'Coal is on the way out': study finds fossil fuel now pricier than solar or wind

[lordsummerisle]

source: theguardian.com

Around three-quarters of US coal production is now more expensive than solar and wind energy in providing electricity to American households, according to a new study.

“Even without major policy shift we will continue to see coal retire pretty rapidly,” said Mike O’Boyle, the co-author of the report for Energy Innovation, a renewables analysis firm. “Our analysis shows that we can move a lot faster to replace coal with wind and solar. The fact that so much coal could be retired right now shows we are off the pace.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/25/coal-more-expensive-wind-solar-us-energy-study

[roamer65]

1. Good. Let it die.

[NNadir]

2. This nonsense gets stated repeatedly.

In the meantime, in the real world, using real data, coal has been the fastest growing source of energy in the 21st century:

In this century, world energy demand grew by 164.83 exajoules to 584.95 exajoules.

In this century, world gas demand grew by 43.38 exajoules to 130.08 exajoules.

In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 32.03 exajoules to 185.68 exajoules.

In this century, the use of coal grew by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.

In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 8.12 exajoules to 10.63 exajoules.

10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.

2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)

The claim, often repeated, that solar and wind energy are "cheap" is a form of three card Monty. So called "renewable energy" seems "cheap" when it works. When it doesn't work, say on a still winter night, it requires a redundant system to back it up. Almost exclusively in this country, this involves burning dangerous natural gas and dumping the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere.

The interesting thing is that the dangerous fossil fuel plants have to waste energy when they cycle up and down because the sun is shining and the wind is blowing or not shining and not blowing, and of course, any plant, including a dangerous fossil fuel plant is less economic when it has lowered capacity utilization.

Usually, in the rare case where someone hyping this very dangerous scheme admits as much, we hear all about how wonderful batteries are or would be, a statement that is entirely oblivious of the thermodynamic, environmental and economic cost of this dubious approach to making so called "renewable energy" "work."

It hasn't worked. It doesn't work, at least if the criteria is addressing climate change as opposed to telling ourselves happy little lies.

Here's something called "the truth:"

Week beginning on March 17, 2019: 411.82 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 409.06 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 388.28 ppm
Last updated: March 25, 2019

Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

In the 20th century, the average annual increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the planetary atmosphere was 1.3 ppm a year.

In the 21st century, the average annual increase in carbon dioxide concentrations is 2.2 ppm year.

In the last 5 years, it's 2.6 ppm per year.

We're doing great! We should break out dancing because so called "renewable energy" is so great. And if it isn't so great, maybe we can just lie to ourselves.

We seem very comfortable with doing so.

Oh, and by the way, the news reporters at the Guardian when they try to "report" on energy are perfect examples of what I've come to think describes modern day journalists. I have come to believe that you can't get a degree in journalism if you have ever passed either a college level science course or a college level math course.

[lordsummerisle]

3. The article

only deals with US energy consumption, your figures are international.

Also, the tone of your post suggests that since alternative energy is failing to live up to its potential then we should throw in the towel and stay with fossil fuels...

[NNadir]

4. You're interpreting my remarks incorrectly.

First of all, the United States, despite much internal opinion to the contrary is not the whole world. It is true that on a per capita basis we are the world's greatest pigs when it comes to energy use, but we don't matter in the grand scheme.

I am an opponent of wind and solar energy, mostly because they don't work. On this planet - and no, I'm not speaking only of provincials in North America - we just spent over two trillion dollars in the last ten years on wind and solar energy. What do we have to show for it? Cheerleading in the Guardian?

If solar and wind did work, the numbers I cited would be different, wouldn't they?

Nuclear energy, by contrast, the subject of so much mindless hatred, ignorance and fear mongering, is both sustainable and clean and, most importantly carbon free.

Now, if you look around, you will see that a large contingent of the people foisting this useless and frankly, under the circumstances, criminal dogma about what is called "renewable energy" but is no such thing, given it's dependence on vast amounts of mined material, short life times, and fossil fuel dependence, you will see that many of them spend lots and lots and lots and lots of time engaging in anti-nuke rhetoric.

They are enormously concerned that someone might die from radiation at Fukushima and completely disinterested in the seven million people who die each year from air pollution.

I'm a scientist, not a cheerleader or a cultist. If something doesn't work, I think that the experimental approach calls for something else.

The something else in my case is nuclear energy. While under constant criticism and attack, it is still producing more than 28 exajoules per year, making it the world's largest low pollution form of energy.

Nuclear energy has prevented the release of over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide, about a year's worth, and saved 1.8 million lives that otherwise would have been lost to air pollution. It did this while everyone was calling for its end, and putting wind and solar lipstick on the fossil fuel pig.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

The dependence on fossil fuels is rising, not falling, and all the cheerleading and delusional bull from the Guardian won't change that.

The numbers don't lie, irrespective of whether provincial Americans are cheering themselves for replacing nuclear energy (25 g CO2/kwh) with gas (550 g CO2/kwh), with the latter figure sure to rise because of the inefficiencies of shutting gas plants - particularly combined cycle plants - on and off because the sun happens to be shining while the wind is blowing at random.

I've been here for 17 years, and I've heard all this cheering for "renewable energy" while watching the climate and the atmosphere that creates it degrade at an accelerating rate.

What more do we need to wake up? A start would be not hyping wrong soporific stuff from uninformed reporters at the Guardian. Can't they see what's going on with the climate? Are they out of their minds?

If it's any consolation, I'm not going to live all that much longer, but I deeply regret that my times were ruled by fear and ignorance.

In my opinion, humanity matters, Americans as a subset of humanity, a tiny fraction, not so much.

[lordsummerisle]

5. I wanted to respond

but DU told me the Ego Quotient for this thread has already been exceeded...