America's Renewables Surpassed Coal in 2022 - But Greenhouse Gas Emissions Still Increased (chicagotribune.com) 91
Last year in America, "Renewable energy surpassed coal power nationwide for the first time in over six decades," reports the New York Times. Wind, solar and hydropower generated 22% of America's electricity, compared with 20% from coal.
But unfortunately, America's greenhouse gas emissions still increased from the year before, "according to preliminary estimates published Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm."
The New Yorker supplies some context: This increase, according to the report, "was driven mainly by the demand for jet fuel," as air travel rebounded from COVID levels, and it might have been even larger but for the war in Ukraine, which drove up fuel prices....
As part of the Paris Agreement, the U.S. pledged to reduce its emissions by half by 2030, using 2005 as a baseline. Emissions are now down only around fifteen per cent compared with 2005, which leaves a thirty-five-per-cent cut to be implemented in just eight years. Last summer's passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorizes some four hundred billion dollars' worth of spending on clean energy, was a "turning point," the Rhodium Group said, and could produce emissions cuts "as early as this year if the government can fast-track implementation." Still, the group admonished, the U.S. "needs to significantly increase its efforts."
But unfortunately, America's greenhouse gas emissions still increased from the year before, "according to preliminary estimates published Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm."
The New Yorker supplies some context: This increase, according to the report, "was driven mainly by the demand for jet fuel," as air travel rebounded from COVID levels, and it might have been even larger but for the war in Ukraine, which drove up fuel prices....
As part of the Paris Agreement, the U.S. pledged to reduce its emissions by half by 2030, using 2005 as a baseline. Emissions are now down only around fifteen per cent compared with 2005, which leaves a thirty-five-per-cent cut to be implemented in just eight years. Last summer's passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorizes some four hundred billion dollars' worth of spending on clean energy, was a "turning point," the Rhodium Group said, and could produce emissions cuts "as early as this year if the government can fast-track implementation." Still, the group admonished, the U.S. "needs to significantly increase its efforts."
Right! says it all! (Score:2)
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Rich assholes getting to be dead is always a win for everybody.
Progress is being made (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, we're making progress, but not fast enough. Worldwide we need to start insisting on offsets being built into the price of carbon pollution - and actually offsetting the pollution companies are dumping into the atmosphere.
Re:Progress is being made (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm actually kind of surprised we're already about 1/3 of the way to the goal.
It was hardly an ambitious goal.
10t of CO2 per American is a higher level than most of Europe already was at back in 2005.
In fact the EU28 average peaked at less than that in about 1980. [ourworldindata.org]
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Unfortunately the few left wingers in Congress that exist couldn't resist putting some social justice warrior crap into the preamble bill. That made it easy to turn people against it who've been brainwashed to hear that stuff and immediately think it's some bizarre deep state conspiracy.
The left wing have the right ideas but dear fucking God they suck at marketing. For all Nancy pelosi's faults and they are legion she at leas
Re: Progress is being made (Score:2)
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You can turn anything into a joke by simply repeating the assertion that it is a joke, because so many people are sheep. That's why I don't take posts which tell me how I should feel about something seriously unless they tell me why.
Re: Progress is being made (Score:2)
We like gay anal perverts, so go away.
Re: Progress is being made (Score:2)
The problem is you're comparing apples to oranges.
Green dealing [Re: Progress is being made] (Score:2)
The green deal was a joke.
Unfortunately, I'll have to agree here. Most of the "green new deal" proposal was aimed at social engineering, not at solving climate problems.
But do note that the "green new deal" was never part of the platform of either party. It was basically a statement of AOC's beliefs, and she is far to the left even by Democratic party standards. It didn't even get to the floor, it was quashed in (Democratic party controlled) committee.
So is the IRA.
Not sure what the Irish Republican Army has to do with any of this, but whatever.
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The left wing have the right ideas
Almost as bad as saying left-handed people are in their right minds.
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Re:Progress is being made (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent about ten years working in the environmental non-profit sector. This was during the transition from what I would characterize as Crying Indian [youtube.com] environmentalism to framing environmentalism in terms of "sustainability". Being a contrarian by nature, I saw a logical problem with this new framing: isn't non-sustainability a self-correcting problem?
The problem isn't that you can't burn petroleum forever. The problem is the consequences of burning fossil fuels until you're literally forced to stop. And although many people have been trained to have a visceral distaste for the world "justice", fairness is a valid concern because those consequences aren't shared equally.
If coffee ends up costing $100/lb, you and I won't be drinking it any more but the petro-billionaires of Dubai will still have plenty. If a new normal of drought makes an American rancher's spread unproductive, the rancher is out of luck but agribusiness will simply source cattle elsewhere. If temperatures in Delhi start hitting 50C/122F routinely, some people will cocoon themselves in air conditioning but the two an a quarter million below the $2400/yr poverty line there will just have to suffer.
In other words, I think sustainability is in the eye of the beholder; one man's environmental catastrophe is another man's chance to make a buck. So yeah, fairness is really an issue here.
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Indeed. It sounds so simple: You pollute - you pay. But capitalism is often merely ripping off others, in this case all of the world and future generations. That crap has to stop.
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Who is bailing out europe's ass right now?
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There are some very clean countries, yes. You seem to not know how many poor European countries there are. A fourth of Europeans live in poverty.
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The overall emissions increased, that's the opposite of making progress.
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The overall emissions increased, that's the opposite of making progress.
Increased from 2021 to 2022, but decreased from 2005 to 2022. 2005 is the Paris Agreement baseline. So, relative to the Paris Agreement goals, decreased.
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Alarmist nonsense, and Europe is having billions poured into it by USA right now.
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In other words, we're making progress, but not fast enough.
I'd say: We're making major progress but haven't gotten far enough yet. Renewables are on a steeply curved up exponential. They've gotten to where they're growing enough that we're actually retiring some of the more carbon- (and money-) intensive fossil fueled generation plants: Despite the increased energy demand, coal fueled electricity production is now substantially declining and petroleum fueled has leveled off. (Actually dropped some over
Natural gas (Score:4, Interesting)
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SUVs get tax breaks: bigger is cheaper (Score:2)
Its also the continual purchasing for more and more inefficient vanity vehicles like ICE trucks and SUVs destroying all the gains made
This is in fact a huge problem. Made worse by US pollution and gas mileage standards which actually favor SUVs [congress.gov] over smaller cars-- SUVs, for example, are not [epa.gov] subject to the federal fuel-economy tax (tagged the "gas guzzler tax")-- but cars are.
Most recently, the Tesla model Y five seater was deemed not eligible for the electric-vehicle tax credit because it was too light. The IRS requires SUVs to weigh more than 6,000 pounds. There is a tax incentive to making vehicles heavier! https://jalopnik.com/irs-dee [jalopnik.com]
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What's the relative rate of growth of renewables and natural gas for electricity supply?
What is the relative rate of change for gas powered heating and electric powered heating?
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Need nuclear, along with taxation (Score:4, Interesting)
We need to do several things:
1) convert coal plants to nat gas, with ability to add nuclear reactors. This way, it drops our emissions, but also allows 2 different sources of heat
2) build new nuclear SMR as fast as possible. NuScale can, and needs, to be sped up. Also, we need new fast SMRs that can finish the nuclear cycle
3) tax consumed goods
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Parent needs to be moded +1, insightful.
"for the first time in over six decades" (Score:2)
Was that hydropower from dams ?
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Never assume something is an unexpected insight when it can be adequately explained as editorial incompetence.
No treaty on this binds the US (Score:2)
Whilst the establishment in the US wants to emphasis how much they want to play nicely, in reality there has been no treaty passing two thirds of the Senate. Therefore the statement: 'As part of the Paris Agreement, the U.S. pledged to reduce its emissions by half by 2030' is untrue. The response of the US constitution's writers to the British crown's ability to make treaties without reference to parliament, requiring a two thirds majority in the Senate, remains an inordinate block progress.
But more broadly
Hilarious (Score:4, Interesting)
They will keep on being puzzled by this, and they will keep on adding intermittent and unreliable generation to the grid to try to lower emissions, and emissions will continue to rise.
Why is this? Because intermittency. You install a higher and higher percentage of total grid capacity from unreliable and intermittent sources. This is called 'overbuilding'. You end up installing double or triple the amount of peak capacity you need to meet demand. But the sun still sets, it still produces very little and then sharply peaked in winter, and there are still long high pressure periods when the wind hardly does anything.
You could see this happening in the UK last summer, and also in early winter 2022. There were periods when a total installed base of wind and solar amounting to 40GW (which is about the average UK demand) produced only 1GW. And quite long periods when it produced less than 4GW.
I know people will not believe this, so look here for the facts:
www.gridwatch.co.uk
www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
So you might think that even so, emissions will be reduced, because for the rest of the time we are not burning fuel. Well no, you'd be wrong. Because you are running the plant in backup and rapid start mode, so you increase emissions per unit of generation.
The whole policy the West is currently following will in fact result in both higher prices for electricity and higher emissions. The reason is, it will raise the demand for electricity for EVs and heat pumps etc. In order to try and meet this raised and existing demand there will have to be massive overbuild of wind and solar. But this will require equally massive backup systems to cope with intermittency, whose structure will not have changed. And which will be working in the most inefficient way.
Meanwhile, the capacity factor of the renewables will actually fall. Because as you overbuild, there will be higher and higher percentages of time when they are producing more power than can be used, and absent storage it will be wasted. So the practical capacity factor, already around 30%, will fall.
This will all be prodigiously expensive, and one of the sources of the expense is the installation of extra transmission facilities to move the power to where it will be consumed. So prices will rise.
Again, look at the UK. Its the canary in the coal mine. The current plans for upgrading the transmission network are hugely expensive.
And as a consumer, consider the fact that at the moment it costs more in the UK to refuel an EV than an ICE one. Astonishing, isn't it? You increase demand, you take out your reliable consistent supply and replace it with intermittent and unreliable, and prices rise and the threat of blackouts rises.
Whoever could have foreseen anything like this, when all we were trying to do was save the planet. Along with China and India, who are also supposedly busy trying to save the planet. But in rather different ways!
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Lots and lots and lots of storage.
Actual data from Bonneville Power Administration for Dec 2022,
Wind capacity installed, 2827 MW. Average capacity factor 16.2%, Median capacity factor 10.7%. 21.7% of the time the turbines produced less than 1% of their rated output.
Solar capacity installed, 138.2 MW. Average daytime capacity factor 20.5%, Best day, Dec 6, 36.1% , Worst day, Dec 23, 5.8% of rated capacity.
This is in winter, so Solar is running only 8 to 8.5 hours a day. How exactly do you intend to run the h
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Mostly wrong [Re:Hilarious] (Score:4, Interesting)
They will keep on being puzzled by this, and they will keep on adding intermittent and unreliable generation to the grid to try to lower emissions, and emissions will continue to rise. Why is this? Because intermittency.
Nope. As a quick simplification of a complex optimization, every joule that renewable sources add to the grid is one joule not produced by fossil-fuel sources EXCEPT power produced from about midnight to 7am, which tends to be of little use because demand is very low.
Solar peaks during the daytime, which is fine. Solar power supplants fossil fuels very well. (Wind... wind power produced during those hours is basically not contributing. So, as a quick approximation, yes, about 1/3 of wind power production is not at a useful time).
You install a higher and higher percentage of total grid capacity from unreliable and intermittent sources. This is called 'overbuilding'.
Wait, wait! Suddenly you are talking about something completely different-- overcapacity. But we were talking about carbon-dioxide emission. Overcapacity is too complicated a subject to really analyze in depth in a slashdot post, but for the current discussion, the critical point is that if a modern fossil-fuel plant isn't producing power, it's not emitting carbon dioxide.
...So you might think that even so, emissions will be reduced, because for the rest of the time we are not burning fuel. Well no, you'd be wrong.
No, you'd be right. Modern gas-turbine power plants spin up very quickly. If you don't want power, you don't burn fuel.
Because you are running the plant in backup and rapid start mode, so you increase emissions per unit of generation.
Are you living in the 1960s? Maybe true for old coal plants, but modern gas turbine power plants spin up very quickly. If you don't need power, you don't burn fuel.
And the supply and demand curves don't have abrupt changes (that's a different problem). You don't need rapid start; you ramp up and down at reasonable rates.
In fact, dealing with the supply/demand curve with intermittent sources is a tricky optimization power, and one which depends very critically on the demand curve, not just the supply curve (where "tricky" is not a synonym for "impossible".) But your blithe statement "adding intermittent sources will increase emissions" is simply wrong.
...Meanwhile, the capacity factor of the renewables will actually fall. Because as you overbuild, there will be higher and higher percentages of time when they are producing more power than can be used, and absent storage it will be wasted.
First, we're talking about carbon emissions. If solar plants are producing more electricity than needed, it does not increase carbon emissions.
Second, we are far from that status. By the time we reach that status, it's reasonable to expect some sort of buffering will be online-- batteries, pumped hydro storage, flywheel energy storage, fuel cells: there are a lot of technologies out there which can be implemented.
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" power produced from about midnight to 7am, which tends to be of little use because demand is very low. "
Maybe now, but as more houses convert to electric heat that won't last.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/B... [bpa.gov]
Nighttime load is about 3/4 of daytime load. Given the hydropower, this area probably has more electric heat than most others. My house is all-electric, as there is no natural gas service here.
I would add one observation (Score:3, Informative)
It seems that everyone who believes there is a climate crisis caused by human CO2 emissions also believes that moving the grids to wind and solar is a viable policy.
Why is this? There is no logical connexion between the two. They are logically independent. It is a perfectly consistent position to be persuaded there is an emergency, but also to believe it to be impossible to run a modern industrial economy off a grid powered by wind and solar.
So why does all serious scrutiny of the merits of wind and solar get called climate denialism? Its nothing of the sort, its just rational scrutiny of the merits of wind and solar, and the experience of all the countries who have tried it, Germany, the UK, Australia, and now the US, is that you cannot lower emissions by installing it. If you want a reliable and usable grid, adding wind and solar to your existing conventional and nuclear one will actually raise emissions, because of the other changes you have to make in order to accommodate it. There is no country which has lowered its emissions by installing wind and solar. Nor is there any country which has lowered its electricity costs - in fact the correlation is the other way, the more renewables, the higher the cost of power.
This is what is happening in the world. Whether there is a climate crisis, emergency or not due to human emissions is immaterial. This is not going to solve it.
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So why does all serious scrutiny of the merits of wind and solar get called climate denialism? Its nothing of the sort, its just rational scrutiny of the merits of wind and solar, and the experience of all the countries who have tried it, Germany, the UK, Australia, and now the US, is that you cannot lower emissions by installing it.
It's because of nonsense like this. What?! Of course you can lower emissions.
I'm skeptical of 100% renewable right now (unless you have shitloads of hydro or thermal) but even with shitty capacity factors you can definitely reduce average emissions. Whether or not it's the best ROI is another matter and depends on the existing grid, insolation, etc.
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"even with shitty capacity factors you can definitely reduce average emissions"
OK, show someone, somewhere, some country, that has done it.
Countries have lowered emissions materially by moving to gas from coal. But show one that has lowered emissions by moving its grid generation to wind and solar.
Maybe at very low levels of penetration it might be possible. But not when you get to the scale of the UK or Germany's installations of wind and solar. Isn't happening.
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Well, Germany, since you bring it up. They don't actually use that much gas for power and despite their overall stupidity with the grid, the carbon emissions decreased significantly on average.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Forgive my jaded pessimism but I'm developing an allergic reaction to the word average. If wind/solar is super clean compared to gas, then even if you switch to coal (which I assume is higher) so long as you generate even more wind/solar to offset it you can bring the average down on paper even if the reality is you had to mostly use coal to power people's homes and the wind was sold to France for 2c/kWh.
Is that what's going on? I don't have a fucking clue. I'm just out of energy to investigate and find it
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It seems that everyone who believes there is a climate crisis caused by human CO2 emissions also believes that moving the grids to wind and solar is a viable policy.
Not all. A lot of them do, but there are people proposing all sorts of other solutions.
Why is this? There is no logical connexion between the two
Sure there is. Climate change due to carbon dioxide emission is the problem; power sources which don't use fossil fuels is a solution. That's a connection. If you don't think carbon dioxide emission is a problem, there's no need to look for solutions.
They are logically independent. It is a perfectly consistent position to be persuaded there is an emergency, but also to believe it to be impossible to run a modern industrial economy off a grid powered by wind and solar.
That is correct, these are different. Which is why there are many people looking at other solutions.
(the actual reasonable solution is all of the above: renewable energy wi
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Huh? Germany substantially reduced the amount of CO2 emissions from the electricity sector by installing renewables.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
It would be much more if Germany kept the nuclear plants running and replaced coal first, but they still achieved substantial reductions.
I'm "American" too (from Latin America) (Score:2)
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Re: I'm "American" too (from Latin America) (Score:2)
Lies by omission (Score:2)
This surpassing was mostly due to coal usage dropping by 50% over the last decade with natural gas increasing by 20% and renewables by 30% over the same time. Just the 20% *increase* in natural gas usage is itself half the total current contribution of renewables.
The stated change is mostly a result of advances in hydrocarbon extraction not investments in renewable energy.
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thinking causes global warming (Score:2)
"was driven mainly by the demand for jet fuel,"
Turns out just the demand, not satisfying it, is enough to increase emissions. No doubt due to all the huffing and puffing about it.