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Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year

reuters.com

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

#61

Post by eunos »

bobthepanda wrote: post #56
teruakohatu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has shown to be willing to use natural gas as a geopolitical weapon. There is no chance China will become dependant on natural gas from outside their border.

Not only that, but Russia-Chinese relations have not always been smooth. They have had dustups over one of the longest land borders in the world before.

With this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Sino-Soviet_Border_Agreem... I think border disagreement already solved. Besides, I believe they realize the contention between them only strengthens NATO over them. I think the possible conflict nowadays is influence over central Asia. However, they might share the influence with China got the economic influence and Russia got political influence. It is interesting to predict this balance post-Putin though.

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

#62

Post by eunos »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #51
woodandsteel wrote: post #19

From what I understand there is an ongoing battle in the Chinese government between those who understand the country desperately needs to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible, and those who want to stay on coal forever. So at the same time that China has been building an enormous number of coal plants, it is also building renewable power plants and pushing hard on ev's.

>there is an ongoing battle ... between those who understand the country desperately needs to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible, and those who want to stay on coal forever. Sounds like a certain other major country.

Coal still employs a huge amount of people. Besides, coal Barrons are very rich and influential as well.

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

#63

Post by Androider »

H8crilA wrote: post #18

That's still so much better than tech companies, even tech companies 6 months ago /s Never forget how absolutely huge coal is. Those Joules are not going to be replaced with renewables any time soon. It's literally impossible because renewables need Joules themselves to be built, not just money. Money does not synthesize power generating objects; materials and energy and machinery and the approval to do so (capital)…

When did you last look at the current state of renewables? Even two years ago, the picture was completely different, but renewables are absolutely catching up. The change is fast and accelerating.

17% of energy production in the US is now renewables. 26% in China. 46% in Germany.

The economic case for deploying renewables continues to improve, and will soon hit a tipping point where operation of legacy generation systems will be more expensive than deploying and operating newer ones. Even in the US, who will want to be in the coal business then? The companies all know this, and are all pivoting from being coal|gas|x-companies to being energy-companies.

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

#65

Post by jbarciauskas »

gentleman11 wrote: post #64

Coal is one of the cheapest energy sources we have (before taking climate damage into account). Is the energy sector in general not very profitable lately?

It's an industry with highly inelastic supply and a huge drop in demand.

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

#66

Post by samatman »

kstrauser wrote: post #57
newswriter99 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 yo…

> Natural gas from fracking does not cause burning tap water. I'll take a step back from "burning", because that seems hard to prove, but it most certainly does contaminate ground water: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-cont... > Fracking-related earthquakes are either minimal or bebeficial That's the most insane claim I've read on the Internet this week. You should be ashamed for saying that.…

It's possible. I have no clue if fracking does so, and the link doesn't support this, but hear me out:

If you can choose between, say, five Richter 3 earthquakes, or one Richter 7, you definitely want the five small ones.

IF fracking induced small earthquakes and IF those small earthquakes relieved pressure such that a big one didn't happen, then those small earthquakes would be beneficial.

This is comparable to deliberately lighting small brushfires to use up fuel and prevent destructive wildfires.

It would be a remarkable coincidence if fracking only caused such beneficent and salubrious earthquakes, and never triggered worse ones. But were it so, it would be good.

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

#67

Post by macintux »

Reason077 wrote: post #52
adventured wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike the USA, China does not have a lot of natural gas. China doesn't need a lot of natural gas within its borders. It's neighbors with Russia, which can supply via pipeline all the natural gas that China can take. The issue is it remains cheaper to do coal domestically in China than to buy natural gas from Russia, so they overwhelmingly prefer to do that still. It's also of course expedient for China to use coal…

Perhaps, but it’s hard to see China ever wanting to become too dependent on imported natural gas. They like coal not only because it’s cheap (which, increasingly, it isn’t), but because it’s domestic .

The virus might change that calculation to some degree, now that we know it can be transmitted via air pollution.

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

#68

Post by greglindahl »

eunos wrote: post #62
IIAOPSW wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there is an ongoing battle ... between those who understand the country desperately needs to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible, and those who want to stay on coal forever. Sounds like a certain other major country.

Coal still employs a huge amount of people. Besides, coal Barrons are very rich and influential as well.

Solar is pretty labor-intensive to install, while coal is extremely mechanized.

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

#69

Post by bobthepanda »

eunos wrote: post #61
bobthepanda wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but Russia-Chinese relations have not always been smooth. They have had dustups over one of the longest land borders in the world before.

With this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Sino-Soviet_Border_Agreem... I think border disagreement already solved. Besides, I believe they realize the contention between them only strengthens NATO over them. I think the possible conflict nowadays is influence over central Asia. However, they might share the influence with China got the economic influence and Russia got political influence. It is interesting to pre…

I mean, that's for now. Russia and the US also signed an agreement over the Ukraine in 1994 and look how that went.

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

#70

Post by kstrauser »

samatman wrote: post #66
kstrauser wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural gas from fracking does not cause burning tap water. I'll take a step back from "burning", because that seems hard to prove, but it most certainly does contaminate ground water: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-cont... > Fracking-related earthquakes are either minimal or bebeficial That's the most insane claim I've read on the Internet this week. You should be ashamed for saying that.…

It's possible. I have no clue if fracking does so, and the link doesn't support this, but hear me out: If you can choose between, say, five Richter 3 earthquakes, or one Richter 7, you definitely want the five small ones. IF fracking induced small earthquakes and IF those small earthquakes relieved pressure such that a big one didn't happen, then those small earthquakes would be beneficial. This is comparable to deli…

The Richter scale is log(10), so a 7 quake is 10,000 times stronger than a 3. A lot of Bay Area residents had thought the same you mentioned over the years (it's not a crazy idea! I mean, it seems at least plausible on paper!) but that's generally accepted as untrue now; see https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-p... for example.
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