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More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

energy.gov

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Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#161

Post by VintageCool »

yesbut wrote: post #107
VintageCool wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there was more coal power generation in 2021 than 2020 because 2020 was an abormally low year of power consumption. If we skip over the pandemic, there was less electricty generated from coal in 2021 than 2019. Coal in the US has been in long-term decline since around 2008. Natural gas seems to be holding fairly stable at the moment. Depending on source, it looks like the US retired some 9 to 11 GW of coal…

China is producing all of the "super affordable" solar panels that everyone else are importing. All of that solar panel manufacturing requires coal.

There was more wind capacity installed in China in 2020 than there was in the US.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#162

Post by yesbut »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #147
yesbut wrote: post #71

How much fossil fuel consumption was reduced as a result?

This is an ill-posed question. What about, how have recent changes affected the carbon intensity of the US electricity grid? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-u-s-electric-power-s...

Energy consumption is increasing everywhere. Renewables are just adding to the overall available energy needed for the new consumption demand and not negating fossil fuel consumption.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#163

Post by stephen_g »

techpression wrote: post #85
stephen_g wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like your argument is the kind that sounds sort of intuitive in isolation, but is nonsensical in context. How much of the inputs into fossil fuel generators are recycled? Massively more coal, gas, oil etc. is consumed than the amount of wind turbine blades that will go to landfill. Then there’s the byproducts - in Australia, coal ash is literally 22% of all waste generated across the whole country per year. It…

That is the typical “two wrongs make a right” argument, fossil fuels being bad makes it ok for wind turbines to generate land fill too.l And I answered a statement about recycling of turbines, nothing more.

My point is that the people who suddenly seem very worried that wind turbines and other renewables produce a small amount of waste don't seem to care about the fact that fossil fuels produce a huge amount of waste (in addition to the GHG emissions). Same issue as being very worried about renewables using resources (some steel, etc.) when not caring about the huge amounts of resources (especially including the fuel itself!) consumed by fossil fuels.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#164

Post by ZeroGravitas »

yesbut wrote: post #162
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ill-posed question. What about, how have recent changes affected the carbon intensity of the US electricity grid? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-u-s-electric-power-s...

Energy consumption is increasing everywhere. Renewables are just adding to the overall available energy needed for the new consumption demand and not negating fossil fuel consumption.

If you're saying we should be rolling them out faster and banning and/or restricting fossil fuel usage further when its too carbon intense and easily replacable then I agree.

Luckily the projections are for faster growth in the future as the fossil fuel groups political stranglehold gets loosened.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#165

Post by fulafel »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #155
adrianN wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced. Solar is cheaper than nuclear and making Methane can be done when production exceeds demand. Why do you think that nuclear would be better suited for the task?

Its cheaper, but you are converting it to methane and back to electricity at abyssimal 15% efficiency, and paying for all that extra conversion infrastructure, so your costs are like 10x.

By the time your now started nuclear project is finished, renewable energy will be less than 1/10 the cost if current trends hold even remotely.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#166

Post by VintageCool »

bongoman37 wrote: post #50

That's a great thing. A singular advantage of wind over solar is that solar has a strong time dependence over the day and seasons. And the time for high solar presence is not that correlated with the consumption time. While seasonality is present over wind as well, wind can blow all through the day reducing dependence on energy storage.

Electricity demand peaks during the day and drops off at night, just like solar.

The demand peak tends to be later in the afternoon than the noon-time peak of solar, but 4-hour batteries would cover that.

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