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More Than 40 Percent of World Coal Plants Are Unprofitable, Says Report (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: More than 40 percent of the world's coal plants are operating at a loss due to high fuel costs and that proportion could to rise to nearly 75 percent by 2040, a report by environmental think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Friday. London-based Carbon Tracker analyzed the profitability of 6,685 coal plants around the world, representing 95 percent of operating capacity and 90 percent of capacity under construction. It found that 42 percent of global coal capacity is already unprofitable. From 2019 onwards, it expects falling renewable energy costs, air pollution regulations and carbon pricing to result in further cost pressures and make around 72 percent of the fleet cashflow negative by 2040. In addition, by 2030, new wind and solar will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96 percent of today's existing and planned coal plants, the report said.
They wouldnt/couldnt continue operating at a loss...that premise is ridiculous.
Not if there's a government propping them up, because, "jobs".
No sig today...
Ah, the first random brainfart that entered the tiny mind of an internet dweeb. Yes, I'm sure it does. Detailed studies tend to account for far more than your feels.
However, I was impressed by raising the base load myth without saying it directly. The problem with your idea is that existing non-renewable sources are already variable and unreliable, so the grid is already designed to cope with it. Even more hilariously, coal power plants are incredibly inflexible compared to wind and solar. Coal power plants can take up to 8 hours to reach peak operation from a warm start, and have suffer from large cycle stress that reduces their lifetime considerably. They are, ironically, fossils of a bygone era.
Hopefully this will lead to increased adoption of cleaner power production - that is not so bad for the environment.
I am not saying that all clean power is cheaper but the more of it that gets used the cheaper that it will become.
Coal isn't being "sabotaged" by regulations. The environmental costs are being incorporated into its usage. And coal does get a lot of subsidies, from mining, usage, and disposal.
And coal plant designs are of a long gone era. Even the latest approved nuclear plants are 2-3 core design versions past current operations. This isn't true for coal. Of course renewables are all new. The only thing as old as coal is hydro.
Utilities are one of the most regulated and subsidized industries in the world. Additionally, in some places, generating capacity is government-owned, and public enterprises frequently operate at a loss. So the real question is: how much of all generating capacity is unprofitable?
Coal will die, but saying that plants are currently unprofitable isn't necessarily an indication of anything. It needs to be compared on a relative basis to alternatives.
The stated source is "a report by environmental think-tank Carbon Tracker". So people whose full-time job is literally energy propaganda.
In other news, Coke tastes bad, according to a report by Pepsi. Linux sucks, according to Microsoft
The only thing suprising here is how many Slahdotters let BeauHD get away with posting this crap.
It is propaganda. Notice how they mention "regulations and carbon pricing," and you must also be aware that "renewable" energies are often heavily subsidized. You can make anything unprofitable with enough government interference in the free market.
Love sees no species.
Along with deaths from respiratory disease! Yay!
The original post says nothing about relaxing emissions of anything but CO2, so you are wrong nobody's lungs would be harmed by this. The original post was right, the problem with coal has been the artificial raising of their fuel costs, specifically tied to CO2 emissions.
Artificial? Since when does burning coal causes no CO2 emissions? Perhaps we should also start taxing those mountain hating coal mining companies for the toxic runoff from their mines that ruins the land of people down hill from their strip mining operation? ... and if you think that toxic runoff is some kind of 'artificial construct' like CO2 emissions I can introduce you to some very angry Appalachian Hillbillies who are ready willing and able to let you bathe in a pond of your choosing full of toxic coal mine runoff.
And how! Not too far away from me is land that was destroyed by coal mining, and before the companies had to restore the land.
I've thought of having tours of the area to show off what has been done. And as a twist, play down he obvious environmental impact, and play up the money lost.
Streams - once highly profitable tourist fishing destinations with almost no cost of doing business, and with high earning tourists who fish and stay in hotels and eat in restaurants. Millions lost every year (adjusted for inflation)
Deforestation. The trees - if any grow after the area is strip mined - are worthless. Usless for providing profit and jobs for logging. Untold millions lost.
Real Estate. The highwalls and tailing piles look like Mars, and are a profit opportunity lost. The modern trend of building communities 10 -15 miles out of town isn't going to work. The land is destroyed,
I reckon I'll have the human Ferengi bawling like babies in no time.
That's only slightly tongue in cheek. How we could ever allow one group - the mining interests, to permanently destroy land that could be useful for many purposes both profitable, providing entertainment, and ecologically sustaining is so short sighted.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Coal isn't being "sabotaged" by regulations. A tiny portion of the environmental costs are being incorporated into its usage."
There, FTFY. Coal would have been gone long since if it had to pay anything like its full costs... which are arguably infinite, since we literally can't clean up after it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not saying it doesn't mean their findings shouldn't be looked at more closely since they clearly have an agenda. But it's in line with the coal plant closings we're seeing. Can you site a study where coal plants _are_ profitable in aggregate?
/. is just an excuse to talk about a trend that seems pretty obvious. If Coal wasn't losing ground Trump wouldn't have been able to capitalize on out of work miners. The market would have those folks well employed.
Put another way, here's the left wing bastion of Forbes discussion the same thing.
Posting this particular study on
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How we could ever allow one group - the mining interests, to permanently destroy land that could be useful for many purposes both profitable, providing entertainment, and ecologically sustaining is so short sighted.
This is the sort of thing I'm referring to when I say "Capitalism gone bad".
Capitalism without any sort or moral structure destroys itself.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.