Italy Proposes Phasing Out Coal Power Plants By 2025 (reuters.com) 123
Italy is the next country to phase out coal. According to Reuters, the country has set its sights on phasing out coal power plants by 2025. From the report: Italy's biggest utility Enel has said it will not invest in new coal-fired power plants. The new energy strategy, still under discussion, aims to reach the goal of 27 percent of gross overall energy consumption from renewable sources by 2030, the document showed. The strategy, which should be approved by the government at the beginning of November, is also looking to speed up the introduction of vehicles powered by alternative fuels. It aims to raise the number of electric charging stations to 19,000 by 2020.
goal of 27 percent (Score:2)
So where is the other 73% of their power coming from. Nuclear and natural gas? :Seems like a big amount for those.
Also the article was basically just the summary. No sources or content whatsoever.
Re: goal of 27 percent (Score:1)
Volcanoes.
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So where is the other 73% of their power coming from. Nuclear and natural gas? :Seems like a big amount for those.
Italy has banned the use of nuclear power in its borders. They'll just buy nuclear power from France.
Here's a recent article stating France and Italy plan to build a large HVDC line between the two nations so France can sell it's cheap nuclear power to Italy.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... [world-nuclear.org]
The article also states France plans to cap their nuclear output at current levels, allowing the share of nuclear to reduce from current 75% to 50%, with new growth in demand coming from unreliable energy like wind and
Re:That's not happening without nuclear power (Score:5, Informative)
Rarely have I seen a comment so stuffed with half truths, myths and outright nonsense.
https://energytransition.org/2013/02/the-german-coal-myth/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_phase-out
How can Germany have "failed on the claim to abandon coal" when German hard coal subsidies aren't scheduled to stop until 2018 and total coal generation isn't scheduled to end until 2030 at the earliest?
Please understand I'm not responding to you. I understand that you have an agenda, and renewables aren't part of it. I'm commenting here simply so people honestly interested in what's happening in the European energy sector have convenient access to information more accurate and less agenda-driven than yours.
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Well, that's blindseer, you know. To say that he has an agenda is not quite the right description - if nuclear power had a dick, he would suck it day and night.
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Thanks for that. I truly did "LOL". I hadn't realized blindseer was so...ah..."dedickated".
Cheers, my friend.
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We should be thanking Germany. Not only did they prove that this was feasible and not economically crippling as some had predicted, but they encouraged other countries to follow suit. It's actually possible that large parts of Europe might be coal, nuclear and largely combustion engine free within my lifetime. Likely, even.
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How about you link to an article that doesn't use five year old data?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
http://notrickszone.com/2017/1... [notrickszone.com]
https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]
The majority of CO2 reductions from Germany in the past 25 years has been from shutting down old Soviet designed power plants that Germany inherited from reunification. If there are any of these inefficient power plants left then any future shutdowns will have diminishing returns on CO2 reductions. A large part of their current zero emissio
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It is completely irrelevant how much CO2 could be saved by using nuclear, as it is too expensive.
And it would be even more expensive, if it would be scaled up to have a global impact, because you would need to establish completely new fuel cycles.
For this reasons, it is not a solution for global warming.
And Germany's use of coal (coal + lignite) decreased substantially: 197 TWh (1996) to 189 TWh (2006) to 161.5 TWh (2016)
(source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.... [ag-energiebilanzen.de])
I know, not in your alternate reality where
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It is completely irrelevant how much CO2 could be saved by using nuclear, as it is too expensive.
What? CO2 saved doesn't matter? I thought that CO2 output was the ultimate threat to life on Earth, and reducing it was to be done at any cost!
Also, wind and solar keep promising to be cheaper than coal and any claim that nuclear could get cheaper as well is dismissed. Why can't nuclear get cheaper too? Is there some magical force in the universe preventing this? Nuclear is only going to get cheaper if people take it seriously as an alternative to coal.
If nuclear power is feared more than global warmin
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It is completely irrelevant how much CO2 could be saved by using nuclear, as it is too expensive.
What? CO2 saved doesn't matter? I thought that CO2 output was the ultimate threat to life on Earth, and reducing it was to be done at any cost!
Spending money for nuclear would prevent spending money on much more cost-effective ways to reduce CO2.
Also, wind and solar keep promising to be cheaper than coal and any claim that nuclear could get cheaper as well is dismissed. Why can't nuclear get cheaper too? Is there some magical force in the universe preventing this? Nuclear is only going to get cheaper if people take it seriously as an alternative to coal.
First, one has to acknowledge that nuclear is already an old technology where a lot of money has already spent in research and development. I did not get cheaper in the past, instead it got much more expensive. In contrast, wind and solar quickly got much cheaper once people started to invest in it. So let's turn the question around: what is the reason more money should suddenly cause a breakthrough in nuc
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Eucker covered it. I don't need to repeat what he said.
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France is a net importer of energy, not an net exporter.
Germany is a net exporter of energy, not a net importer.
And yes, they all learned from Germany. As the energy revolution in Gemany is the poster child for the rest of Europe.
Negative price desls are usually I wash your hand, you wash my hand back and forth going deals amoung energy companies. So why do you care?
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According to the CIA France is the largest exporter of electricity by a large margin.
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu... [cia.gov]
France gets over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear power. Europe runs on nuclear power because of what France exports. If Italy wants to close their coal plants in the next 10 years then they will have to increase their imports from France, burn a lot more expensive natural gas, or see the lights go out.
Italy needs to get over their fear of nuclear power real quick or see their electric
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The "France did it and their rates aren't excessive, so why can't others?" line keeps coming up.
The Messmer Plan, which converted France to a nuclear grid, came at a huge cost. Between 1973 and 1984, EDF's debt rose by 650%. As EDF is largely owned by the state, this has a direct influence on France's total debt standings. By the mid 1980s, EDF's debt standing was 15,4% of France's total foreign debt - a debt which shot up [wordpress.com] during the Messmer Plan's implementation (not solely due to it, but it certainly did
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Did you just call a conversion to electric heat "wasteful"? I thought electric heat was the goal of every "green" energy plan? If people don't heat with electricity then what are they supposed to use?
Heating with coal, oil, or natural gas are presumably out, as those contribute to CO2 output. Are people supposed to burn wood for heat? That's going to go over real well once people find out how many trees would have to be cut down every winter.
Assuming a combined cycle natural gas plant (about 60% efficie
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If you think the goal of "100% renewable electricity cheaper than fossil fuels" is realistic. I don't, at least in the short to mid term. There's nothing wrong with natural gas heating. Natural gas is low carbon, clean burning, cheap, abundant, and can (by varying means and to varying degrees) be a renewable resource.
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Electricity rates are completely irrelevant for a typical european citizen.
An italian probably drinks 3 espresso per day, that is 90 per month, that is significantly more costs than his electricity bill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As you probably see: there are no accurate up to date numbers for every year. It helps to click on the two arrows in the "Electricity exports" column.
Europe runs on nuclear power because of what France exports.
No it does not. France has enough power for its own country and e
Solar price decline will kill coal (Score:1)
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Solar hasn't solved the spinning reserve problem yet.
Meaning of "proposes" explained. (Score:2)
Isn't this going to mess up the environment? (Score:1)
I mean all that coal is going to stay in the ground and pollute out ground water and give people cancer. I like the current system where we extract this dangerous substance and burn it so it can't harm people.
The masses shiver while elites are warm. (Score:1)
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Notice that it's 27% from renewables in over a decade from now. It basically means they'll be burning natural gas from North Africa.
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
they'll be burning natural gas from North Africa.
That is still way better than burning coal.
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)
And since they want to switch to electric vehicles, they'll effectively be "vehicles powered by natural gas burned at very high efficiencies". Which is not in any way a bad thing. Combined cycle NG plants can reach 60% efficiency or so; a typical ICE peaks at 35-40% and averages 20-25%, and releases much more pollution per unit energy - and emits it right where people are breathing it in rather than "at altitude, generally outside of cities".
That said, let me be the first to question Italy's seriousness on the electric vehicle front. While Europe is up to 1,6% market penetration on average, with Norway in first place at around 1/3rd market penetration, Italy has a measly 0,1% market penetration - the worst in the developed world. Even Iceland buys nearly as many electric cars per month now as Italy (the latter having 12% of the population of the entire EU, the former having a third of a million people). Italy is an embarrassment when it comes to electric vehicles, not a role model. We'll see if they actually do anything to change this.
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You can also fit devices to chimneys to capture the pollutants which are too costly/heavy to be fitted to ICE cars so you can release fewer pollutants in the first place, as well as doing so in a better place. And they can be subject to closer monitoring.
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Additionally various cities have wasted taxpayer money in the past on fleets of electric vehicles that were left unused in depots because lead-acid proved to be inadequate, which might have hindered more recent attempts.
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Everyone else can and is doing it. Italy has no excuse. When Iceland is nearly outpacing Italy in total (not per capita) numbers, that doesn't reflect well on Italy.
Furthermore, there is not "unknown battery lifespan". Ignoring that accelerated aging tests have been done, the Roadster was delivered nearly a decade ago and there are Model Ss with with hundreds of thousands of miles / many hundreds of thousands of kilometers on their packs. The "it's unknown" excuse just doesn't fly anymore. It's known, and
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The typical curve is about 4% in the first year, then it greatly slows with time; year five total degradation is about 6-7%.
Assuming reasonable headroom in the capacity and no overheating. Nissan LEAF owners in hot climates have experienced serious battery degradation due to the lack of a battery cooling system. I own a LEAF and have had no problems (50K miles on the clock and negligible degradation), but I don't live in a hot climate.
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Yes, I'm assuming a proper EV (aka, not a Leaf) ;) More specifically, I'm referring to data collected from Tesla Model Ss.
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Yes, I'm assuming a proper EV (aka, not a Leaf) ;)
Hey there! I quite like my LEAF!
I certainly have to grant that the small battery and lack of battery cooling are flaws, though the latter doesn't affect me and the former doesn't affect me much. I'm in line for a Model 3, but fairly far down the list. Probably late 2018 or early 2019. Maybe later if they keep having production ramp-up problems.
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Sorry, I know, Leaf is an easy punching bag ;) It's overly simplified powertrain hurts it in a lot of other ways too, many of which aren't as obvious. For example, Leafs lose a lot of range in the winter, but Teslas only lose 10-20% (assuming dry pavement in both cases). Electric powertrains don't give off a ton of waste heat, but each component does give off a meaningful amount, and being able to capture it from one place and shunt it to another is hugely advantageous in adverse weather conditions.
But, th
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Yeah, the heat management system in Teslas is superb. And they keep coming up with more tricks to make it even better. Example: the Model 3 has no battery pack heater. Wait, isn't that a step backward? Well, no: what they do instead is deliberately run the motor very inefficiently (even when at a stop), creating tons of waste heat in the motor, and then the thermal management system shunts that to the battery pack ;)
Between the battery pack, the drive unit, the cabin heater, the radiator, and the compresso
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All other losses after the Carnot losses are minor. In the US, for example, grid transmission efficiency is around 98%, and there's another 4% losses for distribution, then a couple percent from the transformer to the socket. Charging is usually in the 90%s from the socket/charger connector (slow charging = more efficient, fast = less efficient), relative to achievable energy output from the battery. Motor + inverter efficiency (including wiring losses) depends on the type - induction averaging in the upp
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and as for your first claim:
This is wrong on many levels.
1) The basic premise itself is wrong. If you have fewer people, yes that means less demand, but it also means correspondingly less resources to make the change.
2) Iceland is a much more challenging case than Italy. Both Italy and Iceland are mountainous, but Iceland - in addition to having a worse climate - also has a far lower population density.
3) Infrastructure in Iceland isn't better than in Italy. Take Tesla, for example. Italy has five Tesla stores, 2 Tesla service centres, and 23 supercharging stations (soon to be 35) covering the whole of the country. Iceland? 0, 0 and 0. Iceland doesn't even have any kind of charging stations at all - even slow chargers - covering large chunks of the Ring Road, the main road around the country. Just a couple months ago chargers only went a third of the way around.
I'll repeat: Italy has no excuse. They're not a role model when it comes to EVs; they're being lapped at the track by everyone else and making up excuses for why it's not their fault.
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they'll be burning natural gas from North Africa.
That is still way better than burning coal.
Fucking A. And with increasing improvement in battery technology, they (and hopefully we at some point) will be reducing how much nat or syn gas gets burned for energy.
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And nuclear.
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Italy doesn't have nuclear, is actually illegal.
They'll just buy electricity made by nuclear power from France. Italy will be using nuclear power regardless. They have been for a long time now and their reliance on nuclear power will only increase as France builds more nuclear reactors and Italy shuts down their coal plants. Kind of like how Germany has been buying so much electricity from France to make up for their failure to provide for their electrical demand after shutting down their coal plants.
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Germany foreign trade of electricity 2006-2016 (negative values are exports):
-5,3 -2,3 -0,6 +1,0 +3,1 -1,3 +0,7 -8,1 -7,3 -8,5 -19,8 -19,1 -22,5 -14,3 -17,7 -6,3 -23,1 -33,8 -35,6 -51,8 -53,7
Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.... [ag-energiebilanzen.de]
But I know, nuclear fanboys do not care for facts.
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Units: TWh
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Germany pays subsidies for wind and solar only to export the electricity at low prices so it's not a complete loss. Not only low prices but negative, as in paying people to take it so the grid remains stable. They are bankrupting themselves.
http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/... [fortune.com]
https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
http://euanmearns.com/getting-... [euanmearns.com]
http://www.windpowermonthly.co... [windpowermonthly.com]
Denmark imports electricity at 30 euro/MWh and exports at 20 euro/MWh. Germany does better with imports at 30 euro/MWh and exports at 27
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Stop weaseling. I debunked your previous claim: "Kind of like how Germany has been buying so much electricity from France to make up for their failure to provide for their electrical demand after shutting down their coal plants." Your new nonsense is also easily shown wrong: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/... [fraunhofer.de]
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If solar and wind are as cheap without subsidies as recent stories claim, why do countries need to set targets like this?
Is it more of a target, or rather more of a simple prediction? Also, phasing out coal in India may very well be simply a matter of internalizing externalities. So it is about price, just not the one the coal plant operators are forced to pay in India.
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Re: Why is this necessary? (Score:2, Insightful)
They are trying to prevent the end of the world. Probably spooked by heat waves this year. Remember that coal has received a lot public funding also.
Re: Why is this necessary? (Score:5, Informative)
Who said wind is cheaper? Quote please?
Wind and solar are cheaper than coal in Australia. [cleantechnica.com]
Wind is cheaper than coal in India. [qz.com]
Wind directly competes with coal on price. [oilprice.com]
News Flash: Wind is not cheaper than coal. [institutef...search.org]
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You make a weasel statement. You lose. GP wins.
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Just to be clear, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a 501(c)(03) public charity which received $307,000 from Exxon Mobile or its foundation between 2003 and 2007. IER also received $175,000 from Koch Industries according to a Greenpeace report.
Source: https://www.sourcewatch.org/in... [sourcewatch.org]
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So wind is cheap in USA, Australia, and India. How much does it cost in Italy? Or any neighboring nation?
I tried finding it myself but I haven't had much luck. Lots of articles on how European nations are building wind energy capacity, but that only means that there's a lot of government subsidies.
Australia, India, and the US have access to large land areas to pick from for wind. It's going to be much easier to find cheap wind in these large nations than the relatively tiny Italy.
I look at my globe here
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post assumes that there is a free market in place. If there is not, and energy is centrally-planned, then any change in the mix would need to come from the central planner rather than the non-existent or limited market.
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I really don't know anything about Italy's power system. But from what I know of Europe, I'd be absolutely floored to find out it was a free market. If I had to guess I'd say it was either a state-owned company or well-connected private monopoly that couldn't care less what it pays for power because it passes the generation fees along to the consumer.
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Well how about that! Good for them. But there seems to be something wrong with the market in Italy. From this paper [deloitte.com]:
This indicates pretty strongly that market forces are not in fact at work. This is probabl
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If you call that a 'centrally planned rate structure',
No, that what I'm calling the fact that rates are mandated to be progressive. That is the exact reverse of what a free market would do... when does buying smaller amounts of something result in a cheaper per-unit price? Never in a free market, unless you are buying so much that you start manipulating the market - and even then the price would go up for everyone.
It's self-evident that there is not a free market - otherwise the rates would converge on those of its direct neighbors. If there were a free market
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:4, Informative)
If solar and wind are as cheap without subsidies as recent stories claim, why do countries need to set targets like this? If renewables are really that cheap, shouldn't the free markets phase out coal power without government regulation? Countries setting targets like this and regulating the sources of energy seems to suggest that the claims made about renewables are false. Why else would the government need to intervene?
a) Depending on circumstances they might not be as cheap, but when you factor in CO2 it's a worthwhile investment.
b) Even if it it's cheaper for new infrastructure it still probably costs more to phase out some old infrastructure.
b) Renewables are cheap enough that initiatives like this are feasible.
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Well, we know what increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere does, so shouldn't companies that produce CO2 emissions be forced to pay for what they're doing? Why should the companies with coal-burning power plants get off without paying for emissions? Wouldn't that effectively be a subsidy?
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Deadlines make it harder to obfuscate slight of hand and/or laziness.
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Uh, so they have capacity to meet demand as they phase out coal power? Do you also ask why airlines don't hire blind pilots?
How is your free market cult going to stop climate change?
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)
You misspelled 'America'.
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In case the Italians vote in a disaster like Trump who starts saying things like "Beieve me, we're going to revive the coal industry like you've never seen!" They will at least have some legal precedent in place to help stave off the lunacy.
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The Italians have made Silvio Berlusconi prime minister multiple times. Donald Trump is basically the Hollywood remake of Silvio Berlusconi.
As much as I loathe the Silvio, these two are incomparable.
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The new coal plants are for smelting, not generic electric production.
Coal will never again be a generic source of power. You are deliberately misunderstanding the conversation regarding coal. And I say this as a NeverTrumper who did not vote for him. (Although I am very pleasantly surprised with what he's done.) Listen to Michael Moore - Trump has grabbed th
Re: Why is this necessary? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a neighbor who has four pit bulls. Notice I say "has" not "owns". Her adult son, who lives in the same town, is a dog fancier but can't be bothered to feed them, clean up after them, or pay for veterinary care. He just buys dogs and then dumps them on his mom, and comes over to play with them when he feels like.
This is an example of what economists call "externalized costs". The son doesn't pay the food or vet costs, so he acts like they don't exist,
Externalized costs are why the market won't eliminate coal on its own. According to a recent Scientific American article, coal particulates kill as many Americans annually as car accidents. And given the nature of the illnesses caused, that's a lot of cost, not even putting a price on human longevity or quality of life,
If all the costs of pollution were part of the purchase decision, the market would make an objectively optimal choice about continuing to use coal. But the costs are paid by someone else, so as far as the parties to the transaction are concerned they don't exist.
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I have a neighbor who has four pit bulls. Notice I say "has" not "owns". Her adult son, who lives in the same town, is a dog fancier but can't be bothered to feed them, clean up after them, or pay for veterinary care. He just buys dogs and then dumps them on his mom, and comes over to play with them when he feels like.
This is an example of what economists call "externalized costs". The son doesn't pay the food or vet costs, so he acts like they don't exist,
Externalized costs are why the market won't eliminate coal on its own. According to a recent Scientific American article, coal particulates kill as many Americans annually as car accidents. And given the nature of the illnesses caused, that's a lot of cost, not even putting a price on human longevity or quality of life,
If all the costs of pollution were part of the purchase decision, the market would make an objectively optimal choice about continuing to use coal. But the costs are paid by someone else, so as far as the parties to the transaction are concerned they don't exist.
Ok, but one issue: the "economic" point of view tries to turn things into numbers. There was some study many decades ago trying to study the costs of an infrastructure development, and they ended up having to put a value on things like, the value to the community of an old church building. Trouble is, you could invent any number for that, and so end up with totally different conclusions about which infrastructure design to go for. Anyway, that's what the psychology prof said.
I feel that, the talk about poll
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It's not that complicated. The cost he cited above is measured in lives, and science permits as to determine a fairly accurate number of how many people die from pollution. Without even trying to attach an economic cost to that, that's just a specific number of people dying. I mean, your question amounts to, "Yeah but, how do we knowwwww mannnn? How to we really knowwww?" *rolls eyes*
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Well, let's say you choose to value human life and suffering at $0 -- which is effectively what you do when you choose to ignore the cost because it's hard to put a precise value on those things. You could even argue this is a defensible philosophical position, although defending that position may take you places you don't want to go.
You can still put a hard cost on what it takes to treat 50,000 cases of fatal pulmonary disease. Is it rational to ignore that?
Here's what you're probably left with if you ch
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Well, let's say you choose to value human life and suffering at $0 -- which is effectively what you do when you choose to ignore the cost because it's hard to put a precise value on those things. You could even argue this is a defensible philosophical position, although defending that position may take you places you don't want to go.
You can still put a hard cost on what it takes to treat 50,000 cases of fatal pulmonary disease. Is it rational to ignore that?
Here's what you're probably left with if you choose to value human lives, but not factor them into cost calculations: regulation, but no basis whatsoever to decide whether that regulation should be more restrictive or less restrictive.
As I said, you also have to put a value on the positives. Why do you suppose there are still many coal plants being built? My guess is that people intuitively weigh up the fact that quick expansion of energy is a way to save lives. That's an "external benefit" and if you want to measure it in lives, and reduction in human suffering, then that has to be included.
We cannot be 100% solar and wind. Or at least, I've never heard anyone claim we can. Something has to run the steel mills. Which make the steel for
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"If solar and wind are as cheap without subsidies as recent stories claim, why do countries need to set targets like this?"
Because coal companies still get heavy subsidies all around the world, without which they can't survive. This gives them and their miners an early warning to look for another job.
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This is Europe. ... or most countries are small.
It is pretty difficult for a 'free market entity' to declare itself to be a power company and invest a billion into a new power plant. First of all: from where should it get that billion? And secondly from where should it get the land to build the plan on? Europe is small
Production cost of power is probably a bit less than 30% of the selling price. (30% production, 30% transportatiom, 20% taxes, 10% earnings)
Even while wind is cheaper than coal for new install
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Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)
virtue signaling
Well, it seems like the (unironic, not quoted) use of "virtue signalling" has mostly taken over as "SJW" as the most effective indicator that the user of it is a raging idiot.
The nice thing about "virtue signalling" is that you can accuse anything of being virtue signalling and it's impossible to deny.
For example: the parent post is simply virtue signalling. It's utterly content free, except for waving a big fat virtue flag saying "I'm attacking the right people see how virtuous I am".
Re:Why is this necessary? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that a big part of how people are using the term "virtue signaling" is to mean something like "engaging in support of values or goals I don't care about." Unfortunately, this abuse of the term is making it much less useful to discuss actual virtue signaling; the term actually arises from the study of religious communities where people would engage in public behavior that was obviously very stringent about the rules. In fact, the term could be used in a useful context for discussing environmental issues but almost never is: if for example you make a big deal about how you turn off the lights when you leave a room, but you drive a car regularly and use you a clothes dryer all the time rather than let your clothes dry on a rack or the like, there's a real chance that you are engaging in virtue signaling (or you don't understand to even an order of magnitude how much energy different things use and don't care enough to find out which sounds a lot like virtue signaling also). Yes, every little bit helps, but the big things help more.
I had a conversation a few days ago where someone more or less proudly talked about how they were so careful to turn off lights; I attempted to tell them that if they cared about their energy use, there were a lot of other things they could do. They were completely incredulous that anyone could do any of them (e.g. not own a car, even though my wife and I don't own a car in the same city that this person lives in and it works fine), and got a little irate. When I mentioned that about half the things on the list were things that we actually did, they got very upset. My conclusion is that the person cared more about signaling "I save energy" then actually saving energy. And one when someone out-signaled them, got upset. Part of their mind seemed to have trouble with the idea that one could be taking a course of action to be genuinely helpful in an optimal fashion.
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Or maybe they were just annoyed that you came off as the latest form of this guy: https://www.theonion.com/area- [theonion.com]... [theonion.com]
Sure, cars, TVs and being vegetarian are all the sort of thing that people do feel a need to tell others about. http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/664 [grrlpowercomic.com] is relevant.
It's great that you get by just fine without a car. But not everyone can or wants to. Perhaps his job requires him to work odd hours which would make other options impossible or less desirable. Perhaps he works on call and needs to respond quickly without being at the mercy of uber or zip car availability. Maybe his life is just so busy that the extra 5 minutes you take for granted here and there makes it less realistic for him. There's a multitude of other reasons.
Sure, those are valid reasons! And it is easy to add to that list. If for example one has kids it is pretty much impossible to function without a car. The person in question however is an academic who works at the same university as I do and doesn't live that far from campus.
The simple fact that you engaged in such a conversation with them and challenged them about their commitment level suggest to me that you're probably at least as interested in signalling as they are.
This is the problem with emphasis on "virtue signaling" in a nutshell; i
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Yeah, because there's no other reason to phase out one of the dirtiest means of generating electricity ever invented.
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+1 Insightful.
Not that free markets can not be a useful tool to efficiently organize economic activity in many cases, but it is nothing more than a tool which is useful in some cases and completely inappropriate in many others.
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We should definitely criticize them for not fighting harder in support of the Nazis. ~