135-Year-Long Streak Is Over: Renewables Overtake Coal, But Lag Far Behind Oil and Natural Gas (forbes.com) 187
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Last week the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported something extraordinary. For the first time in 135 years, last year U.S. consumption of renewables surpassed consumption of coal. There are two interrelated reasons for this: The collapse of coal consumption over the past decade, which was fueled by the rise of cheaper alternatives. I have covered the reasons for coal's collapse previously. The short version is that policies to curb carbon emissions were put in place about the same time the shale boom and renewable power revolutions created cheaper, cleaner alternatives to coal. The graphic above shows the surge in renewables that helped collapse coal demand. This surge is better shown by the following graphic, which highlights the three categories of modern renewables that have driven the consumption surge: Wind power, solar power, and biofuels. The report points out that fossil fuels still dominate our energy consumption. "Last year the U.S. consumed 11.3 quadrillion BTUs (quads) of coal and 11.5 quads of renewables," adds Forbes. "But we also consumed 36.7 quads of petroleum and 32.1 quads of natural gas. Each of these categories of fossil fuel consumption was greater than our combined consumption of renewables and coal, which provides a broader perspective on our energy consumption."
"In total, the U.S. consumed 80.5 quads of fossil fuels, 11.5 quads of renewables, and 8.5 quads of nuclear power. Renewables represented 11.4% of U.S. energy consumption in 2019, versus 8.1% a decade ago."
"In total, the U.S. consumed 80.5 quads of fossil fuels, 11.5 quads of renewables, and 8.5 quads of nuclear power. Renewables represented 11.4% of U.S. energy consumption in 2019, versus 8.1% a decade ago."
Quads (Score:2)
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In other news: Renewables were ahead of coal in the 19th century.
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Question: How many power stations were there in 1885?
Re:Quads (Score:5, Informative)
Question: How many power stations were there in 1885?
Power stations weren't really a thing in 1885. Most transmission was still DC, which can't be stepped up or down with transformers. Since transmission was inefficient and each voltage needed an independent generator, centralized power stations didn't make much sense. Instead, generators were placed where the demand was. Each factory would have its own coal-fired generator.
The big switch to AC was in the 1890s. Centralized power stations made more sense after that.
In 1887, America had 68 AC power stations and 121 DC-based stations [wikipedia.org]. But these were small specialized stations, maybe only generating power for streetcars, or perhaps a grid of street lights.
Re:Quads (Score:5, Informative)
Very few. But the article is highlighting energy usage, not electricity. Electricity just happens to be one of the major forms in which we consume energy, but it's hardly the only one. There's a lot of thermal energy for heating buildings and industrial processes. There's a lot of energy in transportation. A fun way of presenting this is the EIA's Energy Consumption by Sources and Sectors [eia.gov] graph, or this one from Lawrence Livermore [llnl.gov]
As the graphs show, the dominant form of energy in the early decades of the U.S. were renewables, almost entirely hydropower. Essentially none of that was electrical generation - it was all mechanical power for mills of one sort or another.
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You are quoting approximate Higher Heating Values of the fuels (some of them a little bit lower than the numbers I see googling around). But not all of that is converted to usable energy. You need to use the Lower Heating Values, unless you're bringing the products of combustion back to their original temperatures and condensing all water vapor, etc.
Also, you're forgetting the conversion of gallons (a measure of volume) to some measure of mass, which has to be done as some
Just coal (Score:4, Insightful)
I think renewables versus non-renewables, or at least renewables versus hydrocarbons, would be a more meaningful comparison.
Re:Just coal (Score:4, Insightful)
I think renewables versus non-renewables, or at least renewables versus hydrocarbons, would be a more meaningful comparison.
Why lump all renewable energy sources together? Should we not break that out into wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and biomass? We could. From that we will find that wind and hydro really dominate in this and solar contributes little more than a rounding error. Wood and other biomass fuels contribute quite a bit but I'd rather see wood used for building material (especially since this is an effective carbon sink). I'd also rather see crop land used for food and clothing crops instead of energy crops or getting paved over with solar panels.
I remember seeing people celebrate that former tobacco fields were being covered in solar PV panels. What a waste of good land. That should instead be used to grow cotton, sunflowers, wheat, strawberries, cabbage, or seeded with wild grass and left to nature. Before someone mentions "agrivoltaics" I'll consider that an improvement of what they are doing now but that's not what people are doing. Yes, agrivoltaics does allow for electricity and crops on the same land but I'm not seeing people do that. Likely because that costs a lot of money. Doing that means that large harvesters cannot be brought in to get the crops. Even with the minimal shading that happens there is a noticeable loss in crop production so even with hand harvested crops there is little incentive to go this route. The people that grow crops want to grow crops. If someone wants to make this harder for them by putting solar PV panels in the way then they will have to be paid enough to make it worth the effort. This means rising costs for food and energy.
We should be breaking these energy sources out separately. Then we can see just how shitty solar power is by comparison with just about anything else we could do for producing energy.
Re:Just coal (Score:5, Funny)
This is becoming tiresome.
Show me on the doll where the solar panel touched you.
Re:Just coal (Score:4, Informative)
This is becoming tiresome.
Show me on the doll where the solar panel touched you.
My taxes. My wallet.
This is getting tiresome, seeing money that taxpayers earned being flushed down the toilet by elected officials trying to by votes with solar power projects that fail to lower CO2 emissions or lower energy prices. If some private citizen wants to pay their own money on a solar power project then that's fine by me. What we don't need is a solar power industry propped up by regulations and taxation, which has only raised energy prices and done little to nothing to lower CO2 emissions.
End all energy subsidies. If solar power is so great then it doesn't need subsidies.
Re:Just coal (Score:4)
I have solar panels on my roof, but I agree that solar subsidies are a bad idea.
There was an article in Scientific American a few years back about the effectiveness of different carbon reduction policies. Solar panel subsidies were one of the least effective per dollar spent. About a hundred times less effective than the best policy when measuring over the next century.
The most effective policy was making contraceptives more available to women in developing countries.
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I have solar panels on my roof, but I agree that solar subsidies are a bad idea.
There was an article in Scientific American a few years back about the effectiveness of different carbon reduction policies. Solar panel subsidies were one of the least effective per dollar spent. About a hundred times less effective than the best policy when measuring over the next century.
The most effective policy was making contraceptives more available to women in developing countries.
Solar and wind don't need subsidies any more. Coal does, nuclear does and fracking gas and fracking oil needs the US government to walk from OPEC country to OPEC country with a big spiky stick issuing threats to make sure they don't drop carbon fuel prices into regions where the US fracking industry is hopelessly unprofitable.
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The most effective policy was making contraceptives more available to women in developing countries.
That is nonsense. Most developing countries are already close to stable population. And most of the CO2 is produced in America and Europe and not in a developing country.
Stop breading [Re:Just coal] (Score:3)
Yep, make the brown-people stop breading.
Yeah, there's too much bread in the world.
(The world only kneads so much.)
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End all energy subsidies
Funny, you sure seemed OK with these recent DOE subsidies [slashdot.org].
Re:Just coal (Score:4, Insightful)
The market is concerned with short term profit, not about long term sustainability. Without some form of counterbalance (eg regulation) you will just end up with destruction...
Not giving a shit about the environment is much cheaper than making any effort to preserve it. Burning the dirtiest fuels and dumping of toxic waste is the cheapest and most profitable course of action. If companies are free to do this, then this is exactly what they will do. Any companies that choose not to will end up being more expensive than their competitors and being forced out of the market.
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If companies are free to do this, then this is exactly what they will do.
Stronger statement: when companies were free to do that then that is exactly what they did. See, e.g. rivers catching fire.
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This is becoming tiresome.
Show me on the doll where the solar panel touched you.
My taxes. My wallet.
This is getting tiresome, seeing money that taxpayers earned being flushed down the toilet by elected officials trying to by votes by subsidising an unprofitable coal mining industry ... blah blah blah ...
Now show us on the doll where else the solar panel touched you...
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Then get off the grid. Seriously, you have no idea just how much the energy you use is subsidized all over the world. Irrelevant of how its produced or transferred or where it is used, every watt that comes to you has a huge spread of subsidies so that you don't need to deal with the political & environmental fluctuations from every corner of the world for every part of the supply chain.
Not enough to worry about [Re:Just coal] (Score:3)
This is becoming tiresome. Show me on the doll where the solar panel touched you.
My taxes. My wallet. This is getting tiresome, seeing money that taxpayers earned being flushed down the toilet by elected officials trying to by votes with solar power projects
The amount of your taxes used on solar power is so trivial that you can't make a pie chart large enough for the wedge to be visible. Really.
If taxes are your real issue, you're looking in the wrong place.
e.g., https://i.insider.com/50887413... [insider.com]
...and if you're ready to say "there it is, that little green wedge named "Department of Energy"-- no. Most of the DOE budget goes to nuclear-- a big part to nuclear weapons and maintaining existing weapons, a somewhat smaller but still large part to cleaning up pas
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If solar power is so great then it doesn't need subsidies.
That comment applies to literally every form of energy all of which is subidies in one form or another. But the reality is solar doesn't need subsidies. It is more than financially viable on its own. However our goal is not to sit here and wait for attrition to slowly find a to stop us fucking ourselves. Hence subsidies are used to accelerate a transition.
And they have worked amazingling. Thanks to subsidies production has increase. Thanks to subsidies costs have come down. Thanks to subsidies R&D has b
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End all energy subsidies. If solar power is so great then it doesn't need subsidies.
Everything new needs subsidies. Or it never comes to market.
Are you a clown?
Well, most subsidies come in form of multibillionaires investing into something new to bring it to market. Or do you think such things popped up from a garage and suddenly dominated a market and replaced old obsolete technology?
Everything new comes by one for of subsidizing ... why not with taxes where you have influence with your vote? About what mu
Re:Just coal (Score:4, Informative)
I leave how it works out to that as an exercise for you. But think of it in realistic terms that no power source is realistically priced and that if they were all priced to reflect their true cost, we'd have a lot of people not having power.
No. That's not how the economy works. Energy subsidies will only increase the cost people pay for energy. The government takes your money through taxes. A portion of that is consumed in overhead. What remains goes to the people producing the energy, who then charge you the difference in your energy rates. Take out the subsidies and a lot of overhead costs are gone. Take out the subsidies and people are paying for energy that is cheapest and not the energy that gets the most subsidies.
Subsidies do not lower energy costs, it only increases it.
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Cathedrals were not government projects? Why do Libertarians never know anything about history? I suppose if they did they'd have to stop being Libertarians.
Cathedrals were built by lords and barons and kings **WHO WERE THE GOVERNMENT** and who extracted their wealth by taxes on their subjects. You don't think the community got together and assembled a cathedral in their spare time, do you? In the Americas the situation was slightly different, the cathedrals were often built by the offspring of the con
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I leave how it works out to that as an exercise for you. But think of it in realistic terms that no power source is realistically priced and that if they were all priced to reflect their true cost, we'd have a lot of people not having power.
No. That's not how the economy works. Energy subsidies will only increase the cost people pay for energy. The government takes your money through taxes. A portion of that is consumed in overhead. What remains goes to the people producing the energy, who then charge you the difference in your energy rates. Take out the subsidies and a lot of overhead costs are gone. Take out the subsidies and people are paying for energy that is cheapest and not the energy that gets the most subsidies.
Subsidies do not lower energy costs, it only increases it.
So subsidising hopelessly unprofitable coal and nuclear energy is economic stupidity? Glad we agree on that ...
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That's not how most subsidies work at all.
For example nuclear in the UK is guaranteed around £100/MWh* no matter what, increasing with inflation. That's the cost that the suppliers (middle men) pay, and is reflected in the price charged to consumers.
Another massive subsidy is free unlimited insurance given to nuclear plants. It only costs anything when a Fukushima style disaster comes about, but then it /really/ hurts your wallet.
Expedited planning permission, assistance with environmental impac
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Subsidies do not lower energy costs, it only increases it.
You're thinking short term, and clearly have no concept of economics, economies of scale or the point of subsides. But as long as you pay 0.01% less taxes today amirite!
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Again, that overhead never goes away. It just never does.
Yes, it does go away. No subsidies and there's no overhead costs in managing the collection and distribution of those subsidies.
I'm sorry I wasted my time on the matter.
I'm afraid I'm wasting my time too. You seem stuck on the idea that the private industry is unable to provide products and services without the government telling people how to do things. We need government in a modern society, I'm not arguing that we don't need a government. There were electric lights and electric utilities before the government came in to fuck it up.
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You seem stuck on the idea that the private industry is unable to provide products and services without the government telling people how to do things.
Obviously it is, exactly that actually the role of a government. Otherwise you do not need one.
And, if it was not needed, why is USA e.g. not CO2 free now? Oops? Because only legislation can force the industry to go CO2 free. Except for a few examples who want to make advertising that they only use clean energy.
Re:Just coal (Score:4, Interesting)
So you can pretend that there is some way we get to complete deregulation.
Who said anything about deregulation? I'm saying we can avoid the overhead of subsidies, and therefore get lower energy costs, by not having subsidies.
Just taking subsidies cost money because the government will not give subsidies for nothing. The people getting them have to file for them and this takes people and time, costing money. Subsidies always come with strings attached, conditions that will cost more money. Subsidies always come with taxes to pay for them.
Intelligent and informed voters and businessmen know that subsidies cost money. There is no inevitable subsidy, someone has to vote for it. So, don't vote for it and it won't happen.
What I am saying is, You cannot avoid the government. Why are you pretending like there is some way you can?
This isn't a figment of my imagination. We can avoid government intrusion BY NOT VOTING FOR IT! President Trump just made large portions of the federal government just disappear by executive orders. I can expect him to do more of this in the future, and I can expect legislators to also shrink government. People voted for a smaller government before, they can do that again.
Why do you pretend that SJWs and moral high grounds don't exist?
Here's a moral high ground to consider, more freedom with less government. Stop voting for energy subsidies and energy costs will go lower.
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President Trump just made large portions of the federal government just disappear by executive orders
Okay I have to ask. What energy subsidies has he decreased that you applaud? I just ask because a lot of energy funds have changed over to credits as opposed to block grants. And credits require Congress, not the President to pull back. A lot that was transitioned over to credits because of the Obama threat to roll back grants to oil industry. That way the power to roll back subsidies wouldn't be in the hands of an ever changing administration.
Now I ask because I'm genuinely curious as to the "energy s
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Why do you always have this unrealistic expectation that a new industry has to be 100% in place overnight? Rome wasn't built in a day. You can also have livestock in the same fields as solar. Solar will also become more of a force once more buildings have panels and storage. - again Rome wasn't built in a day.
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Why do you always have this unrealistic expectation that a new industry has to be 100% in place overnight? Rome wasn't built in a day.
I'm not expecting an overnight change. I've simply been told for my entire life that we will have our energy from 100% renewable sources any day now. Well? Where is it? How much longer do I have to put up with this bullshit before I see something out of solar power?
I've seen wind power gain some meaningful ground. We dammed up all the rivers with a hydroelectric dam sometime in the 1950s. What I've also seen is nuclear power being held back because of solar power was supposed to replace all our nuclea
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I've simply been told for my entire life that we will have our energy from 100% renewable sources any day now.
You've been told the same things about nuclear fusion. Well, I guess in a roundabout way it's true: renewable power is actually nuclear fusion.
It's been over 40 years of the promise of solar power replacing nuclear power. It's no closer to happening now than it was then.
Judging from the annual rate of installation, you're very wrong on that. If everything goes right, 9.4 GW of new nuclear capacity will go online in 2020. Meanwhile in 2019, PV capacity corresponding to ~14 GW of nuclear capacity in terms of total production was connected to the grid. It's not just "closer to happening"; it's already happened. In 2021, it's expected t
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The one thing that baffles me is how so many people just don't even consider the massive variance in the feedstock supply chain and maintenance costs of various power sources.
When the nuclear power plant in my area needs to get refueled, it's major news. Roads get shut down, there's talk about the loss of power generation and what's going to make up for it, etc. They plan a good 6 months in advance for it, and it's a very big deal.
When the wind turbines undergo maintenance or the solar panels get washed, no
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this rate is DRASTICALLY negatively impacted by politics and the NIMBY effect
So are renewables, actually. So there's that.
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What a waste of good land. That should instead be used to grow cotton, sunflowers, wheat, strawberries, cabbage, or seeded with wild grass and left to nature.
Here's an idea. Just ditch all the corn production that is being used for making ethanol. In that area alone, you'll be able to produce hundreds of gigawatts of average power output. Plus you'll be able to grow many of those things things in that area anyway.
Even with the minimal shading that happens there is a noticeable loss in crop production
There are actually cases where it leads to *increased* production: [oranit.de]
“We found that many of our food crops do better in the shade of solar panels because they are spared from the direct sun,” says Baron-Gafford. “In fact, total chiltepin fruit production was three times greater under the PV panels in an agrivoltaic system, and tomato production was twice as great!”
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Why lump all renewable energy sources together? Should we not break that out into wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and biomass?
If you looked at the links in the summary, the second graph linked does show this:
https://specials-images.forbes... [forbesimg.com]
We could. From that we will find that wind and hydro really dominate in this and solar contributes little more than a rounding error. Wood and other biomass fuels contribute quite a bit
Yes, looks like wood, hydro, and biofuels are the three big ones. ("wood" should have been called a biofuel, of course, but since burning wood for energy is ancient, I guess they didn't want to lump them together.)
but I'd rather see wood used for building material (especially since this is an effective carbon sink).
Mostly, this is a different type of wood,.
More notably, though, there just isn't enough building material usage to notice on the scale of energy usage, in which fossil fuels us
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I'd also rather see crop land used for food and clothing crops instead of energy crops or getting paved over with solar panels
You got already hundreds of times too: basically no one is doing that.
Why would anyone do that?
The only cases I'm aware about are crop lands that got taken out of service by EU laws and got special solar subsidies in Germany. Often close to railways.
And then again: Japan is experimenting with combined solar and crop fields. Only about 30% of the field is covered with panels standing
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I think renewables versus non-renewables, or at least renewables versus hydrocarbons, would be a more meaningful comparison.
Depends on what you're trying to show. We can focus on renewables vs all fossil fuels next, but even this is quite meaningful as coal and fuel oil are the two most carbon intense energy sources we have.
Even if coal's demise was entirely due to the rise of natural gas that is still an outright win.
Next step: phase out all coal in this decade (Score:3)
We have to do that rapid phase-out to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to prevent warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial resolution global average temperature.
Natural gas superficially seems clean, and has less local air pollution concerns compared to coal, but it just slows dow the move to zero-emission energy sources, and natural gas is also a powerful greenhouse gas, especially when some of it leaks during exploration, production, and transportation.
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And replace it with more renewables, not with natural gas.
Why not replace coal with nuclear power? It would be cheaper than solar.
We have to do that rapid phase-out to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to prevent warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial resolution global average temperature.
We will not meet any CO2 emission reduction goals without more nuclear power.
Natural gas superficially seems clean, and has less local air pollution concerns compared to coal, but it just slows dow the move to zero-emission energy sources, and natural gas is also a powerful greenhouse gas, especially when some of it leaks during exploration, production, and transportation.
Natural gas is cheap, that's why we use it. If people want to see more solar power then make it cheaper than natural gas. Onshore wind is likely already as cheap as natural gas. When moved offshore then it gets expensive. If we can afford offshore wind then we can afford nuclear power. Once we gain experience in nuclear power then it will get cheaper than
Re:Next step: phase out all coal in this decade (Score:4, Informative)
When private insurance companies will reinsure decommissioning costs, then we can truly say nuclear is cheaper.
Right now- it's cheaper for us but the cost of storing and guarding the waste plus cost over runs on decomissinoing plus cost surcharges *always* fall involuntarily on future tax papers. It's immoral for us to take "cheap" nuclear power and toss the costs forward on to them. And it's also lying to say nuclear is cheaper when we do that.
Likewise- with warming sea water and disappearing glaciers- many nuclear plants may be even less efficient in the future.
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It requires a bi-annual report on the state of the decommissioning fund. What are the consequences for under-funding it? What assumptions is it based on, e.g. X years service before decommissioning is required? What happens if it needs decommissioning early?
And of course the big one, what if there is a serious accident and the piddly little $300M decommissioning fund doesn't cover the $300B clean up cost? I can tell you that in Japan's case the taxpayer took the hit, and that was just the clean-up, economic
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Re:Next step: phase out all coal in this decade (Score:4, Informative)
Subsidies had the effect of making renewables much cheaper. While nuclear (which would not even exist without massive influx of tax dollars) is still very expensive.
https://www.lazard.com/perspec... [lazard.com]
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Subsidies had the effect of making renewables much cheaper. While nuclear (which would not even exist without massive influx of tax dollars) is still very expensive.
Subsidies makes energy cheaper? How? Subsidies are just taking money from one pocket, putting it in another, and somehow thinking that this is making us money. It's an accounting illusion of money being saved.
Let's assume that subsidies do in fact make energy cheaper. What energy source has the lowest CO2 emissions? Which is the safest energy source? Which energy source has the lowest demands in labor, materials, and land per energy output? The answer for all those questions is nuclear power. Then l
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Subsidies makes energy cheaper? How?
By propping up an industry that is expected to make significant progress in terms of cost reduction to make that progress happen earlier.
Which energy source has the lowest demands in labor, materials, and land per energy output?
Antimatter? The problem is, antimatter is actually very expensive...and all is ultimately a matter of economics, and antimatter loses badly on that.
How do we know how much a nuclear power plant costs until we actually build them? The answer is we don't know.
Now THAT is true. Sadly what you find when you start building the plant is that costs will be significantly higher than what you expected.
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Solar power, lower costs, China (Score:2)
Solar power was also very expensive years ago. The costs dropped significantly because we built solar PV panels anyway. This is because of experience improving the technology and bringing economy of scale.
Er, no. The costs dropped significantly because China spent $47 billion in subsidies [scientificamerican.com] to help build its solar manufacturing sector into what it calls a “strategic industry,” dropping world prices for solar panels by 80% over five years (2008-2013).
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Here in the UK, nuclear power is subsidised because it can't compete on price and has been for decades
The UK nuclear industry is a massive pile of stupid and a great example of the government undercutting actual British industry in the most expensive way possible. That damage is long done.
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One of the reasons 4th Gen Nuclear power is appealing - many are small, modular reactors that can be built in a factory and shipped by semi and often just buried, Zero risk of meltdown (some designs are already melted fuel, all have a negative reaction coefficient, so if not powered, they simply shut down), many can burn "nuclear waste" (meaning breed thorium to fissile uranium or uranium to fissile plutonium), and can burn 70% of fuel without reprossessing and 99.5% with (the 70% is based on Beloryarsk [wikipedia.org] num
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Replacing coal with nuclear power isn't a surefire solution at this point.
Your ignorance is showing.
It takes between 10 and 30 years to build a nuclear power plant while renewables can be put in place at a much more rapid pacing.
No. It takes 3 to 5 years to build a nuclear power plant. How do I know? Because that was done routinely decades ago when the Apple II was considered the new hotness. We have better computers now to speed this process along.
It also requires a hell of a lot more planning and bureaucratic nonsense to get a nuclear power plant, not to mention protests and displacements and other potential issues.
What protests? This isn't 1978 any more. If there is "bureaucratic nonsense" holding back nuclear power then that's just a demonstration of the politicians not taking CO2 emissions seriously and therefore should be voted out of office. They cannot claim i
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Basically, your grandma can get a personal to small amount of solar energy generation going, but your grandma can not construct and operate a nuclear power plant.
You didn't know my grandma.
No, but we all wish we did, now that you put it that way.
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If there is "bureaucratic nonsense" holding back nuclear power then that's just a demonstration of the politicians not taking CO2 emissions seriously and therefore should be voted out of office.
Err not at all. The entire nuclear industry is based on one big bureaucratic nonsense nothing at all to do with CO2 and rarely anything to do with a local government. Much of the industry was handed over to self regulate through centralised bodies and they have made it all but impossible to execute projects. It's absolutely fantastic for those of us contracting in that industry. I still remember the lavish parties we had, contractors afterall charging by the sheet of paper, for them a nuclear project is a p
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No. It takes 3 to 5 years to build a nuclear power plant.
Today it is ten to twenty years. And wind and solar can be connected to god peu a peu. Nuclear power, forge the moniker, is only a Big Bang solution. It has to be completed to get connected to the grid, wind and solar not so.
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Natural gas has lead to a tremendous increase in the amount of methane.
https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
135 Year 3rd Place Streak (Score:2)
The real story (Score:5, Informative)
The good news is that even though we're still using fossil fuels, natural gas releases about half as much CO2 as coal for the same amount of energy that's produced, not to mention it doesn't have some of the other pollutants that also go along with coal. Also a lot of the gain in the renewables column is from biomass and that's by far the dirtiest as far as renewables go.
And CH4 for salt in the CO2 soup. (Score:2)
If you just look at methane use from an energy production view it is far better than using coal.
However, if you are leaking CH4 during the fracking[1] - and during incomplete combustion when used as a fuel for cars - then the calculation doesn't look so good. Simply because methane is a climate gas[2] too and it has a much higher potential than its CO2 equivalent[3].
The good side is that CH4 is faster removed from the atmosphere as CO2 would have been and that most of the methane emissions to the atmosphere
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Biomass is net zero CO2. It can be dirty (as in producing other non-CO2 pollutants) if you burn wood. But most of it [eia.gov] is ethanol, burning of solid waste (i.e. sewage), and meth
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"It isn't so much that renewables have overtaken coal as much as our coal consumption has been decreasing quite rapidly for a while now. "
It doesn't matter if you went faster or someone else in the race went slower, if you pass them then you're overtaking.
Natural gas is replacing coal and lowering CO2 (Score:4, Informative)
Another burying of the lede on what is replacing coal and lowering CO2 emissions. It's not renewable energy. It's natural gas. Also, another story ignoring what is the lowest CO2 emitting energy source we have available, and has been such for decades. A source that is also the safest we've had.
The idea of renewable energy powering the world is a delusion.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
https://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
A plan for wind, water, and sun powering the world is a roadmap to nowhere.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
Why we should favor nuclear power.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
We will not get to net zero CO2 emissions soon.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... [forbes.com]
Renewable energy is expensive.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
If climate change is a problem then why the opposition to solving it?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
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Re:Natural gas is replacing coal and lowering CO2 (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear fusion is better than fission in basically every way.
The theoretical and imaginary are always better than the practical and real.
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Nuclear fusion is better than fission in basically every way.
The theoretical and imaginary are always better than the practical and real.
Yeah, but in theory it is better.
The difference between practice and theory is that in theory they are the same, but in practice they are not.
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Nuclear fusion is better than fission in basically every way.
Except for the way that fission generates many terawatt-hours of electricity every year and that fusion doesn't work yet.
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Oh welcome back. It's nice to see you posting your nuclear propaganda again, at least you mildly have a clue on this topic.
Which nuclear company is paying you? (Score:2)
Re:Natural gas is replacing coal and lowering CO2 (Score:4, Insightful)
The cost of wind/solar doesn't include backup costs yet. At the moment existing fossil fuel infrastructure is the backup. Once you try to push renewable to 100% around the entire year, without relying on fossil fueled backup, you're going to need TWh level storage and it's going to be expensive. Whether it be hydrogen stored in old gas fields, pumped hydro or something else.
I don't think impossibly expensive, but expensive nonetheless.
I do think that as long as we shoot a few greens first, so we can fill the deserts, PV will become so cheap it will fill the deserts even without subsidy. Get rid of the silicon by using organic cells. Get rid of the glass by using polymer barriers. Get rid of all the structural metal in frame and mounting by putting it on cushions filled with foamed (bio)polymer on site. Get rid of most of the copper by going straight to multiple kV in a single panel. Just roll that out in the desert, inflate it and leave it with a robot to clean them.
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you're going to need TWh level storage
If just 10% of US vehicles will be BEVs at the point when you have 100% renewables, which is a long time in the future, you will already have TWh level storage. And those vehicles will be very good at consuming whatever power you can throw at them, all while getting rid of significant oil consumption.
Get rid of the silicon by using organic cells. Get rid of the glass by using polymer barriers. Get rid of all the structural metal in frame and mounting by putting it on cushions filled with foamed (bio)polymer on site.
Why? Metal is long-lived and easily recyclable. So is glass and silicon. "Foamed (bio)polymer", "polymer barriers" and "organic cells", on the other hand, are not. It's almost as if you didn't want PV to actual
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"Foamed (bio)polymer"
Maybe he means wood? It doesn't recycle well, but that doesn't really matter.
Re: Natural gas is replacing coal and lowering CO2 (Score:2)
Metal is expensive, just like 4mm glass.
The cheaper less efficient/durable cells don't make a lot of sense today because packaging, mounting and installation cost would simply dominate. If you can bring those all down low enough at the same time, a drop in durability and efficiency doesn't need to be a deal breaker in the desert. Plenty of space.
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Metal is expensive, just like 4mm glass.
...and long lived, and recyclable. It's much less expensive over a long period of time than constantly replacing something that degrades more rapidly and can't be simply remelted.
The cheaper less efficient/durable cells don't make a lot of sense today because packaging, mounting and installation cost would simply dominate.
That's exactly why the polymer structure doesn't make sense.
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We can absolutely do 100% renewable energy, not just electricity but everything:
Yes, we can. We just won't.
I read the claims on both sides and the math on the side of 100% renewable energy does not add up. Will we power the world on 100% nuclear power? No. We won't power the world on 100% of anything because that's not how to get the most energy at the lowest costs.
And you bring up Hinkley Point C to make your point? Sure, let's compare the worse case nuclear power plant construction to the best case solar power construction. Is that how one makes an honest and convincing case fo
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We could never power the whole world with nuclear even if we wanted to because we won't allow some countries to have it and some don't want it and don't have the infrastructure or institutions to run it.
Nice straw man.
Where did I claim we could, or should, get all of our energy from nuclear power plants? I believe we should get our electricity from a mix of nuclear, wind, hydro, and geothermal, with some natural gas in the near term to ease that transition. Because liquid hydrocarbons are just awesome transportation fuels we will have to drill for it as petroleum or synthesize these hydrocarbons using our electricity. Big ships can use nuclear power plants on board. Many passenger cars and railroads ca
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Well...
That's more evidence that the UK government is a bunch of useless fuckers than nuclear is bad per-se.
France has done a good job.
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it's all coming together now (Score:3, Funny)
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I can't keep up with all of the conspiracy theories anymore.
Me too...here's a partial list:
Pizzagate
Deep State
Crisis actors
False flags
Sandy Hook was a hoax
Asbestos poisoning is a mob-led conspiracy
Millions of illegals voting
'Fake News-- Fake Bombs'
FEMA camps
The Uranium One deal
Obama is a Kenyan Muslim
Death panels
Muslim zones
The secret merger of Canada, Mexico and the US
Common Core turning kids into homosexual globalist commies
Murder of Seth Rich, Vince Foster
Trump Tower wiretaps
FISA memo
Agenda 21
Islamic training camps in America and Sharia Law in US courts
Climate Ch
Cheap natural gas is king (Score:3)
With all the cheap sources of natural gas that have appeared in the US over the past decade or so (shale gas, fracking etc), coal would be on the way out even without renewables.
Fuck solar and wind. FUSION! (Score:2)
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Not even close. The payback is more like ten to one.
Primary energy vs. useful energy (Score:2)
One thing you have to keep in mind in these kind of comparisons is that much of the energy released by burning stuff isn't actually that useful. For instance, when you convert 1 ICE car on the road to a BEV, the sum on the renewable side may only grow X while the sum on the fossil side may be lowered by 3X.
Even for heating purposes, a heat pump can double or triple the utility of the energy delivered by, say, a wind turbine.
Thank God (Score:2)
A bunch of people hare arguing about the cash subsidies, without mentioning the real issue - illness subsidies.
It isn't just about money, there is the problem of the commons, in this case major health and environment issues created by the energy sources.
Coal is the worst, pumping out mercury and radioactive thorium in addition to the Carbon dioxide.
The entire reason we have subsidies is not to make energy cost less $, but instead to make energy cost less pollution. Photovoltaic solar has EARNED those subsi
Re:A round of applause! (Score:4, Insightful)
"The USA is the best place in the world to live"
Now you're just being funny.
"If they think that places like Norway or Canada have a better idea on how to run a nation"
Comedy gold.
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The USA is the best place in the world to live. If it wasn't then we'd be seeing people swim towards Cuba from Florida instead of the other way around, and we'd see Americans flee into Mexico.
This kind of is you in a summary isn't it. You only ever compare 2-3 three options out of a possible of 194 different options in an attempt to come up with a world view that suits your bias.
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The USA is the best place in the world to live.
You've obviously never been outside the US. There are lots of great places in the world to live. Maybe your MAGA hat is cutting off the circulation to your brain.
I do wish that these America haters would just leave. If they think that places like Norway or Canada have a better idea on how to run a nation then they should go live there.
Typical loser attitude. Fuck you, I'm not going to leave- I'm going to stay and make my country better instead of cutting and running like you cowards suggest. You can leave if you're so unhappy.
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They don't want Americans.
Then they must be racists.
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Wind power might be the worst, but it isn't.
Solar panels use only small amounts of rare earths.