Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#31

Post by pfdietz »

toohotatopic wrote: post #14

Why should energy costs fall below their current levels? There are billions of people who only consume a fraction of the energy that citizens of industrialized countries consume. If anything, energy prices will rise and coal will remain profitable. Energy will be needed to build all those roads and cars. And then there is the scarcity of sand. How can sand for concrete be artificially created but with more energy?

You might as well ask why should computer prices fall. Energy costs fall because of advances in technology. Wind and PV have now brought the very rapid cost reductions of the tech sector to the energy sector. PV costs fell by nearly an order of magnitude in the last decade.

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#32

Post by ineedasername »

nick_kline wrote: post #29
_bxg1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) The economic snowball we're finally starting to see for renewables is largely driven by governments finally being forced by the undeniable reality to take real regulation steps. b) The economic cost of waiting 10 years to address an exponential process is going to far outweigh the cost there would've been to give an extra "oomph" to action, I'm sure.

"Exponential processes just don't really exist in nature". Hopefully no one (cough, politicians) says this anymore, after Covid-19.

"Exponential processes just don't really exist in nature"

Wait, do people actually say that?

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#33

Post by fred_is_fred »

jethro_tell wrote: post #28
jseip wrote: post #21

Thank you natural gas!

Yeah, I love lighting my water on fire and fracking earthquakes. Switching America's oil subsidies to solar and wind would be much better than pretending that fracking shale is a net plus.

Where I live in the US, pretty much none of the oil companies are fracking to get gas, they are fracking to get oil. The gas is effectively a waste product - and honestly if we don't burn it for heat, they will flare it - so at least by using it in our homes and power plants it has some value and also replaces coal.

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#34

Post by ineedasername »

roenxi wrote: post #13
_bxg1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) The economic snowball we're finally starting to see for renewables is largely driven by governments finally being forced by the undeniable reality to take real regulation steps. b) The economic cost of waiting 10 years to address an exponential process is going to far outweigh the cost there would've been to give an extra "oomph" to action, I'm sure.

> largely driven by governments ... tak[ing] real regulation steps Which ones? I'm only aware of serious efforts in Germany and they basically torpedoed their own electricity use (their per-capita trends aren't good). There aren't that many governments who could stomach doing that to their people.

Governmental regulations are not merely proscriptive, i.e., "You shall not pollute above these levels or we will fine you/shut you down". They are also prescriptive: "If you build renewable infrastructure we shall provide direct subsidies/indirect tax breaks to support it."

Both are regulations.

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#35

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

colechristensen wrote: post #24
greglindahl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of coal plants in developed countries are closing. The least efficient ones are most likely to close. That should tend to make the % unprofitable fall, but it's rising instead.

Electricity production (in the building power plants sense) isn't very elastic. Profitability wouldn't be the only, or likely the primary consideration for what to close and when. The market for electricity isn't very "efficient" in that way, a utility or market doesn't buy and sell from an individual power plant so the price/profitability of a single plant doesn't reflect the supply/demand from that plant.

Yeah, you’d think if 41% were unprofitable this year then next year there’d only be 4000 odd coal-fired plants, and so on and so forth.

So obviously profitability isn’t the only thing keeping these plants open or not.

Additionally:

but this risks locking in high-cost coal power

Coal is only high-cost when compared against certain metrics that favour non-coal electricity sources.

On the whole electricity is extremely cheap, even from fossil sources, and where the end user may pay enough to care about total usage, the major components of the retail price are not source related, but rather delivery / tax / administrative / bureaucratic.

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#36

Post by newswriter99 »

jethro_tell wrote: post #28
jseip wrote: post #21

Thank you natural gas!

Yeah, I love lighting my water on fire and fracking earthquakes. Switching America's oil subsidies to solar and wind would be much better than pretending that fracking shale is a net plus.

>Yeah, I love lighting my water on fire and fracking earthquakes

Natural gas from fracking does not cause burning tap water.

https://www.cred.org/is-fracking-connected-to-burning-tap-wa...

Fracking-related earthquakes are either minimal or bebeficial

https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/does...

0/10 "green energy" shill. Fracking gave us dirt cheap natgas, which is damn cleaner than coal AND why your electricity prices havent gone up in the last decade. Educate yourself.

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#37

Post by mrpopo »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #33
jethro_tell wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I love lighting my water on fire and fracking earthquakes. Switching America's oil subsidies to solar and wind would be much better than pretending that fracking shale is a net plus.

Where I live in the US, pretty much none of the oil companies are fracking to get gas, they are fracking to get oil. The gas is effectively a waste product - and honestly if we don't burn it for heat, they will flare it - so at least by using it in our homes and power plants it has some value and also replaces coal.

And fracking lives solely on government subsidies and will receive even more subsidies after this crisis. Without subsidies, fracking's gone and coal's back up. I fail to see how your comment responds to OP's suggestion of divesting subsidies to support renewables instead.

Re: Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

#40

Post by FreeFull »

XCSme wrote: post #38

Is this good or bad news? I assume good for the environment, right? Or creating the alternative sources would generate more CO2?

Burning coal is generally known for being really bad for air quality. The ash is somewhat radioactive, and if there's any sulphur in the coal it'll cause acid rain. The exhaust from burning the coal nowadays ends up going through treatment to clean it up (remove sulphur and particulates), which is an added expense. In comparison, natural gas tends to be rather pure, so when burned it produces just carbon dioxide and water.
Post reply on HN