91–100 of 109 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
To have this discussion, one needs to include information about the entire energy market. If you heavily subsidize low-no carbon footprint sources, you devalue the others.
Additionally you need to separate base load sources from load following sources. Load following coal plants might be more prevalent by number (ie 95%) and in direct competition with natural gas. The smaller the total energy output the more competition you have from solar and wind, which are highly subsidized and reduce margins.
Reuter’s would do better to give this proper context.
Japan is building new plants. You'll see that news a bunch. What you do not see is the why. Japan has companies which are building new coal plants in order to replace existing plants. Old coal plants have lower efficiency. Old coal plants produce more pollution. A none trivial reason why so many old coal plants are unprofitable is because other newer fossil fuel plants can out compete them. Sure renewables play a par…
Do you have a source for that information? Old coal plants will presumably be able to operate on the marginal cost of the coal plus maintenance, where as new plants have a big initial capital spending they need to fund. Now, it is clear that some plants are so old that they're going beyond their planned lifetime and need investments. But that does not seem to be what you are hinting at?
- "How Things Work: A Coal (and Gas) Power Plant" -- https://youtu.be/TDsmJ3aheCk
- "Cleaning Coal (I.e., Dropping Acid)" -- https://youtu.be/dijpXxU1QB0
- "Burning Coal through the Decades" -- https://youtu.be/vT0cfNGxNeo
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 sys…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Computer prices are only falling when you compare processors with the same speed and monitors with the same resolution. Overall, prices might as well increase if you look at the prices of the last flagship phones or at least remain stable if you look at main memory. It comes down to the [1] Jevons paradox. >In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased t…
As PV and wind fall in cost, they will end up dictating the market price. So, you are technically correct, but otherwise wrong: the current market price is no floor for the cost of PV and wind, any more than (at any point) the cost per unit of computation or storage was the floor on the cost of computers.
I expect PV to drive the levelized cost of power below $0.01/kWh, possibly much below (recent utility scale bids in some places have the power not far above this, and extrapolating the experience curve for PV has costs falling another factor of 4 or so by the time PV becomes a globally dominant energy source.) At these costs, resistive heat from PV is cheaper than any fossil fuel heat source, per unit of thermal energy. And thermal energy is very cheap to store, compared to batteries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The virus might change that calculation to some degree, now that we know it can be transmitted via air pollution.
Do we?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v...
https://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_le-coronavirus-pourr...
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It’s a good point, and I tend to agree. However, why would I do that when everyone else isn’t . And how would I do that when there’s no economic framework for me, as an individual retail customer, to do so? Sure, I can buy 100% renewables, but here in Australia the retailers want to charge me more for that choice. Here in Tasmania the local retailer, Aurora Energy, wants an additional 6.023 cents / kWh for 100% renew…
I was asking about the underlying assumptions, not the retail market. Those are two different things. You appear to be only referring only to the latter. Surely we should be able to talk about the first before considering the second?
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"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?
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…