74% of US Coal Plants Threatened by Renewables, But Emissions Continue To Rise (arstechnica.com) 169
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.
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.
Well yeah (Score:1)
You have to stop burning coal. You cant just use renewable zero emission energy AND still burn the coal and expect things to change
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You have to stop burning coal. You cant just use renewable zero emission energy AND still burn the coal and expect things to change
Think burning coal is bad?
Wait until legislation is passed, outlawing all the solar cells and windmills and designating them to be burned in coal plants. /s?
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You have to stop burning coal.
We also need to start treating CO2 as a global problem.
A solar panel in Arizona is going to offset half as much CO2 as a solar panel in Rajasthan.
We need to deploy renewables first where they will do the most good.
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Deploying solar PV in Arizona helps bring the cost of the tech down so that it is affordable in Rajasthan..
Re: Well yeah (Score:2)
Deploying solar PV in Arizona
Would that fall under the category of increasing supply or demand? Serious question; not trying to be snide or argumentative... still too sleepy for that.
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Well there isn't a supply bottleneck, so it would be demand.
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This growth in emissions is not about coal, which is simply not competitive in US right now due to shale revolution having made natgas almost free.
It's about the massive growth cycle US is in.
Ah must be all that (Score:4, Insightful)
Clean coal they are talking about. :’D
It's the oil crash (Score:1)
Seems pretty obvious to me. It's the crash in oil (as well as coal) that led to the increase in use. What else could have allowed people to start using 6-wheel diesel trucks as commuter cars? Cheaper cost of operation, of course. Some of these chest-beating wannabes are driving to their white-collar office jobs in 6-wheel diesel trucks, every day, as if it's normal. They've never towed a damn thing in their lives.
It was economics that led to the increase, and it will be economics that leads to the fallout.
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And for the record, I don't think it's fair to call her an idiot, even if she is played by one...
The Paris Accord Will Fix Everything (Score:1, Informative)
Just keep blaming Trump and ignore the fact that several countries who signed the Paris Accord, including China and India, have increased their use of coal.
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But...but...Orange Man Bad!
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Mueller will save you, I'm sure. Any day now.
You WindBourne or just a generic GOPer? (Score:1)
You clearly have no idea what the Paris Accord even was.
Sounds like a solution (Score:2)
If most of the coal-related emissions are coming from a couple countries, multiple countries should be able to gang up and apply sanctions against them until they fix the (now geographically localized) sources of the problems.
Re: Sounds like a solution (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re: Sounds like a solution (Score:1)
True. You have to make a middle class before you can exploit them and shove them back into poverty again.
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1st world is the US and allied nations mostly following capitalist economic policies
2nd world was the Soviet Union and other nations within it's sphere of influence, mostly following communist economic policies (China is more 2nd world than Any of the nations that made of the former Soviet Union are today).
3rd World are those nations outside the direct influence of eith
Re: Sounds like a solution (Score:5, Informative)
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 primary emitters are China, India, and the USA. While they all have wealth-distribution and other issues, I'd hardly call them third-world. All three are spacefaring. All three have high-quality universities whose graduates make an impact all over the globe. All three have considerable and unique contributions to world culture and knowledge.
Don't get me wrong, third-world nations should be given support. But you're making a mistake when you claim the OP wants to "gang up" on third-world nations. China, India, and the USA are the "couple counties" the OP suggest the rest of the world should "gang up" on.
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And two of them - India and China - together have something like seven times as many people as the United States. Which means they get to pollute more than the Unit
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Living in a remote area where you have NO electricity, no running water (and obviously) no car means your CO2 production is limited to burning wood. There are tens of millions of such people living in China today, in 2019. They want - and will get running water and electricity.
A frugal lifestyle (small apartment, bicycle to work, no A/C) etc... in the west produces many times the CO2. Case in point - your refridgerator, TV and internet.
Comparing per ca
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So you reinforce the point that the whining about pollution from China
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It's the Western fools that think we can reduce our standard of living to the point where there would be an environmental equilibrium that I'm ridiculing.
This is a technological problem more than it is a reduce consumption problem.
Solar (PV) and wind generated power is growing at an exponential rate. That needs to continue - that's what needs to be focused on.
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Do tell how you come to a global agreement on reducing CO2 pollution without setting an emissions standard?
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All three are spacefaring. All three have high-quality universities whose graduates make an impact all over the globe. All three have considerable and unique contributions to world culture and knowledge.
That would still be possible in a third world country.
When we think of a country as poor the case is usually that the poorest are on the verge of starvation.
That doesn't mean that the richest doesn't have plenty of resources and goes to good universities.
North Korea is dirt poor but the upper class still lives a life in luxury.
That is why we don't judge countries of how great their best and how rich their top are.
We judge them by how they treat their poorest.
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The only problem is that at least two of the countries (I don't know about India...) are led by "fuck you I do what I want" people, and have large military complexes.
So the best the rest of the world can do is implement trade sactions, and even then you're playing a game of chicken.
I'm so glad I'm not in politics cause I don't have the foggiest idea of what could be done.
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Even if you could somehow get enough countries to agree to impose sanctions against China to actually hurt the Chinese, you would never be able to convince the Chinese to move away from coal by a large enough amount to make a real difference to global emissions.
FUD stats... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [iea.org])
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.
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^ Is complete bullshit, you just have to invest in the infrastructure to comparable levels. https://www.clf.org/blog/doe-e... [clf.org]
Did you not read what I wrote? With the current state of things - the current infrastructure - gas power production can literally ramp up by pressing a couple buttons and telling the plant to produce more energy. The plants are not normally running at 100% capacity. Solar and wind already produce all they are capable of producing, and that is just pumped into the grid with hopes it can be used at that exact moment. "Ramping up" means literally building and installing new solar panels and wind turbines.
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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.
Demand increases because population continues to increase. But not by 10%. And the economy doesn't grow that fast. The hidden factor here is keeping the natural gas plants spinning to backup renewables. This isn't a 1 year trend. In CA, CO2 emissions have increased during the last decade, a period where we deployed a large amount of solar and wind. When you have intermittent power sources, you either need storage or you keep a running backup. For CA and most of the US, that's natural gas [youtube.com]. The large
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Perhaps you want to research how fast a gas turbine is spinning up.
Hint: no one keeps gas turbines as spinning reserves.
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Sure you do, you just define 'spinning reserve' as starting in under 2-5 minutes. Spinning, ready etc nomenclature changes world wide, even regionally (in the details) in the USA.
You have to be careful terms are explicitly defined when dealing with any sort of fuzzy foreigners.
Also note: Gas turbines do not like to spin up fast and cold. Pick one, they can do it, but it cuts a bunch off their lives.
What CTs mostly do is ramp, then come back down as the slower cheaper plants ramp. Some/many stay on du
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Also note: Gas turbines do not like to spin up fast and cold.
They do. They go from cold and zero to ~80% power in 30 seconds, and to 100% in less than 1 minute.
That is why I politely gave the hint to the parent: read it up.
Also your parent always wrong with his "back up myth" and "spinning reserves".
When you have enough renewables, then they are spread out as virtual power plants. E.g. a wind farm with 100 turbines is not 100 plants but one single virtual plant.
When you have a few dozens of those virtual pl
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you perfectly know how much power each of them will produce in the foreseeable future (next 15, next 30, next 120, next 240 minutes)
Wow, that is a lot of time to get your backup system up and running efficiently. /sarcasm
When you have enough renewables, then they are spread out as virtual power plants. E.g. a wind farm with 100 turbines is not 100 plants but one single virtual plant. When you have a few dozens of those virtual plants you perfectly know how much power each of them will produce in the foreseeable future.
Here is where reality kicks in. Power plants do not produce energy, but power: electric utilities sell a guaranteed power output (e.g. 3kW to a household, 500kW to a small factory etc.) and they are liable if that power supply is not met. New renewables do not guarantee a given power output, unlike hydropower, coal, gas, nuclear. With coal for example, you build a 1MW coal power plant and you are pretty sure to have a 1
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Solar is very schedulable. Wind less so, but it's not like weather forecasts don't exist. Already used in load forecasting.
You do need plants after dark, but it's not like that's not known.
But 'good news', other than northern climates in winter, demand is typically highest at noon/late afternoon (the classic double peak). They've got plants sitting there ready to run when the sun goes down. You don't have to build them, just staff and fuel them. It does mean you can't tear them down and is a real cost.
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Solar is very schedulable. Wind less so, but it's not like weather forecasts don't exist. Already used in load forecasting.
I know that english is not my mother tongue, but, come on, I was pretty clear. I am not talking about load balancing or production scheduling. I am talking about production planning and capacity factor [wikipedia.org]. The biggest share of renewable sources you have, the lowest the capacity factor of your whole power supply (i.e. the weighted sum of the capacity factor of all your power sources) is, so you need more redundancy to meet the requested power supply, that is you need more plants, which means more costs. Moreove
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Solar is 'peak shaving', the plants to serve nighttime load already exist. You just can't tear them down yet.
All peaker plants only run a few hours/day. That's their nature. The most expensive, oldest peaker in your region likely has a worse capacity factor than solar. Solar is only the worst 'category', individual plants will run lower capacity factors. There are individual plants that run at 0% (granting not 0.0000000%) capacity factor most years. They make all their money on capacity payments. Some ar
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Just to add: Your basic mistake is thinking any plant can 'guarantee a given power output'.
That's just wrong. They _have_ (FERC rules in the USA) to spin for their biggest single power source, as _none_ are guaranteed.
As a practical matter, they _all_ violate spinning/ready reserve rules a few hours/year BTW. But engineers are practical people, not mathematicians.
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The biggest share of renewable sources you have, the lowest the capacity factor of your whole power supply And why would the CF be relevant when I actually know with a very small error margin how much power my plants will produce over the next 6hours?
so you need more redundancy to meet the requested power supply Erm ... no?
that is you need more plants, which means more costs. Erm ... no? You have the plants already ... you use the plants you are replacing with renewables ...
Moreover, for traditional power
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Wow, that is a lot of time to get your backup system up and running efficiently. /sarcasm
Yes, it is. so what is your point?
Here is where reality kicks in. Power plants do not produce energy, but power: electric utilities sell a guaranteed power output
The "utility company", yes. But they are free to use what ever plant they want, or simply buy power elsewhere.
Did I mention: I'm tired about idiots who have no clue how production works?
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But they are free to use what ever plant they want, or simply buy power elsewhere.
Ah, ok, now I get it: your plan is to let, say, Mexico build coal plants, so when your solar and wind power is slacking off, you can buy power from them and berate them because they still use dirty sources. Smart.
Did I mention: I'm tired about idiots who have no clue how production works?
Internet is serious stuff, uh?
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No, my plan would be to buy power e.g. from Texas.
And if we talk about Mexico, obviously we set up wind and solar plants there as they have lots of sun and a long coastline.
Mexico build coal plants
Why would they? It is the second most expensive power source, or the third if one was so stupid to build an oil plant.
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I bet I've spent more hours on control floors than you.
CTs can go from cold to power fast, but it costs them _many_ hours of lifetime. Hence utilities _don't_do_it_. They warm them up first, it's not like rapid ramp periods are surprises to them
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Obviously they keep them warmed up.
My point was about performance.
No idea what a control floor is :P
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AKA dispatch center, control center, grid operations center, Independent System Operator (ISO) regional control center.
I spent a decade+ writing software that collected real time system data and fired off many simulations in the 1 day to 1 week forecast range. Allowed the system operator or power trader to examine various operational scenarios. That job took me around the world a few times.
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AKA dispatch center, control center, grid operations center, Independent System Operator (ISO) regional control center.
Half guessed that, we call it dispatcher center/room. I only spent a few hours there.
I spent a decade+ writing software that collected real time system data and fired off many simulations in the 1 day to 1 week forecast range. Allowed the system operator or power trader to examine various operational scenarios.
I did the same.
That job took me around the world a few times.
Unfortunately stuc
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Our power trading code likely exchanged data. We were at the Swamp German power company...as well as all over the UK, Spain etc.
CEO to another team lead: 'Fix that by friday our you're going to Amsterdam to explain the client why it's broken.'
Me: 'What do I have to screw up to get sent to Amsterdam? Say the word and it's as good as broken!'
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That's not true.
US Electrical consumption has actually been flat for over a decade: https://www.vox.com/energy-and... [vox.com]
Per capita, we're declining in electrical demand.
Burn More On Purpose? (Score:3)
For some countries burning as much fossil fuel as possible works. Never ever forget the country most impacted by climate change and sea level rise will be the USA, no country will suffer as much as they do, the entire US east coast is under huge threat. Right now for those countries in conflict it makes sense to generate as much carbon dioxide as fast as possible, it's no like the USA will complain, they will help and in their insanity try to out compete you by producing even more carbon dioxide. All entirely silly but unfortunately much closer to reality than it should sanely be.
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Every country with coasts will suffer. :P
But it is nice you showed us your US centric few of the problem
I would assume the coasts of Australia, India, China etc. are similar long.
Re:Burn More On Purpose? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bangladesh will suffer the most - the whole country is basically at current sea level. They'll need to hold back the ocean Dutch-style or pack up and leave.
Re:Burn More On Purpose? (Score:5, Informative)
Due to the special conditions around the North Sea (a small sea bordering an ocean) you have high tidal differences, which allows to empty the rivers during low tide and block the incoming seawater during high tide. The difference in height is up to ten feet at the Dutch coast, but only about one foot at Bangladesh's coast.
The tidal changes work like a large natural water pump. The natural pump basically doesn't exist in Bangladesh with only one foot twice per day, and with one foot of sealevel rise, it is totally gone. Instead, Bangladesh would have to install large man-made water to get the water of the Ganges and the Brahmhaputra river out of the country and into the ocean.
I always wonder when people bring up the Dutch dam system if they ever actually look how they work? And why they only exists along the North Sea and nowhere else on the globe? You would expect them to have been built alongside all coasts of the world, if they were an universally appliable concept. Alas, they aren't. They work because the Dutch coast is in fact a mudflat... the largest mutflat of the world. The Dutch dam system only works with mudflats. Everywhere else, it fails, becaue either, you don't have enough tidal changes, or because of the missing mudflats along the coast.
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I always wonder when people bring up the Dutch dam system if they ever actually look how they work?
In general it is safe to assume that people don't look up how stuff works.
Hence all the misconceptions about renewable power, its supposed dirtiness in production of wind turbines, panels etc. usage of rare earth elements (which are not rare) etc. p.p.
Funnily many things are super simple to grasp if one would just sit back 30 minutes, empty the mind of all prejudice and start thinking with a clear mind on a fr
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Every country with coasts will suffer.
Yes, but they will mostly cooperate to make space for those who have to move away from the costal areas.
Imagine what will happen in the US when "those costal people" that makes up 90% of the population migrates to higher ground.
It's not going to be pretty in a country where the focus is on greed rather than resolving issues.
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Every country with coasts will suffer.
Evo Morales chuckles at the thought. It's not just the US that will suffer. Chile will pay a steep price too. Maybe Bolivia will finally get access to the sea if it rises enough.
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the entire US east coast is under huge threat.
That's why I'm about a mile high in Denver [youtube.com]. That's an old Jimmy Buffett song before he realized he liked Margaritas better than Coors? LOL... Nobody drinks Coors here.
Why not nuclear? (Score:1)
Coal => natural gas+nuclear => fusion
Renewables will always be a niche market.
Duh! (Score:2)
Coal contributes to one third of the increase mainly due to China and India
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74% of the US coal plants threatened.
Coal contributes to one third of the increase mainly due to China and India
Yes, but per capita the US reigns as emperor along with Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia who all emit from 15-17 tons of CO2 per capita. Comparable figures for India and China are 1,58 tons and 6,59 tons of CO2 per capita. Some 327 million Americans produce the same amount of CO2 emissions as 800 million Chinese and 3,4 billion Indians (that's 2,5 times the current population of India).
Coal is dead (Score:5, Interesting)
If the coal workers have any sense, they will support the Democrats and make sure they get the job of safely shutting down coal mines. There is enough work there to guarantee jobs for the coal workers till they retire. There is money for it from the bonds posted by the coal companies. Democrats will make sure those bonds are actually used to give jobs to the coal workers. If they go with the Republicans, the companies will self post, sign some papers, steal the bonds, and promptly declare bankruptcy after divvying up the money.
The Dems aren't shooting for jobs (Score:2, Insightful)
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And when there are more unemployed people looking for work than there are jobs available? Besides, if there's enough demand, corporations will - shockingly enough in today's capitalist USA - recruit and train workers to the job. A GND would create far more jobs than would be lost in the coal industry, skipping the old saw about workers being untrained. Replacing coal and nuclear with wind and solar would take a few decades, so it's not like people
Re:The Dems aren't shooting for jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I think Andrew Wheeler's plan is to follow the example of Brazil and wait until there's a dam holding toxic waste that breaks [theguardian.com] thus providing lots of money and jobs to whoever cleans it up...
They will clean it up, right?
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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).
You say that like it's a bad thing.
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Not a surprise... (Score:3, Informative)
The EU just abandoned their 2050 climate goals [thegwpf.com] because there was no chance of reaching it. And Germany has seen coal use slightly rise over the last 10 years - no chance of meeting their own 2020 and 2030 commitments.
The future isn't solar and wind (because it's not working); it's nuclear. That is the only way forward out of pollution and limited power.
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The EU just abandoned their 2050 climate goals [thegwpf.com] because there was no chance of reaching it. And Germany has seen coal use slightly rise over the last 10 years - no chance of meeting their own 2020 and 2030 commitments.
The future isn't solar and wind (because it's not working); it's nuclear. That is the only way forward out of pollution and limited power.
Germany is set to phase out coal-fired power stations by 2038: https://www.ft.com/content/cfa... [ft.com] Both Nucear and Coal will be killed off by the free market for the simple reason that Nuclear and Coal are the two most expensive options available in terms of LCOE and the only remaining fossil full that can compete with terrestrial wind and solar in terms of cost-effectiveness is natural gas. Isn't the free market wonderful?
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When you are so deranged by green ideology, you seriously claim that wind and solar are the most cost effective power production methods.
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its a big world (Score:2)
https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]
That's why emissions are up in the US.
Secondly, the US isn't the top carbon emitter enymore either: China emits more carbon then the US and Europe combined:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
Third, the US has a president that denies global warming is real and is doing everything he can to eradicate any "Obama era" policy that might require reduced em
Are you thick? Or deceitful? (Score:1)
China has a lot more people than the US and EU combined too. Did you have a point?
Maybe your point was to hide the fact Americans are twice as CO2 polluting as either Europeans or Chinese.
Technically (Score:2)
Global CO2 levels continue to rise (Score:2)
YEAH!
And it's not from the coal we're burning in the US! Even with the coal we burn, we're DOWN, year over year.
Look at China and India though.
This is where the global rise is coming from.
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YEAH!
And it's not from the coal we're burning in the US! Even with the coal we burn, we're DOWN, year over year.
Look at China and India though.
This is where the global rise is coming from.
Yes but in terms of raw tonnage of CO2 emissions it's the US and China that matter by far the most. The US and China emit more CO2 put together than the entire rest of the top 20 list of CO2 emitters put together including India: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/d... [ucsusa.org] If you consider the populations behind the slices on that pie chart the US emissions are simply staggering.
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He read the actual data. Summary is intentionally misleading.
Us coal went down (Score:3)
The articles are shit (Score:2)
Illegal Immigration (Score:2)
I'm curious how much illegal immigration affects energy consumption in the US? We're so caught up in how the media spins illegal immigration (and shutting down people who point out the destruction of low-skilled jobs available to impoverished American citizens), I hardly hear anyone talk about the environmental impact of illegal immigrants. Many of the places they come from don't really push "energy consciousness," an American value stemming from its relatively high standards of living.
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Stop IMPERSONATING me lying
You wanna know how you can stop people impersonating you? By signing the fuck in.