Most Plans for New Coal Plants Scrapped Since Paris Agreement (theguardian.com) 98
The global pipeline of new coal power plants has collapsed since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to research that suggests the end of the polluting energy source is in sight. From a report: The report found that more than three-quarters of the world's planned plants have been scrapped since the climate deal was signed, meaning 44 countries no longer have any future coal power plans. The climate groups behind the report -- E3G, Global Energy Monitor and Ember -- said those countries now have the opportunity to join the 40 countries that have already signed up to a "no new coal" commitment to help tackle global carbon emissions. "Only five years ago, there were so many new coal power plants planned to be built, but most of these have now been either officially halted, or are paused and unlikely to ever be built," said Dave Jones, from Ember. "Multiple countries can add their voices to a snowball of public commitments to 'no new coal,' collectively delivering a key milestone to sealing coal's fate."
delightful (Score:2)
That is fantastic, we get happy news for once on the climate front. Now let's just hope this also means that existing coal power plants are being phased out at record speed.
We might not be fudged just yet.
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If Trump gets re-elected, he'll scrap the Paris agreement all over again.
I don't think this is over yet.
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Pfft! Greater chance of the Taliban running our government than Trump ever coming back.
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That fake news. It may be what you hear on Faux, or talk radio, but there have been NO VOTING IRREGULARITIES that changed a vote.
The Lt. Gov of TX offered $1M for proof of any. So far, the only person who's claimed it, and not gotten paid, was the Lt. Gov of PA, who found a GOPper who was trying to vote for his mother, who died in 2015.
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Unfortunately, it is true [brennancenter.org], just not in the way he thinks it is.
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He hasn't confirmed anything publicly. He'll wait until the last moment before he announces what he does. While there are some who think that he's going to run, he has until November 2023, the earliest deadlines to register for the presidential primaries (Alabama, Arkansas, and New Hampshire), to formally decide. Until then, he's going to keep the grift going. The Republican nomination is his if he wants it, but he can also sort of rule from afar in Mar-a-Lago, having everyone including the actual president
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Nope. He's got *maybe* 30%, and is losing it. Meanwhile, the GOP is the party of NOPE - no health, no help to people losing their apartments, or their jobs.
Name one thing that the GOP has done *positive* that helps people, not billionaires (or multimillionaires, like Moscow Mitch and his wife, worth $355M).
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If Trump gets re-elected, he'll scrap the Paris agreement all over again.
I don't think this is over yet.
It doesn't really matter, renewables and nat-gas have comprehensively killed off coal, electric cars will kill off oil and nat-gas is next on the list.
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Maybe not, but steam [youtu.be] and by extension natural gas may be used.
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Indeed. A new coal plant is a 60-year investment.
No one is going to build one because Trump is president for another 4 years.
No new coal plants were built during Trump's first presidency. His pro-coal advocacy was just talk.
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The coal industry is a shadow of what it once was. People still think that hundreds of thousands of miners go underground everyday to pull out the lifeblood of the country. Mining employment peaked in 1919 at 624,000 and has trended downward since then even as production has trended up: peak US production was reached in 2008. The most productive coal state by far is Wyoming, which uses surface mining, mostly because the high-quality coal from east of the Appalachians is almost gone. Surface mining requires
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Got your number wrong. There were 778,000 miners in '72. Now: 78,000. Mountaintop removal and strip mining and automation.
War on coal? No, war on coal miners, because they have unions.
Trump is not going to get re-elected. (Score:1, Troll)
If Trump gets re-elected, he'll scrap the Paris agreement all over again.
Don't worry. Trump's never going to get re-elected.
CA Governor Recall Vote [washingtonpost.com] -- 47% vote for Larry Elder (Republican) to replace Newsom. But 64% voted NO on recalling Gavin Newsom (Democrat). How is that possible? If you're voting NO on recalling Newsom, wouldn't you pick a Democrat as the replacement in the event the recalled passes? The leading replacement Democrat only garnered less than 10%. Even if you add up ALL the Democrat replacements, that still wouldn't beat Larry Elder.
There are reports of Republi
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Even with trump in office, the States still dropped their emissions, except for 1 year.
Because of Trump, or inspite of Trump?
At least one of those years was because of the coronavirus shutting down the world economy. But I suppose Trump should take credit for that, right?
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I wouldn't read too much into coal companies going bankrupt, it's part of standard operating procedure now. They bankrupt then start right back up under a slightly different name minus debt and other liabilities. I work in the coal industry and my former employer bankrupted 3 times in the last 10 years.
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"Other liabilities". Ah, yes, getting rid of union contracts, and failing to pay into the federally-mandated health and pension funds for miners.
And when they don't pay, our taxes to to that.
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It was over even when he was sitting in the Oval Office.
How many new coal leases did the Trump administration give out? Zero. In fact the coal barons where returning leases they already had as they knew they would never mine coal there. They may be greedy but they ain't stupid, they know their industry is shutting down and are planning for it.
How much did coal production go up under Trump? Why it fell to the lowest level since 1965 [eia.gov] when it produced 1/4 as much electricity.
Trump failed to halt, or even slow,
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With all of the information coming out about how he tried to effectively stage a coup, I can't believe he is not in jail yet.
What is wrong with your legal system over there in the USA? How can people even be seriously talking about him running again?
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Nah they are not like the Germans with the panicked, overreacting, irresponsible shutdown of their nuclear plants. China is still building hundreds of coal plants at home https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org] https://e360.yale.edu/features... [yale.edu] https://www.energylivenews.com... [energylivenews.com] and abroad https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29... [npr.org]
They should shut down, not build, many hundreds, right now https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Re: delightful (Score:1)
Now let's just hope this also means that existing coal power plants are being phased out at record speed.
And while we're at, let's be sure to not make sure that replacement sources are up and running - because it's not like we're going to need more power for EV's or anything...
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To not mention other benefits, such as people not dying of lung cancer due the smoke and coal mining as well.
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It's not so great when you realise that every country is just being lazy and building out tons of gas power plants instead. Natural gas also emits plenty of CO2 which when burned and is an extremely bad green-house gas when it leaks which it does a lot, especially from old fracking wells of which there are literally millions.
I don't think it has anything to do with Paris (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't think it has anything to do with Paris (Score:4, Interesting)
Sad thing is, there are just 50,000 of them. Almost all Americans would support relief for coal workers, if it does not go to the coal companies and perpetuate the coal burning powerplants.
We need the skill of these coal miners to safely close the bankrupt mines. Yeah, yeah the coal mines should have paid into a trust fund that will pay for proper closing, but most of them are "self bonded" and there isn't a dime you can get from them for proper closure.
EPA can simply create a program to guarantee every qualified underground coal miner jobs. Every year of experience underground gets you a year of job guarantee. Their job would be to properly close bankrupt mines. EPA can also assume ownership of these abandoned mines, and keep them properly sealed.
Tax payers can pay for it up front. Eventually all these mines will become valuable. Compressed Air Energy Storage is far cheaper than batteries and pumped hydro. So eventually after the become valuable we can sell it off and recover the cost paid by us.
If Democrats have two molecules of brain they will go straight to job guarantee for coal miners and take them not political pawns. They are Americans and they need our help, and we need their skills, why not ...
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For now. There's a test facility going up in Minnesota with a goal of providing one megawatt of power for 100+ continuous hours using Form Energy's iron-air battery, which they claim will cost about $20 per kWh to construct, around one fifth to one tenth the cost of current lithium-ion batteries. If it works, it could be a huge game changer, though we may have to wait until 2023 to know for sure.
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Coming back to coal workers, I think even if the coal mines never become valuable enough to pay back, it is still worth the investment to close them off and seal them properly, give employment assurance to coal miners facing uncertain future. Their employers dodged taxes an
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For stationary applications, especially for utility scale store, something better than lithium-ion might emerge.
A number have already emerged - including both non-lithium chemistries and lithium chemistries that don't have the flamibility and/or thermal runaway problems. Many more are on their way.
We're already part way over the cusp from "you can do it but it's pricey and dangerous" to "there are a lot of ways to do it with varying price, efficiency, and safety tradeoffs, and more on the way - so which of
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That's exactly what the iron-air battery is intended to be: utility scale store at hitherto unheard-of prices. More importantly, it's supposed to be able to supply power continuously for more than four days. The details are still scarce, including how large the one-megawatt, 150 MWh facility will be. The rendering suggests that it will be fairly large, but not insurmountably so for many places. Sc
Hold your horses (Score:4, Informative)
Exhibit A: Britain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
Exhibit B: Estonia (can't find an English link).
The situation is similar in other countries.
No wind so the great and wonderful windmills do not have anything to move them. Russians deciding that they will supply Europe strictly on long term contracts and world market prices (isn't 3rd energy regulation package by EC just lovely) and as an icing on the cake the interconnect between UK and France catching fire.
So do not write off coal just yet. It will be interesting how things develop, but we may see some roll-back of the CO2 reduction measures as well as restart of coal in the coming months. Anything else aside, the cycle of cold winters in Europe is roughly 10-11 years and the last one was exactly 11 years ago. It was only -35 in Germany, Poland and Czech then and only one-two meters of snow with the balmy warm -20 in Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. Based on the normal long term weather cycle in Europe we are due for a repeat this winter or next.
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*shrug* We're also overdue for a pole flip [newscientist.com] as well. 2022 is going to be a mess.
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From you linked article:
The magnetic poles wander and occasionally reverse around every 200,000 to 300,000 years, but we have little evidence on how this impacts our planet.
Alan Cooper at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide and his colleagues have now provided some answers. They came up with the most accurate date yet of Earth’s last magnetic field reversal called the Laschamp event, which they estimate occurred between 41,560 and 41,050 years ago
Sounds like we are 150,000-250,000 years under-due for a pole flip. Don't go placing those pole lip bets yet.
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This week most of the remaining European coal plants which were mothballed or even scheduled for demolition were fired again.
Exhibit A: Britain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
Exhibit B: Estonia (can't find an English link).
The situation is similar in other countries.
No wind so the great and wonderful windmills do not have anything to move them.
Let me get this straight, you read an article entitled: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar, and through some marvellous leap of cognitive dissonance managed blame that on wind power? Keep in mind we are talking 3% of UK national power here, up from 2,2%, not exactly an earth shattering resurgence for coal. In a grid that relies heavily on wind energy this is something easily bridged with grid storage for example, that is to say if the UK government ever gets around to installing some.
So do not write off coal just yet. It will be interesting how things develop ....
The way th
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Let me get this straight, you read an article entitled: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar, and through some marvellous leap of cognitive dissonance managed blame that on wind power?
The problem here is that the wind generation is underperforming right now, so peaking power plants are using up all the natural gas available to provide baseline power instead of actual peaks.
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so peaking power plants are using up all the natural gas available to provide baseline power instead of actual peaks.
The end result is that electricity price volatility is going to go through the roof. The UK is going to look like Enron in California. Smart people will take profits and run. Not so smart people will use the artificial increase in ROI to justify some questionable investments. And someone (rate payers) will be stuck with the bill when those projects don't pan out and there's nothing left but the bonds issued.
It's a wonderful time to be alive if you know how to game the system.
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It's not underperforming, we just need more of it.
In fact the problem is that it's performing better than expected. That's forced a lot of other generation out of the market, and the grid hasn't keep up with the transition by adding more geographic diversity and storage. It was thought that there would be many more years until we got to this point.
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It's not underperforming, we just need more of it.
It IS underperforming. And short-term storage won't help a lot
That's the issue with the renewables, they can go down for an extended period of time. We're at least lucky it's not happening during the winter time.
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Wind in the UK is performing as expected. The issue is that there isn't enough of it, and because there was no plan and it was just left to investors the easier sites were selected first, rather than ones that would have produced more stability.
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It's not underperforming, we just need more of it.
It's actually dramatically underperforming, wind in the north sea is down to a level that has taken grid operators off-guard. Wind turbines are performing at something like 5% of theoretical peak output, for extended periods. It literally calls into question some of the planning assumptions around a highly wind dependent grid in Europe.
This shortfall would normally have been made up with LNG being burned, except China sucked up huge amounts of LNG late last year due to power issues they are having, and Eu
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This week most of the remaining European coal plants which were mothballed or even scheduled for demolition were fired again.
Exhibit A: Britain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
Exhibit B: Estonia (can't find an English link).
The situation is similar in other countries.
No wind so the great and wonderful windmills do not have anything to move them.
Let me get this straight, you read an article entitled: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar, and through some marvellous leap of cognitive dissonance managed blame that on wind power? Keep in mind we are talking 3% of UK national power here, up from 2,2%, not exactly an earth shattering resurgence for coal. In a grid that relies heavily on wind energy this is something easily bridged with grid storage for example, that is to say if the UK government ever gets around to installing some.
So do not write off coal just yet. It will be interesting how things develop ....
The way things will develop is simple. Coal has an LCOE that normally is way above that of wind, solar and nat-gas. That means that anybody who isn't bribed into going for coal will go for wind, solar and nat-gas, probably wind and solar, because, as the article you linked to explains, the price of nat-gas can soar or fall off a cliff. The price of sun and wind remains pretty rock steady at $ 0.00 per unit.
Scroll down to the next slashdot article "When the Wind Stops Blowing, an Energy Storm Brews"
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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This week most of the remaining European coal plants which were mothballed or even scheduled for demolition were fired again.
Exhibit A: Britain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
Exhibit B: Estonia (can't find an English link).
The situation is similar in other countries.
No wind so the great and wonderful windmills do not have anything to move them.
Let me get this straight, you read an article entitled: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar, and through some marvellous leap of cognitive dissonance managed blame that on wind power? Keep in mind we are talking 3% of UK national power here, up from 2,2%, not exactly an earth shattering resurgence for coal. In a grid that relies heavily on wind energy this is something easily bridged with grid storage for example, that is to say if the UK government ever gets around to installing some.
So do not write off coal just yet. It will be interesting how things develop ....
The way things will develop is simple. Coal has an LCOE that normally is way above that of wind, solar and nat-gas. That means that anybody who isn't bribed into going for coal will go for wind, solar and nat-gas, probably wind and solar, because, as the article you linked to explains, the price of nat-gas can soar or fall off a cliff. The price of sun and wind remains pretty rock steady at $ 0.00 per unit.
Scroll down to the next slashdot article "When the Wind Stops Blowing, an Energy Storm Brews" https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Read this: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar , and yet you people have decided that coal is the future of energy generation and that only wind power is to blame for this. What the UK National Grid did was issue an electricity margin notice of 1.5%. As it turns out we are talking about an 0.8% shortfall in energy production that is being compensated for by increasing coal power from 2,2% to 3%. It's not like thousands of Britons are sitting in their living rooms huddled together wrapped in blan
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This week most of the remaining European coal plants which were mothballed or even scheduled for demolition were fired again.
Exhibit A: Britain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
Exhibit B: Estonia (can't find an English link).
The situation is similar in other countries.
No wind so the great and wonderful windmills do not have anything to move them.
Let me get this straight, you read an article entitled: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar, and through some marvellous leap of cognitive dissonance managed blame that on wind power? Keep in mind we are talking 3% of UK national power here, up from 2,2%, not exactly an earth shattering resurgence for coal. In a grid that relies heavily on wind energy this is something easily bridged with grid storage for example, that is to say if the UK government ever gets around to installing some.
So do not write off coal just yet. It will be interesting how things develop ....
The way things will develop is simple. Coal has an LCOE that normally is way above that of wind, solar and nat-gas. That means that anybody who isn't bribed into going for coal will go for wind, solar and nat-gas, probably wind and solar, because, as the article you linked to explains, the price of nat-gas can soar or fall off a cliff. The price of sun and wind remains pretty rock steady at $ 0.00 per unit.
Scroll down to the next slashdot article "When the Wind Stops Blowing, an Energy Storm Brews"
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Read this: UK fires up coal power plant as gas prices soar , and yet you people have decided that coal is the future of energy generation and that only wind power is to blame for this. What the UK National Grid did was issue an electricity margin notice of 1.5%. As it turns out we are talking about an 0.8% shortfall in energy production that is being compensated for by increasing coal power from 2,2% to 3%. It's not like thousands of Britons are sitting in their living rooms huddled together wrapped in blankets with icicles hanging from their noses. They covered the shortfall by temporarily boosting coal energy generation a bit because natural gas prices had become extortionate. Yet, here you are concluding that this means wind energy is doomed to failure. Meanwhile the rest of the world is concluding that the solution here is increased grid storage, diversification of carbon neutral energy generation methods and increased pan European grid interconnectivity (which currently stands at a mere 6% in the UK) and grid modernisation so that surplus energy at one end of Europe can be used to even out shortages on the other side of the continent.
I made no such claim. A diverse supply of energy is in the national interest and the best way to avoid energy shortages.
The current news coming out of Europe is that there are problems when the wind stops blowing. That isn't an argument to avoid wind energy, it is an argument for energy supply diversity.
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From your linked article (did you actually read it?):
Last year, coal contributed 1.6% of the country's electricity mix. That was down from 25% five years ago.
25% to 1.6% in five years. Yeah it is roaring back. Hasn't reached dead zero yet, and they fired up one (count'em one) coal plant for a few days, though did go coal free for three months this summer.
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With one overwhelming exception (Score:5, Informative)
China.
They built about three times as much coal capacity in 2020 as the rest of the world, COMBINED. They're not slowing down, either (at least 47 more are planned over the next few years).
India, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia are all happily building new coal plants, too.
When 44 out of the 195 (more or less) countries in the world stop building coal, but the biggest ones keep constructing like mad, you don't gain much.
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Thank you, citizen. 10 social credit points have been deposited into your account.
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They built about three times as much coal capacity in 2020 as the rest of the world, COMBINED.
They also built more solar and more wind than the rest of the world, COMBINED in 2020. What's your point? That poor countries should stay poor? You got yours so fuck everyone else? and as for all the the "coal capacity" China built in 2020, a large portion of it was to replace existing dirtier coal plants.
India, well that's the world's 3rd largest renewable energy producer and that number is rising rapidly as well.
Rather than shitting on the efforts of others maybe congratulate them. History will show that
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Yeah, China built up their solar to a massive THREE POINT FIVE PERCENT of their total energy capacity. In effective terms, it's closer to two percent, though, because they haven't done a damned thing about storage.
They built more coal power in 2020 than they have solar power, total.
So you can take that "they're trying, honest!" stuff and throw it in the nearest river, like China does with all of the toxic chemicals they use to make their solar panels.
"Shitting on the poor countries" isn't what's going on. I
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You got yours so fuck everyone else?
China is fucking everyone else with their new coal plants.
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Everyone knows the US doesn't have much industry other than, trying to have a monopoly on IT, Social media to spy on others, as well as their military industrial complex.
Then everyone is a big fucking idiot, because that's wholly false.
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America already fucked over everyone.
You know how everyone complains about how China's pollution is on behalf of other countries? You do know that the USA is a massive exporter of foods and in fact goods, right?
Regardless, America is working on cleaning up while China is working on getting dirtier. This is unsustainable given they have three times our population.
Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Informative)
But Paris climate accord did not kill the coal plants.
Fracking and natural gas killed coal plants. Natural gas is cheaper coal. Coal died.
There are definite shifts to renewables happening. But again real long term trend is, unsubsidized cost of solar and wind is becoming competitive with natural gas. Paris climate accord might have helped the renewables in the fight with natural gas, but when it comes to coal, the killer was natural gas, not Paris accord.
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:4, Interesting)
Mostly correct, but not quite. Almost everywhere outside US, natgas remains more expensive than coal. In most places, much more expensive. Reminder: fracking at scale for natgas is only really a major source of fuel in US.
And natgas is really hard to transport. Having to cool and compress or liquefy it is very energy intensive, so you want to pipe it. But it still did drive cost of natgas down globally for a while, because US was no longer a place to export it to. So temporary glut on the market until demand and supply rebalance around the new normal where US is a net exporter rather than net importer.
But the biggest change is modern automation and physics simulation capability enabling novel designs for combined cycle gas turbines about a decade ago. Gas turbines became extremely efficient, and rapid increase in built up of intermittents meant extreme demand for spinning and cold reserve plants that could quickly take up the load. And gas turbines are really, REALLY good at rapidly taking the load.
So you had a combined pressure from increase in efficiency of CCGTs, combined with cheaper gas (for foreseeable future in US and temporarily in Europe), combined with rapidly growing demand for power generators able to spin up quickly due to rapid increase in built up of intermittents like wind and solar.
End result is that CCGTs simply outcompete almost everything in short term. Until gas supply and demand situation changes again.
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This also explains one curious thing I learned yesterday. I claimed crude oil is very crucial for fertilizer production, someone said, most fertilizer is made from natgas not oil May be he/she was talking about US market.
Another nugget is the efficiency improvements in CCGT. Coal plants use steam turbines which were more efficient than GT. If it catches up on thermal efficiency, and then cost, coal plants would bec
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Guess what else is made from natgas? Hydrogen. Yep, that clean-burning stuff. When you need bulk industrial quantities of it, you extract it from natgas -- far more economical than electrolysis.
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Coal is actually very much alive and utterly crushing solar and wind almost everywhere. Just look at developing countries. Look at Germany.
This is another one of those "fracking killed it", and there's pretty much no fracking for gas at scale outside US. So the "are solar and wind killing coal" translates into "are CCGTs backing those two up killing it" translates into "are you getting cheap gas for CCGTs".
And most of the world doesn't. Which is why developing nations keep building coal. It's cheap, reliabl
Bitcoin (Score:2)
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While that is true, most of them are buying up waste coal plants.
They mined coal for more than a century and put the lower quality coal aside. So they have these huge piles of low grade coal. Not worth burning for a long time. But if you have a coal plant in the middle of nowhere that happens to be near a waste coal mountain, then different economics apply.
1) You can buy the plant and waste coal cheap as no one wants them. The coal is basically free.
2) You do not need to ship the coal anywhere
3) You d
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Once they are gone, those coal plants die the final death.
Not quite. A site with rail lines, power lines, and other infrastructure to support a coal power plant there could be someone to come along with the intent to convert the site into a natural gas or nuclear power plant. So long as the steam turbines are in good shape they can take steam from anything to produce electricity. There's already plans by a number of companies to buy up old coal power plants to convert to nuclear power. Not likely the big light water power that was dominant for the last 50 year
Change comes quickly. (Score:2)
600 new coal plants being built in asia (Score:2)
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
So all the back slapping in the summary seems rather misplaced.
About bloody time (Score:2)
Energy from the Past (Score:2)
Coal is stored solar energy from millions of years ago. As is oil and uranium. The primary means of acquiring coal, oil and uranium is not production, it's extraction and I think this is a fact that is deliberately obscured so that we aren't led to considering the consequences.
Those consequences are that each one of them have different constraints that will make them unusable eventually. For coal it will probably be the saturation of CO2 in the atmosphere before it runs out. For oil when it becomes too