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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."
The summary states $40 million has been allowed to help coal workers and other residents of the norther corner of the state - but will that really be enough to help them Native American communities that suffer from coal plant shutdowns? (html links for text don't seem to be working, check out https://www.abqjournal.com/121... for details).
It sure seems like the offer to buy the plat and retrofit it with scrubbers and recapturing technology was a win-win that should have been lauded as a green solution that also helped the residents of that part of the state.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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"
Never mind that the modern renewables are already cheaper than coal. Coal's days are done.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
... and we think this is somehow a wonderful thing. *SMH*
mnem
"Clean Coal" is, and always has been, a fucking lie.
https://justoneminute.typepad....
“A committed, lifelong Green pounds the table for nuclear power. People familiar with the baseload problem and the unreliable nature of wind and solar won’t find the plot surprising, but the detailed studies of California’s seasonal use and generation from wind and solar were new to me.”
Yea too bad we never invented a way of storing surplus electricity for later use. /sarcasm
they heat their homes 3 weeks out of the year. I don't think you've ever lived in the American Southwest.
And RTFS, all they have to do it have no carbon emissions. There are Zero emission gas plants. That's half the reason coal is dead. Gas is cheaper and cleaner. Clean coal doesn't work because coal is dirty as F.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That's actually one of the main reasons why coal mines are closing if not the only reason. Coal is worthless now. It costs more to dig it up than it's good for on the market. Just like US Canadian tar sands shale oil.
Yep. Economics is keeping it in the ground more than any other factor by far. I don't know how it's possible that you would have any opinion on the matter and not know this basic shit, weird.
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.
Thank goodness for diapers. Something that conveniently held our piss and shit in when we were all babies and incontinent. Very sad that you've turned your back on diapers in favor of something new, different, and arguably more sanitary. Anyone in the world who ever shit in a diaper but now uses a toilet is a hypocrite and has zero credibility not only on where to shit, but every other conceivable topic as well. I'll excuse you while you make your daily remittance to your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents and on down the line because without them you wouldn't have your current standard of life.
I on the other had will use the best options available to me today.
Anyone who has driven across New Mexico in an East-West direction would notice that there are persistent strong winds that blow through the state's prairies and passes. New Mexico is the home of a lot of Department of Energy talent who I am sure have also noticed this. With the ever-decreasing costs of building giant wind turbines, the only major challenge is to develop a smart electrical grid to efficiently deliver and store the fluctuating surplus energy to provide a 24/7 smooth supply. Photovoltaic electricity, which is also getting cheaper than carbon, is also a major positive consideration for a state that has an abundance of sunshine.
AC local battery storage capacity is a new cost to be passed on. More money to pay.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
New Mexico is right next to Texas, the Great Plains, and has good solar. New Mexico could join Texas' big wind powered grid, and throw on some solar. So, getting a good amount of renewable power is not prohibitively expensive. Now, going COMPLETELY renewable, will be expensive.
That's a silly question. The wind is always blowing somewhere.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Actually Coal Ash aka Fly Ash is used in cement production so most of it is not in land fill as are many other byproduct of coal power
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Yea too bad we never invented a way of storing surplus electricity for later use. /sarcasm
To those who read energy-related news (no offense intended to those that don't), this is an exciting time for the prospects of electrical energy generation and storage. Wind turbines, photovoltaics (residential and large-scale industrial), solar steam plants, molten salt heat storage, ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies, decentralization . . . It's a time in which it only makes economic sense to dispense with old and adopt the new.
I believe you mean "whale oil". Also note that major health problem skyrocketed because of fossil fuels. Of course other health problems went down because of better medicine, and that has the major effect on life expectancy.
Wind turbines, photovoltaics (residential and large-scale industrial), solar steam plants, molten salt heat storage, ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies, decentralization . . . It's a time in which it only makes economic sense to dispense with old and adopt the new.
Wind turbines when the wind speed is productive.
Photovoltaics when the sun is out.
Molten salt heat storage works until the molten part cools and gets stuck.
Ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies is still too expensive.
Someone is going to have to pay for all the new.
Low cost 24/7 power is what the USA needs.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Almost the entirety of coal mined in New Mexico is exported to other states and countries. New Mexico does not need coal for energy, what it is losing by getting rid of coal are royalties given to the state. Now it may be argued whether giving up the royalties is good or bad, but that's a better argument than lying about skyrocketing energy costs.
New Mexico already does not use the coal it mines, almost all of it is exported.
Pumped hydro would be great. Wonder why that's not an option?
Whats missing from more pumped hydro?
The pump part?
The water part?
How much baseline energy can the US get from pumped hydro?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Plus it's so done. I'm looking forward to mod my car to start Rollin' Nuclear.
Sure some are taking their time, however IMO there certainly seems correlation between the 2.
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/ucenergy/2018/03/09/does-providing-electricity-to-the-poor-reduce-poverty-research-suggests-not-quite/#38144646e39b
You might be skeptical about this, but right now new privately owned plants based on renewables are showing up everywhere as replacements for decommissioning coal plants, so commercially the figures must make sense. A search showed one in my neighbourhood I hadn't heard of at all, coincidentally the same capacity as what's coal fired in New Mexico:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/02/22/1-5-gw-solar-500-mwh-battery-project-breaks-ground-in-australia/
In actual-reality America the vast, vast mass of toxic fly ash sits unused in huge piles alongside rivers and other waterways, and has contaminated the groundwater of all 48 lower states. https://www.grandforksherald.com/business/energy-and-mining/4583002-report-unsafe-levels-coal-ash-contamination-found-north-dakota
Battery storage currently adds about $0.07/kWh, and should drop by half or better in the next 15 years as cell cost and cycle life improve. When you add grid benefits, the consumer cost can be substantially lower as it offsets transmission premiums.
In actual-reality America the vast, vast mass of toxic fly ash sits unused in huge piles alongside rivers and other waterways, and has contaminated the groundwater of all 48 lower states. https://www.grandforksherald.c...
Well that comes down to regulations and enforcement of those regulations however when it comes to climate change https://www.carbonbrief.org/ma... paints an interesting picture. Instead of complaining about the converted western countries who are clearly closing plants to their own economic detriment to appease the climate change brigade. Why don't those same people go protest in countries who are building more coal fired plants and tell them what they are doing is bad for the planet. And note:- those countries have far fewer regulations and even less enforcement than the EU and US and other western nations. Just wait till that catches up with the planet.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Yea, but it's a minor initial buy-in for a long-term savings that makes mathematical sense even aside from the whole saving the environment thing.
Plus, it creates jobs... actually a lot more jobs than the coal mine and power plants they shut down.
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.
Never mind that the modern renewables are already cheaper than coal. Coal's days are done.
We stop the subsidies then
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
I'm interested in this idea that Acme was going to fit CCS tech. I thought it had never been commercialised?
Two, perhaps 3 nuclear power plants should be able to replace their coal fired plants.
I'm in no way anti-nuclear and its not as if NM is a stranger to uh nukes, but its got vast amounts of empty space and vast amounts of sunshine. Its pretty much the ideal place for solar.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm guessing you don't do NPV calculations for a living...
I'll bite.
How much lower lifetime CO2 emission than coal of natural gas must a generation source emit to qualify as low carbon?
GRID-TIED infrastructure NM needs deal with Colo and a neighbor to the west Ariz. R.E.C. guys are the long lead items on that timeline. Population centers are few, easy, low hanging fruit and far between is the R.E.C. task of getting that tied affordably. Affordability in NM approaches -$0.00- once in the pucker brush, washes and arroyo's.
Well their goal is zero carbon, so it's more a question of how much can they capture. If they capture 1kg of CO2 somewhere they can then emit 1kg of CO2 somewhere else and it's net zero.
Obviously the more CO2 they emit generating electricity the more they need to capture elsewhere. So it makes sense to pick low emission technology for generation because then it's easier to get to net zero.
Nuclear can be fairly low, but only in the absolute best case for fuelling it and dealing with the waste. In practice it's not great, and spending the money to get it down to that best case doesn't make sense given the alternatives.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Any country with a liberal enough government reduces poverty significantly when electricity penetration is high.
I can't argue with your hollow generalized generalization because I have no idea whether you're using the traditional definition of "liberal" (i.e. a modern, enlightened humanist who's against feudalism and monarchy) or the virtually opposite Jeffersonian/Hamiltonian definition (an authoritarian Tory determined to prevent the decentralization of power).
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.
My residential retail cost TOTAL (including all fees, etc) for electricity is currently only about $0.162/kW-hr. An increase of $0.07/kW-hr would be a 50% increase in my energy prices.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
OK. I'll bite again.
5 kg of uranium contains enough energy for one (American) person's lifetime on average. It also costs about $200 per kg, so you need about $1,000 worth of uranium to power an energy hungry American lifestyle for a lifetime.
$1,000 buys about 1,000 litres of petrol (gasoline for you Americans) I reckon. 1,000 litres of petrol produces about 2,300kg of CO2 (or 2.3 metric tonnes of CO2).
The per capita CO2 emissions for the average American is 15.53 metric tonnes per year.
So, assuming that all of the cost of mining uranium is all expended in the burning of petrol then it follows if you incur a CO2 cost of (much less than) 15% of one year's worth of the average American's output in mining uranium, you will be able to provide that American with enough energy for a lifetime.
Assuming the average American lives 80 years, then switching to an all nuclear future will reduce carbon emissions by more than 99% - 15% / 80 is less than 1%.
Therefore, I think it follows that nuclear is a low carbon solution (unless in your book, a 99% reduction in CO2 doesn't qualify as low carbon).
Oh, and even the IPCC has published figures suggesting my less than 1% is broadly right - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
QED
The link - it is right there - shows you than nuclear is pretty much the lowest energy source (next to onshore wind). Solar is, on average (or median) about 4 times more CO2 emissions on a lifecycle basis.
Yes, solar doesn't need any fuel, but solar panels also don't grow on trees.
Bottom line is nuclear is lower CO2 than solar!
And here I though I was replying to a response to my initial post (in which I did not bring up solar by the way).
The point I was making, and the point I originally made, was that nuclear is low carbon. Heck, the link I provided (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC,_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources) shows it is indeed close to the lowest carbon source of energy, and that solar produces 4 times as much CO2 on average, when lifetime emissions are taken into account.
And yes, I also consider solar to be low carbon too if you are asking.
And of course the average American CO2 output is kinda relevant since the US produces about a sixth of global CO2 emissions!
Typical idiotic AC post, but I'll answer anyway. Of course Germany overproduces power - in the summer, on sunny days. Sun produces solar power, news at 11:00.
The problem comes on cloudy days in January, when Germany is importing power from all over Europe to power their industry. Nuclear in France? Check. Coal in Eastern Europe? Check.
Dunno where you get the idea that Germany makes money doing this, because they don't. There's a reason that German household power prices are around $0.30 / kwh. What do you pay?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
YOU brought up how low CO2 production must be to be low carbon to someone who said that nuclear wasn't really an option for NM because it's not that low.
Now we are getting somewhere. For the bit in bold, I disagree. Nuclear IS that low. It is very low indeed, close to the lowest CO2 generating source out there. SO your claim is demonstrably false, as per IPCC data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC,_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources).
If you are claiming otherwise, then show us the data / information.
Not to be a contrarian, but I am not sure that any of the "renewable" mechanisms you list are really going to be cost effective for heating my house when it drops down to 10 degrees Fahrenheit or less which is fairly common in northern locales. I get it that I could probably "invest" thousands of dollars on a monthly basis to do so, but I am sure that my home operating budget would flatline -- besides which I prefer my $200 a month heating bill in the winter...
He's actually more correct than not. Sherman's March did raze large sections of the south. The South was in economic ruins and the plantation owners were also in ruins. Slavery was paid for in blood and treasure. Jim Crow, you can argue was not. But then, the whole idea behind the Great Society rhetoric which expanded welfare and the like in the 1960s, was to jump-start black economic progress.
It didn't work out that way did it? And yet trillions were spent.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Power plants going off for maintenance is par for the course and is generally planned. This is generally scheduled for when demand is low, or no other plants are being take offline for maintenance.
Unplanned shutdowns are a bit trickier, but it's not like nuclear (or coal) power plants are networked such that one going off affects the rest. Besides, in the US, there are 60 odd nuclear power plants. If one suddenly went offline in an unplanned way, that is less than 2% capacity (give or take) disappearing without notice. Not ideal, but very manageable. Heck, if 10% of the capacity disappeared, that would still be manageable - maybe painful.
With wind, for example, it is not unheard of for plants to be running at less than 10% of their nameplate capacity over a decent period of time over a fairly large region (such as the UK). You can see some charts at http://gridwatch.co.uk/ and the data for the UK is available at bmreports.com - if you are so inclined, you can download and play with it. The data basically shows inverted demand between CCGT and wind because CCGT has to pick up the slack whenever wind is down. Heck, even coal has had to pick up the slack for wind at times.
And have a look at how consistent the nuclear supply is there too! I don't think we should be worrying about incredibly low probability events like multiple unconnected nuclear power plants all getting into issues at the same time, while dismissing the very real and present challenges that variability of sources like wind present right now.
Solar panels are incredibly toxic to make
Bullshit.
and have horrible efficiency
They have the HIGHEST efficiency in converting sunlight - the primary source of energy for all electricity generation that isn't nuclear, tidal or geothermal (with the latter two being negligible contributors to anything on Earth at the moment) - compared to any other pathway through which sunlight ever became electricity, be it wind, oil, gas or coal.
They never pay off the emissions
They do, in a year or so.
a d toxic chemicals required to make them
That's not even a thing for them.
let alone anything beyond that, before needing to be replaced
They last 25 years or more without any problems.
Ezekiel 23:20
Not to be contrarian but:
If it only gets down to +10F in the winter time, you're not very far north. Maybe consider insulating your house better? I pay half that with electric heat, and my parents running propane pay ~$400 for the entire winter...in a location that frequently gets down to -40F in the winter.
Since there is always a demand for coal *somewhere*, miners will likely find buyers in adjacent states and send their coal trains on slightly longer paths to their destination. The net amount of pollution remains relatively static in this case.
Ultimately, the only real solution IMHO is to develop alternative energy sources that are economically cheaper than coal, making mining unnecessary in any part of the world.
When you factor in battery costs, and renewable maintenance (replacing those old wind turbines and solar cells that require massive reliable power to fabricate)
The generators are cheap even accounting for lifetime costs.
Battery costs will be a non-issue if BEVs spread due to the synergistic effect of renewable generation growth and BEV fleet growth. Massive amounts of load can be shifted to or from BEV charging almost instantly, so lots of BEVs allow for greater renewable generation deployment, and conversely, lots of renewable generators ensure that there's extra electricity available for lots of BEVs, which will standing around most of the time anyway like almost all cars.
Germany and other countries/states have shown, those with the highest percent of renewables have the highest power costs.
Or, it's the other way round and countries with high electricity costs turn to renewables in order to lower power costs in the future. Germany just had a "bump" problem in the sense that it was the first one to do it on such a scale that early costs bit them, but that's a 2010 thing, not a 2020 thing.
Ezekiel 23:20
New Mexico will just unplug California.
Have gnu, will travel.
Both are cheaper than any new renewable installations.
Not anymore.
Ezekiel 23:20
They have lots of empty space for building antenna arrays. They should look at space based solar power.
For a house built in the 60's in upstate New York, it has typical insulation properties (i.e. 4 inch thick stud cavities already filled with fiberglass (figure R-13) and same in attic augmented by an additional 4-6 inches of blown in cellulose insulation. Energy prices in New York tend to be above average, but if my annual heating bills run approximately $1000, in a house we might stay in for another 10 years, how does one justify the investment/ROI? There are ways to augment the majority of the insulation (i.e. the walls), but none if it will be very inexpensive, and will certainly not add much re-sale value (i.e. if I double the insulation values and lower my annual heating cost to $500 per annum, then over 10 years I will have saved a total of $5,000). There is no way I could double my insulation values for anywhere close to that amount of money (nor would a potential buyer value the improvements in a way to justify the investment). Most business look for ROI's of 3-5 years for capital investments (some longer based on the improvements), but even us poor schlubs look for an ROI of 10 years with 15 and 20 being on the absolute outside edge -- and their is no way I could double the insulation on a 2,500 square foot 2 story home for a mere $5,000 or $10,000...
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."
My actual costs:
Typically industrial solar capacity is quoted at $0.035/kW-hr, so that would at most reduce the capacity and non-capacity charges by at most about $0.04. And solar has no fuel... so that would eliminate a whopping $0.002/kW-hr from my bill (fossil fuels are cheap! that is part of the problem).
Ok, so maybe batteries at $0.07/kW-hr would only increase my bill $0.03/kW-hr, but that's still a 25% increase.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
He's actually more correct than not. Sherman's March did raze large sections of the south. The South was in economic ruins and the plantation owners were also in ruins. Slavery was paid for in blood and treasure. Jim Crow, you can argue was not. But then, the whole idea behind the Great Society rhetoric which expanded welfare and the like in the 1960s, was to jump-start black economic progress. It didn't work out that way did it? And yet trillions were spent.
Actually, from the 1960s to the 1980s, approximately half of all African-Americans moved from lower class to middle class. The great society was actually hugely successful. But then in the early 1980's Reagon cut all of those programs and that progress halted and even reversed. Its likely that we have much larger bills for policing and social services today because we cut those programs in the 1980s. But do go on repeating what Rush or whatever AM talk radio personality you got that from.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Solar uses no fuel.
So it is zero emissions.
Yes, solar is zero emissions, IF you completely ignore all the emissions producing solar panels.
Nuclear is also zero emissions - "burning" uranium does not produce CO2.
I choose not to ignore that bit, because, well, I don't like to be ignorant of facts I guess. But the facts are, solar is NOT lower CO2 than nuclear, unless you choose a measure that is misleading.
Let me put it another way. I could choose, at the outset, to mine all the materials I need (iron, rare earth metals, uranium etc) that I will need over a 60 year operational lifetime of a nuclear power plants*, put them in a pile and use them as i need them i.e. use the building materials at the outset, and the uranium as and when needed. I could then claim that nuclear is CO2 free because it will not produce any CO2 in operation. And it still comes out better than solar if I do this (from a pure CO2 emission perspective). The bottom line is nuclear power requires less CO2 over its lifetime than solar and that is all that should matter.
I don't know why this fact threatens your view. This isn't to say NM or anyone else should go for nuclear. But that arguing against nuclear for CO2 reasons is misleading and wrong when compared to the alternatives. There are many valid reasons to oppose nuclear, but CO2 emissions is not one of them.
* I obviously wouldn't buy 60 year's worth of fuel at the outset because it is completely unnecessary to do so, but as a thought experiment, it is a valid way of looking at things.
"$40 million toward economic diversification efforts in that corner of the state and support for affected power plant employees and miners."
That's going to be awfully short for helping the displaced.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Strange definitions as here a Tory is opposite a Liberal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
and have horrible efficiency
They have the HIGHEST efficiency in converting sunlight - the primary source of energy for all electricity generation that isn't nuclear, tidal or geothermal (with the latter two being negligible contributors to anything on Earth at the moment) - compared to any other pathway through which sunlight ever became electricity, be it wind, oil, gas or coal.
They never pay off the emissions
They do, in a year or so.
a d toxic chemicals required to make them
That's not even a thing for them.
The problem with solar is similar to the problem for most energy sources and that is low energy density. Solar at large scale requires lots of land. And while some PV cells are made with toxic materials, others are made with much less environmental impact. The problem is they are also lower efficiencies. Solar is great for small amounts of power which are far from generation sources. Its just not a useful energy source for large scale grid applications. Also, your definition of generation capacity used by solar advocates is what we call "nameplate capacity". Its the max amount of power produced per unit time at ideal conditions (when the sun is shining). But in reality, you only get about 10% of that from solar. So even if you ignore the generation problem, to install enough solar to supply a significant amount of grid load you are using absurd amounts of land. As in more land than food production currently uses. Solar is nice and makes folks feel good but it does nothing to dent our CO2 production. Without nuclear, nothing does. Its the only source that has high enough energy density to replace the bulk of fossil fuels.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
While you're correct that energy equals wealth, so does things like clean air, clean water and a stable environment.
These have to be balanced and if the cheap power is subsidized by dirty air etc, the power isn't really cheap.
I think the environmentalists are trying to balance these things in general. Of course capitalism leads to things like Exon funding Greenpeace to protect their business model. Can't have cheap nukes can we.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The generators are cheap even accounting for lifetime costs.
Battery costs will be a non-issue if BEVs spread due to the synergistic effect of renewable generation growth and BEV fleet growth. Massive amounts of load can be shifted to or from BEV charging almost instantly, so lots of BEVs allow for greater renewable generation deployment, and conversely, lots of renewable generators ensure that there's extra electricity available for lots of BEVs, which will standing around most of the time anyway like almost all cars.
This old one again. Look, its not possible to make enough Li-ion batteries (or batteries of any type) to back up a grid for even a day. Your solution is off by about a factor of 100x in terms of being about to do what you claim.
Germany and other countries/states have shown, those with the highest percent of renewables have the highest power costs.
Or, it's the other way round and countries with high electricity costs turn to renewables in order to lower power costs in the future. Germany just had a "bump" problem in the sense that it was the first one to do it on such a scale that early costs bit them, but that's a 2010 thing, not a 2020 thing.
Germany has higher energy costs because of renewables. They had lower costs in 2010. Then they installed a lot of renewables (from 2010-now) and now they have higher costs. Also, more CO2 output because of all the natural gas they burn to backup their wind. But don't let facts get in your unicorn's way.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Wind turbines, photovoltaics (residential and large-scale industrial), solar steam plants, molten salt heat storage, ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies, decentralization . . . It's a time in which it only makes economic sense to dispense with old and adopt the new. Wind turbines when the wind speed is productive. Photovoltaics when the sun is out. Molten salt heat storage works until the molten part cools and gets stuck. Ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies is still too expensive. Someone is going to have to pay for all the new. Low cost 24/7 power is what the USA needs.
Add all of those up, even without considering cost and only limiting with issues like world-wide mining production of various raw materials and you still won't even replace 10% of our current power production. Scale matters. Energy density matters. When PG&E says they will get 50% of their power from renewables, they are calculating nameplate capacity only. At 50% nameplate capacity, only 5% of the power generated will actually be from renewables with the rest coming from fossil fuels and nuclear. Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism. You need at least 80 hours worth to backup a grid, otherwise you are always spinning natural gas as a backup. Keep pumping up those unicorns though, laws of physics be damned...
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Nuclear power plants are not getting built because the cost/benefits are not there -- otherwise you'd see more than just the Georgia plant going up that is 3x what they projected to build it for.
I'm not an expert, but I do believe that MOST of the products of oil are put to use right now except for Benzene, which we have too much of but is put in gas as a good way to get rid of it (and we tolerate this, apparently). I don't think those plastics, or fertilizers are going to need the gasoline products -- so, those by-products are just going to get more expensive as the use for the gasoline fuel goes down (and, not an expert, but that's probably the most expensive and profit-making part). Thus, I'm betting gasoline will get cheaper as electric cars get more numerous, and Jet Fuel (kerosene) will get cheaper but plastics and such more expensive as now they are the principle profit source.
Anyway, solar and wind are just going to become more and more economical and we will probably solve the storage issue. Right now there's a solar panel that produces hydrogen -- you could have both on a rooftop and the hydrogen is used as a way to store energy when the wind and sun aren't producing any.
If we acted like our lives depended on it - we could really get carbon neutral in 20 years -- if we had the can-do attitude that took us to the moon or the Manhattan project that is.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
What storage? The only storage methods we currently have with the potential for more than an hour or so are pumped hydro which isn't scaleable and thermal which only helps with heating and requires massive investments in district heating. We need reliable backup, batteries ain't it.
If building more wind&solar was cheaper than fueling a coal power plant, then they could make power cheaper right now. For now you have to pay for both the coal&gas power plants backup and the wind&solar, the combination is more expensive than just running the backup full time.
One of the fatal flaws about conservatives is they usually believe the answers are simple.
...and then proceeds to lay out a system that he believes is simple, except ignoring all the complexities.
Have you not heard ANYTHING about that Green New Deal the leftists are pushing? It has the same fatal flaw that you have presented here. A simple solution where we cede control to people that know better, so that they can make decisions for us.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
There is more than one type of solar, you know. In the case of New Mexico, there is no reason not to use thermal solar. In this case, the "panels" could be nothing more than polished sheets of aluminum that all focus the sunlight on a central point.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The problem with solar is similar to the problem for most energy sources and that is low energy density. Solar at large scale requires lots of land.
I take it you've never driven through New Mexico. The problem with New Mexico is that it is a lot of empty land, that rarely has cloud cover.
And while some PV cells are made with toxic materials, others are made with much less environmental impact. The problem is they are also lower efficiencies.
So? Don't use PV. Thermal solar is much cheaper at grid scale and has the capacity to inherently store energy (through underground liquified salts).
Solar is great for small amounts of power which are far from generation sources. Its just not a useful energy source for large scale grid applications.
My local power company would like to see your analysis, since they've been working on different numbers and quietly building out large PV farms. Considering that thermal solar is even cheaper than PV, my thinking is that they're telling everybody else that it isn't worthwhile to invest in home solar while they build out their own infrastructure.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
+1
Which is the only reason the politicals are making up their laws. They're just trying to stay ahead of the parades so that they can keep calling themselves the leader.
If ANY of the 50 united states should be leading in the solar revolution, it should be New Mexico (and it would be a head-to-head race with Arizona and eastern Texas).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Use solar thermal to liquify salts (or some other chemical) and store it underground. You can then have a HUGE power reserve. If you need more reserve, just dig another hole and put a tank in it. There are options other than PV.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism.
Interesting. I'd like to see some numbers on that. What is it that limits the size of an underground holding tank?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
If you're watching the energy market, you would see that they ARE trampling each other. There are solar panel shortages. What is happening is that the "greedy companies" are slurping up the subsidies that were put in place while the panels were more expensive. Now they are getting the benefits of subsidies AND an economically viable solar solution.
More corporate welfare. This time from the left.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Cool. Then why bother fighting tooth and nail trying to kill coal off, when you can lay back, relax and watch economy do the dirty (or clean in this case) work for you?
Because, due to the falling curve of renewable prices, it will soon replace everything else without ANY intervention. The political class can't take credit and claim they invented it if that happens. They MUST pass a pointless law legislating the inevitable BEFORE the inevitable happens.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
No.
There should be a move to the government owning and controlling the transmission lines, the allowing anyone to produce and sell electricity in the same way that anyone can start a trucking company.
At that point, you'll see which technology is truly viable.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism.
Interesting. I'd like to see some numbers on that. What is it that limits the size of an underground holding tank?
Doesn't matter. Its a limitation of the molten salt material itself. Any size will have a max limit of about 6 hours with current technology. It has nothing to do with the size/scale of the salt loop. Perhaps it will get better in the future but the limitation is quality of insulation and that's unlikely to radically improve.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
This old one again. Look, its not possible to make enough Li-ion batteries (or batteries of any type) to back up a grid for even a day. Your solution is off by about a factor of 100x in terms of being about to do what you claim.
A straw man. I never said that (that this was a "solution" "to back up a grid for even a day"), even though there are reasons to believe that you're completely wrong about that, too. Why do you believe that it is impossible to manufacture 7 kWh of batteries per citizen of Earth? And why that random "100x" factor, of all things?
Germany has higher energy costs because of renewables. They had lower costs in 2010.
Lots of countries had lower costs in 2010, for reasons having nothing to do with renewables.
Then they installed a lot of renewables (from 2010-now) and now they have higher costs.
Setting aside post hoc ergo propter hoc, any extra costs Germany incurred specifically in the renewable generation field around 2010 or so are the results of the feed in tariff rate subsidies that were fixed for the installations at that time. These were high initially because of the discrepancy between renewable generation equipment available at that time and the bulk electricity price at that time and were necessary to stimulate the market. One can perhaps argue whether they were set at levels that would minimize long-term costs to the state and maximize the value thus obtained, but in any case, as the costs of the former went down, so did the subsidies, now basically at zero levels. These are grandfathered for the old installations and effectively sunk costs. They can't possibly have rationally any bearing on your reasoning about why not to install new renewable generation equipment *today*. Yet for some reason you seem to be obsessed by them.
Also, more CO2 output because of all the natural gas they burn to backup their wind. But don't let facts get in your unicorn's way.
Ah, facts. Facts like these? The natural gas generation has increased since 2010 by...wait, minus 2 TWh? Oh, look, the CO2 output in the energy sector decreased between 2010 and 2017 as well. In fact, it went down from 356 to 313 Mt, even though generation increased from around 635 TWh to around 650 TWh. Wait...is that actually a 14% decrease of CO2 emissions per kWh? By space, how is it posssible? /s
Ezekiel 23:20
Solar is great for small amounts of power which are far from generation sources. Its just not a useful energy source for large scale grid applications.
My local power company would like to see your analysis, since they've been working on different numbers and quietly building out large PV farms. Considering that thermal solar is even cheaper than PV, my thinking is that they're telling everybody else that it isn't worthwhile to invest in home solar while they build out their own infrastructure.
Your local power company doesn't do this type of analysis. They build/buy what their regulators tell them to. Those regulators don't do analysis either, they answer to elected officials. Those elected officials don't do the analysis either unless their opposition does it, in which case they do it too but twist the numbers to say what they want. Ironically, the only folks to do these types of analysis work for banks which bet on these power companies and energy traders that bet on the price of energy in highly localized markets. They love solar but not for the reason you do. They love it because it makes the price of energy very volatile. That's good for them and bad for the rest of us. Of course, to do this type of analysis, all you need to know are the raw inputs to each type of energy source and then see what it would take to replace a good chunk of a major grid with new supply. At that point, the result of the analysis will come screaming out at you, either yes it scales (nuclear and fossil fuels) or no it doesn't (everything else).
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
30cent is greatly exaggerated. ...
And household power prices are dropping
Germany is a net exporter of power. They days we import more than we export are extremely rare.
Here you can play around: https://www.energy-charts.de/i...
The highest contribution to solar power btw. are cold sunny winter days, especially weekends when the industry is sleeping ... we had plenty of days were all our power was green.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism. You need at least 80 hours worth to backup a grid, ... why would anyone want 80h backup is beyond me.
Perhaps you want to look at a demand curve
When PG&E says they will get 50% of their power from renewables, they are calculating nameplate capacity only.
When a power company says it produces 50% of its power by renewables than it so. Perhaps they have twice or thrice the name plate capacity installed, what do YOU know?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How much baseline energy can the US get from pumped hydro?
ZERO. Pumped storage is not used for baseline^H^H^H^Hload ...perhaps you want to read up what base load means.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The problem with solar is similar to the problem for most energy sources and that is low energy density. Solar at large scale requires lots of land.
Fortunately we have lots of spaces that we don't know what better thing to do with them.
And while some PV cells are made with toxic materials, others are made with much less environmental impact.
Yes, CdTe panels contain cadmium. Yet they are mostly an American curiosity, courtesy of First Solar, and conventional crystalline silicone panel, which contain no toxic materials, constitute 95% of the current market. So I wouldn't worry about toxicity.
The problem is they are also lower efficiencies.
Efficiency is not a problem if you have space to waste, unless you're talking about cost efficiency. But we've already achieved grid parity in many places. So that should not be an issue anymore.
Solar is nice and makes folks feel good but it does nothing to dent our CO2 production.
It did almost nothing perhaps in Germany for the simple reason that the increase in renewable generation in Germany was only somewhat higher than the closures of nuclear power plants that were possible because of the renewable generation increase. But that is an outlier, and if you're claiming that a generator that has CO2 intensity of 50 g CO2/kWh (and *still* quickly declining) saves nothing over a coal plant with 1000 g CO2/kWh emitted, then I don't understand where is your extra 950 g CO2/kWh coming from.
Without nuclear, nothing does
Great. It would be awesome and I'd absolutely love it, if it weren't for the fact that the price for new nuclear generation is somewhere around 14 cents per kWh - which is around triple the price of new solar in Germany.
Ezekiel 23:20
Also, more CO2 output because of all the natural gas they burn to backup their wind.
Double wrong. Our CO2 output sank drastically.
There was a 1% raise from 2016 to 2017, or 2017 to 2018, I forgot: due to cold winters and more CO2 produced due to heating. Germany has not many gas plants anyway, so actually tripple wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Your $0.162 is likely made up of about $0.07 in energy costs and the remainder is distribution costs, based either on peak demand or bundled into energy cost depending on your tariff. What should happen is that the extra $0.07 helps to offset generation (solar/wind are about $0.04-5 currently, when available), and/or a transmission costs. It could potentially add up to $0.02 to your rate over time, but it just depends on your exact situation. (That extra is essentially providing increased availability, which you may or may not see value in.)
Sigh.
Solar is not zero emissions because it doesn't demand fuel any more than nuclear power. Solar panels require mined material as much as if not more than nuclear. The fact that with solar power you get to incur all your carbon costs at the outset is not an advantage.
To use an analogy, if I was buying a house and I had two options - pay for the house at the outset and pay X, or pay for the house in instalments and pay half as much. Your position is that the first option is better because it doesn't involve continuing instalments even though it is twice as expensive. I say that is a silly way to evaluate the options. In case this has gone over your head, the instalment represent the CO2 emissions in this scenario, and the house represents the power generation source.
Saying nuclear produces continuing emissions because you need fuel is intellectually dishonest or ignorant. In any case, I would put it to you that a nuclear power plant has a 60 year life while solar panels will need to be replaced after between 20-25 years. Therefore the solar solution will require additional emissions in the future to replace solar panels anyway.
In any case, the fixation on fuel is misguided. If we want to choose the option that puts less CO2 in the atmosphere between solar and nuclear, then the choice should be nuclear. The facts say so. The fact that the nuclear option emits the CO2 more slowly is actually a positive but you are trying hard to spin it as a negative. However, it appears that you have some alternative facts that you would like to lean on.
Counting the emissions during the production of the solar panel but ignoring the emissions of building the nuclear plant is dishonest. The construction of the nuclear plant requires a massive amount of concrete and steel, both of which output large values of CO2.
I am not doing that at all. The point I made was that the lifecycle emissions for a nuclear power plant were lower than for solar. The IPCC has figures suggesting that solar CO2 emissions on a lifecycle basis are 4 times higher than for nuclear - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
The claim that had been made was that because nuclear required refuelling, it would continue to produce CO2 because mining nuclear fuel produces CO2. I just countered that once we take everything in the round, nuclear still produces lower CO2. I also made the point that both are still low CO2 sources anyway, so both are good from a climate change perspective.
We need to quit emitting CO2.
What is not needed is to force our nation to use just wind/solar, which from a national security POV, that is a disaster in the making.
Nuclear fission (replaced by fusion in the future), Geo-thermal combined with wind, solar on rooftops, and storage, would be the best idea going.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
but understand that coal is now history. time to move on.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Never said " the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery" I said that large portions of the south was razed and that it was in economic ruins. And deservedly so.
What makes you want to dispute that?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Calm down dear!
If you dispute what the bloody IPCC says, then show us the data. I.e put up or shut up.
Oh, and here is yet another study showing similar results.
http://www.dae.nic.in/writerea...
Nuclear power produces lower emissions than solar. Again!
Every country has had a history of grinding poverty ... before it started massively exploiting fossil fuel.
Yeah, but what time in the US was before fossil fuel? Think you missed the point.