causing part of problem #2), substantially adding to both construction costs, operational expense (leading to the corner-cutting in problem #2), and political ill-will (yet again, #1).
4. Decommissioning of aging, obsolete, and borderline-dangerous designs. The United States has 100 or so commercial reactors running right now, producing ~20% of the energy on the grid. Many of those are 1950s and 60s designs, built in the 1960s and 70s, license-uprated in the 1980s, and license-extended in the 2000s because we're not replacing them, and can't afford to do without them. These aging reactors are running longer, and harder than they were originally designed to, and they won't last forever; the longer they operate the more chance there is of failure. Plus, they still have to store all the spent fuel on-site for the extended operation due to license extension (contributing to problem #3). It would be great to replace them with something much better designed and more efficient, but it's hard to put any trust in the current designs when the nuclear industry has such a history replete with lies and exaggerations about safety, costs, and operational lifespan (problem #2). Oh, and there's still problem #1 preventing any construction of replacement infrastructure.
Fix those completely insurmountable issues (get the public to change their collective mind all of a sudden, cause the commercial nuclear industry and the US Government to start being responsible actors all of a sudden, and then wish into existence hundreds of billions of dollars of reprocessing infrastructure and waste internment sites) and I guess we're good to go?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Umm, shifting from a power source that produces ZERO greenhouse gasses to one that produces any amount greater than zero (and Gas power plants are only good in comparison to coal, really) doesn't actually move you toward a "greener" future. It's a step backwards to go from nuclear power (zero carbon emissions) to NatGas (non-zero carbon emissions - note that for every 16kg of NatGas burned, you get 44kg of CO2)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The flaw in this is there aren't that many places where you can do pumped hydro easily.
I didn't say it was easy, but easier. If that's hard with nuclear, then it is even harder with wind and solar etc. You definitely need storage with the intermittent generation sources, and you don't have the luxury of certainty (to a point) of availability of energy, therefore you need more of it.
Not really. Baseload came about because coal power plants could not follow the load - it took hours to alter a coal power plant output so if possible it was always running at whatever output it was designed for. Since coal power plants have been the most common power plants for over a century, all electrical power infrastructure is built around them and their limitations.
That's not really true. Coal power plants can ramp load relatively quickly, generally around 1-2% of capacity per minute. Aside from slightly increased maintenance costs, they can easily run at 25-30% at night and ramp up in the morning. The issue is that they can't be started and stopped easily.
Nuclear power plants are a different story. They do have strict operating limitations, but the driving factor is economic- they have large fixed costs, but very low fuel or variable operation costs. Therefore it doesn't make sense for them to operate at less than 100% power, since it costs approximately the same.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
That's the most succinct explanation I have seen of why coal and nuclear power deserve subsidies, or at least equal footing with subsidized renewables. Otherwise "the market" will choose whatever is cheapest, which may not necessarily be whatever is best for grid stability.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
*slaps forehead*
Are you people so dogmatically idealistic you cannot see the word DECOMMISSIONED?
Reactors don't run forever, they have a service life. Take Fukushima for example, that was near the end of its service life. That is when nuclear reactors are at their most dangerous because the S class facilities are all neutron embrittled. That's when steel cracks and breaks apart and creates a nuclear accident. We can't afford any more nuclear accidents.
However the turbine and grid infrastructure is still serviceable and is a perfect candidate for conversion to natural gas. I'm not saying it's an ideal solution, I'm saying not to waste what is there and provide an income to the utilities that will handle the decommissioning of the reactor.
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Clearly nuclear power advocates are all out of ideas when it comes to nuclear power.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
My German extended family covered their roofs with solar.
Not only because it is subsidized and it sort of makes financial sense, but because Russia was holding them hostage via their gas supply.
Some of them also converted their home heat to _wood_ for the same reason.
Technically renewable and carbon neutral! Just don't ask about the particulates. You would probably be surprised to know how common wood heating is in some northern rural areas of the US. My family burned between 6 and 8 cords (21-29m^3) of wood per winter when I was growing up. We would get truck-length logs, cut, split, throw them through one of the basement windows, and stack up the wood inside. There is nothing as glorious as setting the thermostat at 80F when it is -20F outside and not worrying about the fuel cost.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
China is actively researching and developing pebble bed nuclear power generation technology, and their plan is to design their future pebble-bed nuclear power plant modules that is smaller than the space provided by (decommissioned) coal power plants
Pebble bed reactors have been proven unreliable for a few reasons. The first is the graphite fuel balls cannot be reliably manufactured to consistent sizes. The second is the fuel balls get jammed in the reactor and nothing can get them to move after that.
The third is the graphite moderator tends to catch fire and we all know how that went down for Chernobyl.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Mr AC, PBMR reactors are unreliable technology. If German engineering couldn't get them to work how do you expect Chinese engineering to get them to work?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The media induces panics all the time. Remember in 2011 they scaremongered about nuclear power?
You mean when the Fukushima reactors blew up, that was really elaborate scaremongering.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm late to this thread so you probably won't read this reply but the entire idea of base load is going to shift.
When the National electricity regulators and courts upheld the ability of companies to pay for load shifting about 6 years ago it caused a fundamental shift in electricity markets. There are now multiple companies in every jurisdiction paying companies to turn off electricity during peak demand and to spin up demand when there is excess electricity. The result of all this is the idea of base load goes out the window. When renewable sources of electricity are streaming into the grid these companies encourage high power use industries to spin up and use this power and cheaper rates and when those sources shut off (clouds, wind stops, whatever) they pay those companies to stop using power.
In the end what happens is that rather than the base load concept the demand curve warps to fit the supply curve and you no longer need a "base load" that's providing more power than you need at night and less power than you need during the day. Demand scales with supply in this new model and the power markets are changing dramatically.
I should note this scares the bejessus out of the power companies (They fought the national regulation allowing demand tuning to the supreme court) because this has the potential to completely shave off the peak power prices and level power prices throughout the day. These peak power rates in the mid afternoon are where power companies make the majority of their unregulated profits on business power sales. Without the peak and trough power pricing of "base load" pricing they run the risk of significant drops in their unregulated profits. But ultimately that is a good thing for all buyers of power, and it's very good for renewables.
So 75% of the world needs to pollute less than 15% of the world, because reasons - you even listening to yourself? It's per capita or nothing, toolbag. Otherwise the Vatican, population one thousand, is free to pollute as much as much as the United States, population 320+ million.
Yes. I and I comprehend enough to note that I read one of the dumbest claims I've had to read so far.
That's funny, why don't you go hit up the current environmental impact assessments regarding various deployments of HVDC stations in Europe. You'll find them on say wikipedia, through secondary links. When you read them, and get back to me. You should figure out where the dumbest claim is coming from, and it's not from the person that knows what they're talking about.
A HVDC costs around 30% more then a HVAC system, but has lower overall costs and recoups the 30% cost within the first 5 years in most cases. A government can be 100% behind something and be 100% stymied by regulations, courts, and court challenges. There's actually one case right now with a planned deployment, and people arguing that EM radiation from it will cause cancer 70km away.
Om, nomnomnom...
Putting the risk of meltdowns aside entirely, nuclear power is unjustifiable based on cost alone. It costs too damn much and time to build, too damn much to maintain and operate, and too damn much to deal with the waste for tens of thousands of years. When other power sources can be rolled in in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost, with none of the risk or long long LONG term storage problems....why even.
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Careful bringing facts into the debate. It won't go well.
http://gridwatch.co.uk/
Look at the hourly average. Basically, for the UK, 20GW is more or less the minimum which can be matched by baseload generation. It will pretty much never go below 19.
Thermal storage using water is big and expensive
Half right. It is big, but it is not expensive. Turns out water is cheap.
and results in more energy usage, not less.
Slightly more; depending on exactly how you use it. It can actually be more efficient, if the air conditioning peak is spread out over a longer time, or less efficient if you're narrowing it down over a shorter time span. Not actually a big effect, though.
It does offset the afternoon peak demand in exchange for more energy consumption at night, which saves money by increasing the use factor for those big, base-load power plants.
That's also a possible use for thermal storage, yes. Different from the one I mentioned. That application is one of the cases where the thermal storage approach is actually more efficient than using air conditioning when you need it (by running at night, you reject heat at lower temperature.) But, again, the difference is in most cases small.
Unfortunately, that is just the opposite of what you want if you're generating with photovoltaics.
No, it's exactly the same: you run when energy is cheap, instead of when energy is expensive. The time of day that energy is cheap will depend on your energy source (9am to 3 pm for solar, midnight to 6am for coal), but the basic concept, that the price of energy depends on time of day, so you use thermal storage to use the cheap energy, is the same.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I didn't say it was easy, but easier
The entire point is it is not easier.
If that's hard with nuclear, then it is even harder with wind and solar etc.
You're talking about pumped hydro, not nuclear.
Also, placement of wind and solar plants is trivially easy.
You definitely need storage with the intermittent generation sources, and you don't have the luxury of certainty (to a point) of availability of energy, therefore you need more of it.
And pumped hydro is an expensive and difficult way to get that storage.
Try and get a teanager to split wood these days.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Also nuclear produces greenhouse gases. During mining, during enrichment, during reactor construction.
Careful bringing facts into the debate. It won't go well.
Well TransAtomic's Wamsr reactors is not longer listed as a solution on the US govt's egeneration site so I don't know what these nuclear idealists think they are going to do now that the only Gen IV reactor proposed for NRC approval is not going to be available. Oh well there goes that idea.
I suppose they're waiting for some magic thinking to save us.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
As I said: your information is completely outdated.
Feed in Tariffs are very low at the moment, and get reduced by 0.5cent per year.
Solar panels still have an efficiency of 80% after 30 years. Again: your information is minimum 30 to 40 years outdated.
Good luck on the warranty, since those companies have long since gone out of business too. ... americans ....
Unlikely. And it would not matter anyway as they pay into the warranty fond/insurance and some other company fixes the problem. Sigh
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What are you on about?
The original statement I made was:
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.
I used pumped hydro as an example of a technology you might use to store excess energy generated using nuclear, hence the like before the pumped hydro in that statement. You could use batteries, for example, or any other storage scheme with nuclear if you wanted to do load following.
The point was that with nuclear (or other baseload), it is mostly a question of shifting demand within the day provided you are generating enough energy to meet daily demand. With wind energy, for example, you can't even guarantee enough generation on a daily basis, and so you need more storage, potentially to last days, rather than hours. The storage demands will be much greater - maybe even an order of magnitude greater.
Don't believe me, well let's find some data shall we - http://gridwatch.co.uk/?
Can you see that hourly average (last month) chart? See how it varies from day to day, by a factor of greater than 5 (by eye). That's for the whole of the UK. On some days, wind will produce less than 10% of nameplate capacity, heck even 5%. If you want to rely on that, you need serious storage because there are going to be days when a 20GW installed capacity that produces 8GW on average will produce less than 1GW, and there is nothing you can do about it.
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm against their stupid nuclear ideology which prevents any useful progress on anything. They say "Nuclear is perfect and solar/wind/geothermal isn't good enough" and neither is true.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm against their stupid nuclear ideology which prevents any useful progress on anything. They say "Nuclear is perfect and solar/wind/geothermal isn't good enough" and neither is true.
Indeed, and we most likely need a mix of sources to cope with things such as risk, investment issues, weaponisation and uranium supplies with nuclear, and managing intermittency and scale of renewables.
No idea ...
No idea where you got this "controlling wind" meme from.
But in case you mean "my winds", I control them pretty good and most of the time only release them when I'm alone or on the toilet. That is actually not very hard, troll.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If your aim is to get rid of fossil fuels, then you want to get rid of gas plants.
And if we need to provide both storage and fossil fuel backup for wind, then maybe we might want to rethink how costly wind actually is.