74% of US Coal Plants Threatened by Renewables, But Emissions Continue To Rise (arstechnica.com)

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report this week saying that in 2018, "global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7 percent to 33 Gigatonnes." That's the most growth in emissions that the world has seen since 2013. From a report: Coal use contributed to a third of the total increase, mostly from new coal-fired power plants in China and India. This is worrisome because new coal plants have a lifespan of roughly 50 years. But the consequences of climate change are already upon us, and coal's hefty emissions profile compared to other energy sources means that, globally, carbon mitigation is going to be a lot more difficult to tackle than it may look from here in the US.

Even in the US, carbon emissions grew by 3.1 percent in 2018, according to the IEA. (This closely tracks estimates by the Rhodium Group, which released a preliminary report in January saying that US carbon emissions increased by 3.4 percent in 2018.) "By country, China, the United States, and India together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the rise in energy demand," Reuters wrote.

Comments

Ah must be all that

[ruddk]

Clean coal they are talking about. :’D

FUD stats...

[Dan East]

The lightweight article referred to above has links to a more thorough article that gets to the important details (https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2019/march/global-energy-demand-rose-by-23-in-2018-its-fastest-pace-in-the-last-decade.html)

The issue here is that the demand for electricity increased by a large percentage in the US, China and India. Obviously something has to ramp up to meet those demands. In the US that was primarily natural gas, the usage of which increased by 10% in 2018. China is using coal to meet their increased power demands.

So why is power consumption increasing? The article above said a significant portion was due to colder than normal winters and hotter than normal summers, thus requiring more power for heating and cooling. In the US petrochemical demand has increased due to trucking and industrial consumption. The economy is strong, growth is occurring, and that is fueled by energy.

So the FUD here is that "emissions continue to rise" is not due to a shift back to coal, but the use of fossil fuels to meet a quick increase in energy demands. Solar, nuclear, wind, etc, cannot ramp up nearly as fast as gas and coal, because those plants already have spare capacity to meet peak demands. If the higher rate consumption continues then renewable sources will continue to grow to reach at least their previous percentage share of power generation.

Re: Sounds like a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you gang up on 3rd world nations? These countries are just developing a middle class and billions of people are coming out of poverty. Its a shame you only look at it from a Western point of view.

The Dems aren't shooting for jobs

[rsilvergun]

shutting down coal plants. They're trying to replace the coal jobs via the Green New Deal. The "Green" part is incidental to the "New Deal" part. It's a jobs program to give a real answer to the question "What do we do with all these out of work coal miners in Ohio that swing presidential elections?". The answer is to give them jobs doing something we want done anyway (replacing old, dirty coal plants with wind and solar).

Re:The Dems aren't shooting for jobs

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Do you know how much work there is shutting down the coal mines safely? All those tilings left behind. Mine shafts to be systematically closed and sealed, lest some random soccer team gets lost in there. All those toxic ponds of pumped water to be safely disposed off. These are all green jobs. The coal companies posted bonds to do the clean up. Or have self bonded. There are just 50,000 coal workers left. And we need them. They are the only ones skilled enough, trained enough to do the job. None of the coal workers want their kids to get into coal mining. They really don't want the coal mines to operate in perpetuity. All they want is a honest job with honest pay till their retirement.

Orderly shutting down of coal mines would do the job, has the money for it. But you can trust Republicans to play up the emotions, steal all the bond money posted by the coal companies and leave the workers high and dry, and the taxpayers with the clean up bill.