Slashdot Mirror
New Mexico the Most Coal-Heavy State To Pledge 100 Percent Carbon-Free Energy By 2045 (arstechnica.com)
New Mexico's state House of Representatives passed the "Energy Transition Act" on Tuesday, where it's expected to be signed quickly by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. The bill "commits the state to getting 100 percent of its energy from carbon-free sources by 2045," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The bill includes interim goals mandating that 50 percent of the state's energy mix be renewable by 2030 and 80 percent of the energy mix be renewable by 2040. The state currently buys no nuclear power, which is not renewable but qualifies as a zero-carbon energy source. The bill passed yesterday does not require that 100 percent of the state's energy be renewable by 2045; it just specifies that no electricity come from a carbon-emitting source.
New Mexico is unique among these states because it is a relatively coal-heavy state, generating 1.5 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity as of November 2018. Last month, the state's Public Service Company of New Mexico had slated its 847MW San Juan coal plant for shut down by 2022, but a New York hedge fund called Acme Equities swooped in with an offer to buy the 46-year-old plant. According to Power Magazine, Acme intends to retrofit the plant with carbon capture and sequestration technology. If the deal goes through, Acme would use the captured carbon in enhanced oil recovery, where carbon is forced into older or weak oil wells to improve the pressure of the well and extract more oil. But with the passage of this bill, Acme's offer may not stand. New Mexico In Depth writes that the bill puts "$30 million toward the clean-up of the [San Juan] coal-fired power plant and the mine that supplies it and $40 million toward economic diversification efforts in that corner of the state and support for affected power plant employees and miners."
New Mexico is unique among these states because it is a relatively coal-heavy state, generating 1.5 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity as of November 2018. Last month, the state's Public Service Company of New Mexico had slated its 847MW San Juan coal plant for shut down by 2022, but a New York hedge fund called Acme Equities swooped in with an offer to buy the 46-year-old plant. According to Power Magazine, Acme intends to retrofit the plant with carbon capture and sequestration technology. If the deal goes through, Acme would use the captured carbon in enhanced oil recovery, where carbon is forced into older or weak oil wells to improve the pressure of the well and extract more oil. But with the passage of this bill, Acme's offer may not stand. New Mexico In Depth writes that the bill puts "$30 million toward the clean-up of the [San Juan] coal-fired power plant and the mine that supplies it and $40 million toward economic diversification efforts in that corner of the state and support for affected power plant employees and miners."
Thank God for coal. Something that made us a 1st world nation and took us out of poverty. Very sad to hear that you don't understand history. You're very cozy and extraordinary way of life you can owe all to fossil fuels. Standards of living, life expectancy all went up because of fossil fuels.
The USA grew to a great exporting nation with lots of low cost 24/7 electrical power.
The new jobs and work moved many into the middle glass.
Gentrification and better education for all. Winning.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Two, perhaps 3 nuclear power plants should be able to replace their coal fired plants. Coal and oil are going to be too valuable as feedstocks for chemical processes to just burn the stuff.
I used to live in New Mexico. Lovely place, but not terribly wealthy, which makes me wonder when I see legislation like this. If you read it, much of the legislation is about handing out money to various parties: incentives, but also reparations to plants and workers that will have to close. Bet: these handouts will be exploited to suck on the public teat.
That aside, here's the core message:
"...'renewable energy resource' means electric or useful thermal energy:
So it's the usual greenie idiocy: spend other people's money on a pipe dream. Solar, of course, would be great in the high desert - except for the minor little problem that the sun doesn't shine at night. None of the named technologies can possibly produce enough power 24/7, except possibly razing and burning the forests.
They could take a lesson from parts of Australia or Germany that have already made the same damned mistake: They wind up giving their solar power away, when they have too much of it. At night, or when it's cloudy, they have to import power, sometimes at outrageous prices.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Of course, someone else has discounted that, but as noted there is more than just electricity driving reduction in poverty. https://www.forbes.com/sites/u...
Did you read that article? They hooked up a couple of huts to a grid then measured those families 18 months later. But that's a fundamentally dishonest way to measure it. Having reliable electricity allows for heavy industry to exist. It reduces spoilage of food stuffs. And it has a fundamental impact upon an economy. These things can't be measured marginally like the authors of your study assume. A few more huts having electricity doesn't fundamentally change the businesses that are now possible. It doesn't change how the central market stores produce. It doesn't change individual outcomes inside of a society, it changes the entire society fundamentally and so marginal expansion of a grid doesn't show the same impacts as initial introduction of reliable electricity.
One of the reasons fools on youtube rail against science is fundamentally dishonest studies like this one that are clearly politically motivated to find a specific outcome to support some ideologue's ideas about how the world works. Cheap energy is the single best way we have to lift people out of poverty. That goes entirely counter to the environmental movement's ideas about increasing energy costs to encourage efficiency. Sorry if this little inconvenient fact gets in the way of the image environmentalist want to project about their movement but reality doesn't respond to spin.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."