U.S. Will Not Provide Financing For New International Coal-Fired Power Plants 329
Dorianny writes "The Treasury Department declared it would no longer support any new coal-fired power plants around the world. By leading a coalition of like-minded countries including several European ones that have already announced similar intentions, they will effectively be able to block the World Bank and other international development banks from providing financing for new coal-fired plants. The policy is unlikely to amount to any real change as 75 percent of proposed coal-powered plants are in China and India, which do not rely on outside financing. It seems to me that the poorest, most underdeveloped nations that contribute the least to global emissions are the ones getting the short end of the stick from this policy."
Re:FTFY (Score:2, Interesting)
Why would the U.S. want to finance potential competitors?
Re:FTFY (Score:5, Interesting)
Coal isn't the smartest tech to develop in the truly undeveloped areas anyway. Cost per kilowatt calculations in the first world assume that a high-voltage grid is already in place. Even with a high-voltage grid in place, solar and wind are close to parity with coal in many parts of the first world now. Lacking the high-voltage distribution, localized solar and wind - and biomass in some places - are overall at the advantage, because they can be used closer to where they're generated. Nobody puts a small coal-powered generator in their backyard, or next to their factory or hospital. On the other hand I have friends with solar in their backyard, and they live normal American lives with it, firing up gas generators only a few dark winter days a year. Most of the third world doesn't have dark winter days.
Re:FTFY (Score:2, Interesting)
"Now 22, Kamkwamba wants to build windmills across Malawi and perhaps beyond. Next summer he also plans to construct a drilling machine to bore 40-meter holes for water and pumps. His aim is to help Africans become self-sufficient and resolve their problems without reliance on foreign aid."
Where is his nobel peace prize? Seriously this is the kind of thing Africa just needs a few hundred more of, since in the history of "financial aid" no nation has ever scraped out of poverty by getting deep into debt (don't try to use Indonesia as an example).
Re:FTFY (Score:2, Interesting)
Coal is by far cheapest and most economical however, and modern coal doesn't even pollute. Modern coal burning process in new power plants alone removes most of the nasties like NOx and SO2 emissions and modern filters can eliminate particle exhaust by turning it into ash which can be kept out of atmosphere.
Comparable gas fired plants are much more expensive, nuclear requires extreme investment and country that is politically and geologically stable, hydro requires appropriate geography, oil is less expensive than gas but has problems with price fluctuations and the so called "green power" is prohibitively expensive. Just ask germans, who are among the richest people on the planet and they are reeling from costs to the point where they have a concept of "power poverty" in Germany now.
That is why in spite of lack of subsidies, growing economies build mostly coal. It's cheap, it's reliable and if they bothered to build modern stations instead of rushing, they'd be pretty clean too just like new ones in the West are. It's the uncomfortable reality that after you take away the fluff, coal is likely going to remain the overall best power generation technology for at least another century, or at least until we manage to invent something completely new. Because none of the current technologies can match coal. Which is why it's still being built.
If it weren't for CO2 problem, modern coal burning would be among the greenest ways to generate power. In fact, it could be argued that most of the particle pollution and NOx/SO2 problems currently experienced in China and India would be fixed by transitioning crappy basic coal plants that these countries are full of and replacing them with modern coal plants.
It's not that engineers want to build coal. It's that in developing nations (and in many cases developed nations) often there's simply no real other choice.
Re:FTFY (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:FTFY (Score:5, Interesting)
Coal is by far cheapest and most economical however,
This is simply not true [wikipedia.org]. Not only is it untrue, but solar/wind will be much cheaper than coal in just a few years. The technology is really moving that fast.
Re: Carbon is carbon (Score:3, Interesting)
I loved this idea so much I had to find it, took one google image search:
http://twentytwowords.com/2011/06/21/cavemen-and-the-problem-with-living-organically/ [twentytwowords.com]
Of course there is a great comment by "Jeff" if you scroll down a bit on that page:
So save that comic for the next time you want to blow an evolutionary biologists top off :)