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For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

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Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#151
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper that is sometimes true, and gas companies try to lean in hard on that. Gas can do 480 gCO2/kWh vs. coal's 800+. But when you include wellhead and pipeline losses of methane they end up looking almost exactly equal, according to many studies. So it's not really progress. Also, half the CO2 of coal is nowhere even close to acceptable. We need things that do about 1/20th the carbon of coal or less, so wind, sol…

amusing units √(kilowatt hour / 480 g) = 2700 m/s √(kilowatt hour / 800 g) = 2100 m/s 480 g is 60% of 800 g so i guess my vaguely remembered percentage was about right wrt co₂ reduction i think carbon capture is probably going to be necessary

Grams CO₂-equiv emitted per kWh of electricity generated are the units used by everyone, e.g. the IPCC to quantify the carbon intensity of energy sources. E.g. for a graph of data from IPCC, see [1].

Again, 480 is not all-inclusive. If you look at the whole system, gas is no better than coal, due to wellhead and pipeline leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/img/lifecycle-carbon-emissions-nol...

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#152
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to produce them.

Not fully true. There are incredibly competent manufacturing engineers living there. By a factor of at least 5 over the US

I am not contending Chinese are any shape or form incapable, given the factory floor of the world for a generation they do have best of the best.

The issue is State subsidies and Environmental and Labor regulation that is flimsy. Any American company operating on US soil will be uncompetitive from Day 1 trying to follow, Federal, State and EPA regulation.

As much as Solar Panels are touted in Environmental community, they are a product of intense chemical process that produces poisonous waste.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that dams aren't just built for electricity. They're also built to control flooding and to control water supply. I'm not saying that's the case in Laos, but it does happen. People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live without water.

I cringe each time that I hear a foreigner complain about China's Three Gorges Dam as an "environmental damage". The number of people who have died from floods on those rivers in the last 2000 years in mind-boggling. Yes, it generates a lot of electricity, but it is dual purpose to also control flooding. People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live without water. This part is also interesting. Whil…

If flood control is the main concern, then the size of the dam does not have to be that of Three Gorges -- there are many things that went into three gorges and Vanity of CCP is a significant part of them.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#154
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have the impression that gas produces something like 40 percent less co₂ per joule than coal? in some sense that's 'low carbon'

On paper that is sometimes true, and gas companies try to lean in hard on that. Gas can do 480 gCO2/kWh vs. coal's 800+. But when you include wellhead and pipeline losses of methane they end up looking almost exactly equal, according to many studies. So it's not really progress. Also, half the CO2 of coal is nowhere even close to acceptable. We need things that do about 1/20th the carbon of coal or less, so wind, sol…

There’s also some methane emissions from coal that you need to consider.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#155
post #136
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the US try to lead solar panel technology ? China has many talented engineers and plenty of venture capital. I'd prefer them to invest it in solar panel manufacturing and power electronics rather than social media, ai or Telco technology.

Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to produce them.

Honest question: so why aren't iPhones cheap?

EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor people who built it cannot afford it"

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#156
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not at all funny when apparently Germany had to reopen coal plants. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/germany-b... "Utility Steag GmbH will add four hard-coal plants with a capacity of 2.5 gigawatts to the market within the next few weeks, while Uniper SE will prolong operations at its 345-megawatt Scholven-C hard-coal-fired power plant, the companies said on Friday. " https://www.npr.org/2022/…

You left out the specific reason as to why they re-opened coal plants at the end of 2022: "Germany is deploying about 3 gigawatts of coal-fired generation to ensure there are enough electricity supplies to make it through the winter amid curtailed natural gas supplies from Russia." This was done out of necessity to ensure Germany did not run out of natural gas during the winter months as the gas imports from Russia h…

Another reason is the maintenance issues in French nuclear reactors.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#157
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to produce them.

Honest question: so why aren't iPhones cheap? EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor people who built it cannot afford it"

Because they have a half-eaten apple as a logo.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#158
post #87
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad the capital requirements upfront are so expensive for nuclear and literally no one wants to fund a project that will cost at least $8 billion, won't be online for a decade, and the power it be will produce is already more expensive than that of smaller renewable projects. Who knows maybe once renewable market penetration is nearly maxed out and if storage tech somehow hasn't caught up enough despite the great…

Nuclear is not offering the best price per Mwh now ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source ), but it will certainly in the next decades. Solar and wind power sources requires an absurd amount of metal (sometimes rare metals) to build the generators (solar panels, wind turbines, etc). This metal is extracted today with an enourmous consumption of fossil fuels, and it will be difficult to have a g…

basically you are working from wildly incorrect information and consequently coming to completely incorrect conclusions

it's very difficult to predict future technological developments, especially as to pricing, but getting nuclear power down to the price of pv would require dramatic reductions in the cost of heat engines; the nuclear island is only a part of the cost of a nuclear power plant, and the rest of the plant is by itself enough to make the plant economically uncompetitive

solar panels, as i understand it, contain minuscule quantities of metal; they're mostly silicon and glass, with much smaller amounts of boron, phosphorus, aluminum, copper, silver, and eva. but they are commonly mounted in aluminium frames, on the order of a gram of aluminum per peak watt or ten grams per average watt

refining aluminum or iron from ore does cost a significant amount of energy, but there's no real obstacle to doing it with renewable energy and no fossil fuels; aluminum smelting pots won't even notice, and in the case of steelmaking, the technical problems of reduction with hydrogen are interesting but don't pose a risk to the success of the enterprise. the energy payback time on current solar panels is a few months, which is to say they generate all the energy needed to reproduce themselves (metals and all) in that time

aluminum, silicon, and iron are among the most abundant elements in the earth's crust (#3, #2, and #4, respectively), so there's no real risk of having to dig for them. even copper averages 100 ppm. with silver there's a bit of a pinch, as about 10% of world silver production is going to solar panels; copper works as a substitute but significantly impairs efficiency

windmills use the same kind of electrical generator you'd use in a coal or nuclear plant, just at a lower duty cycle, so at worst they have a small disadvantage relative to fossil fuels in terms of metal use. the counterbalancing advantage is that they don't need steam plumbing or a parsons turbine; windmill blades are fiberglass, not metal

(sometimes generators do use rare elements, but that's just a matter of what's cheaper at the moment)

that's why renewable energy from pv and wind is already much cheaper than fossil energy and continuing to get cheaper

if your conclusion were correct, then despite your posited subsidy from cheap fossil fuels, pv and wind energy would already be more expensive than fossil-fuel energy, as it was until about 02014, because their energy payback time would have to be decades. you're two orders of magnitude outdated

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#159
post #7

Nice. The economics of renewables are really hard to beat. I hope we speed up the construction speed and at the same time electrify more sectors.

The economics of renewables are hard to beat until night falls and the wind stops blowing, at which point the cost jumps to $infinity/MWh

If the wind stops blowing that means no new weather systems are being formed. In which case the sun must have stopped shining and the entire planet is doomed.

Too late to worry about electricity in that case!

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#160
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to produce them.

Honest question: so why aren't iPhones cheap? EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor people who built it cannot afford it"

Because you’re not just paying for a physical device. You’re also paying for the software that runs on it which is best in class. And before people start saying it’s not, how many people are running 7 year old androids compared to iPhones? In USD, A brand new iPhone, kept for 7 years works out at 32 cents a day - phenomenally cheap for something integral to modern day life. And that’s not even taking into account you can most likely sell it for $50/$100 at the end of that seven years, making it even cheaper.
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