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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
Never mind that the modern renewables are already cheaper than coal. Coal's days are done.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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."
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.