The US Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/The-US-Coal-Industry-Is-Declining-Irreversibly.html

by toomuchtodo • 6 years ago

39 32 6 years ago

Avicebron2• 6 years ago

This seems good as long as the industry is being supplanted domestically with renewable alternatives at the same rate it's falling.

toomuchtodo5• 6 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23567153

In the US, renewables are expected to see fifty times as much net capacity added in the next three years as nuclear and fossil fuels combined.
This particular item was widely commented on in the media, as SDC releases often are. But the issue everyone covered was the fact that renewables accounted for 100% of installations in April [1]. It seems nearly nobody noticed the paragraph above.
I was stunned by the idea that renewables would outpace fossil fuels plus nuclear by a factor of 50 over the next three years. In fact, I double-checked the data at FERC. It is true, as you can see for yourself in the Energy Infrastructure Update for April 2020 [2].
Another thing, however, is that the news from the real world suggests that coal, in particular, is declining faster than FERC, or anyone else, could have expected. Every week, I seem to see two or three announcements of coal-burning power plants being closed ahead of schedule. These are retirements that FERC has not yet taken into account.

andromeduck3• 6 years ago

It shouldn't be that surprising as wind and solar recieve 10x and 40x more subsidies per unit energy generated vs nuclear. Hydro is even lower.

https://files.texaspolicy.com/uploads/2020/04/23135621/Benne...

gaukes• 6 years ago

The US also gets a larger share of its energy from oil relative to coal. With the shale boom, oils become cheaper and more reliable in the US and burns more cleanly than coal.

diogenescynic6• 6 years ago

Among those renewables are “biomass” which is just burning trees. If we burned all the trees in the country it would only be enough fuel for a year. This is replacing one awful fuel source with another. Wind and solar rely heavily on fossil fuel infrastructure or directly—-solar panels are made with coal and mined quartz. And it has to be replaced ever few years. It’s looking more and more like nuclear is the only real option but that is another terrifying option because companies are greedy and will mismanage it and we can’t afford nuclear disasters.

Avicebron2• 6 years ago

I agree that using biomass is a pretty shady metric unless there is strong side by side evidence that the mass is growing back at the same rate of consumption. Unlikely in the case of trees.

I'm also a proponent of nuclear after my thermodynamics professor sat my class down and explained why solar is a dirty process to get up and running and biomass is not sustainable.

I think the potential is in advancement of nuclear power plant tech. The US is working with pretty old 20th century technology and there isn't much movement in the space that I know of probably due to fear.

skissane4• 6 years ago

solar panels are made with coal

You are talking about solar panel manufacturing being an energy-intensive process. It is true that over 50% of the global production of solar panels happens in China, and most of the electricity used in the manufacture of those panels comes from burning coal. But there is no reason in principle why solar panel manufacturing could not be powered by electricity produced by non-fossil fuel based power sources (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal etc).

China is going to move away from fossil fuels for electricity generation over time. Slower than it should, but it is going to do it. And just because China controls so much of that industry right now is no guarantee that it will continue to do so into the future.

ericcumbee• 6 years ago

biomass is a lot more than just trees. and even then its byproducts of forestry product production like saw dust.

ethanwillis• 6 years ago

It seems good as long as your local economy is actually given a chance to retool and not become a ghost town.

You have people on the coasts buying up cheap housing from rural people. You have megacorps essentially squatting on what could be productive land for the communities. And then you have poor people who can't afford to take a couple of years to go get educated in another discipline. Not to mention lack of access to credit to retool their economy by forming new businesses.

totalZero2• 6 years ago

Even if you replace coal with natural gas, you're doing the environment a favor.

Gibbon12• 6 years ago

My gut feeling is that natural gas plants can make a profit by filling in for unmet demands created by renewables intermittency. You can make money by letting out contracts to provide standby capacity. That situation may last decades.

Coal plants though don't spin up fast enough to do that and are low margin as a result.

The US Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly

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