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The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

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Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#51

Post by NotSammyHagar »

strictnein wrote: post #19

I'm glad we're leaving a lot of coal in the ground, but for different reasons. If society as a whole ever slides backwards (due to global war, horrific disease, etc), it leaves a lot of fairly easily extractable energy for the future generation that survives. Dark way of looking at it, I know.

interesting. the widespread dissemination of knowledge should make it easier to bootstrap ourselves up even after an apocalypse, but we certainly have tried to use up the easily accessible energy and minerals.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#52

Post by derefr »

lettergram wrote: post #39
strictnein wrote: post #19

I'm glad we're leaving a lot of coal in the ground, but for different reasons. If society as a whole ever slides backwards (due to global war, horrific disease, etc), it leaves a lot of fairly easily extractable energy for the future generation that survives. Dark way of looking at it, I know.

There are actually things like peat moss[1], which are a semi-renewable energy, which I see being far more useful in a "dark age" scenario. Not to say, it's not good to keep coal in the ground for the same reason. Just thought I would share another tid-bit lol [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphagnum

If we only need to power a dark-age "amount" of technology, windmills and water-wheels (or small hydroelectric dams if you're lucky in choice-of-location) would cover more than enough, no? And it's not like any of those are hard to build, or require any advanced principles; they get more efficient as your tech-base improves, but people living on frontiers in the 1800s were knocking them together for their family homes as soon as electricity became a thing that anyone had any use for.

And that's assuming we don't still have access to, say, the hardcopy US Patent filing records. You could get very far indeed with basic metalworking + modern knowledge of the optimal energy-collecting shapes for rotor blades.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#53

Post by Animats »

lettergram wrote: post #39
strictnein wrote: post #19

I'm glad we're leaving a lot of coal in the ground, but for different reasons. If society as a whole ever slides backwards (due to global war, horrific disease, etc), it leaves a lot of fairly easily extractable energy for the future generation that survives. Dark way of looking at it, I know.

There are actually things like peat moss[1], which are a semi-renewable energy, which I see being far more useful in a "dark age" scenario. Not to say, it's not good to keep coal in the ground for the same reason. Just thought I would share another tid-bit lol [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphagnum

Have you ever seen a large peat moss power plant? Ireland has some. They're gross polluters.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#54

Post by philipkglass »

Trump can slow the decline of coal consumption but he can't reverse it. Investors in new generating plants expect them to operate for decades. The regulatory pendulum is going to swing back against coal within a decade. The optimal thing to do if you own an old coal plant is to run it as much as you profitably can right now, don't invest in major upgrades for the future, and be ready to scrap it whenever the EPA resumes actually protecting the environment.

The Chekhov's gun waiting to go off in electricity demand is electric vehicles. When they become a non-trivial part of transportation they'll be the biggest new demand driver for electricity in two generations. Hopefully they'll arrive in a big way shortly after the big wave of coal retirements is finished; otherwise they could keep marginal coal units lingering for a while longer.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#55

Post by Dylan16807 »

Mendenhall wrote: post #48
sfifs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you misunderstood what marginal cost means. It is the cost of generating one additional unit of power on an already​ existing infrastructure. It takes expense to mine an additional ton of coal, transport it to a power plant, burn it and convert it into electricity even after the underlying infrastructure is setup. It doesn't for solar and wind.

That falls under "rhetoric" the author takes a small unit of time "when sun is shining and wind is blowing" to then use the word "free". Thats cherry picking to the extreme and rhetoric 101. It is used to paint a picture that does not really exist. What happens to solar and wind when its night and the wind is still? By cherry picking and creating a scene which doesnt truly exist it paints a false picture of the effic…

I don't understand. If someone is giving out free balloons but only during certain hours, you shouldn't call it free?

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#56

Post by ben_w »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #51
strictnein wrote: post #19

I'm glad we're leaving a lot of coal in the ground, but for different reasons. If society as a whole ever slides backwards (due to global war, horrific disease, etc), it leaves a lot of fairly easily extractable energy for the future generation that survives. Dark way of looking at it, I know.

interesting. the widespread dissemination of knowledge should make it easier to bootstrap ourselves up even after an apocalypse, but we certainly have tried to use up the easily accessible energy and minerals.

Most of the dissemination is digital, which isn't so helpful if there is anything that kills power supplies. Saving coal might be a good part of a global disaster recovery plan, but I think we'll need the whole plan before we can really tell if it is a useful part of one.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#57

Post by hjdivad »

delecti wrote: post #14
FussyZeus wrote: post #2

Coal was dead long before Trump was elected. The fact that he and the majority of the GoP continue to lack the political will to tell their people the truth does not change this. The worst victims of all of this are of course the people being told that coal is coming back, that the way that their fathers made a solid living will someday return so they continue sitting in a pit of addiction and despair, waiting for th…

I don't think they lack the political will, they just realize that paying lip service to the coal communities keeps them as their constituents, rather than letting those people come to the realization that their needs would be much better served by the other guys.

Isn't this point exactly what is meant by saying that they lack the political will?

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#58

Post by Dylan16807 »

michaelt wrote: post #50
epistasis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you think that's a misrepresentation? Why do you think "essentially free" marginal renewable cost is a falsehood? The difference between lettings the electrons flow and not letting the electrons flow on an installed plant is what, exactly? That's what's being referenced. Though there's lots of data to support the article, they do leave out the cost of extracting natural gas from the "practically…

Why do you think "essentially free" marginal renewable cost is a falsehood? Unless you can control the sun, the cost for one extra kilowatt of solar power is the cost of a 1kw solar panel?

That's the capital cost. You pay it up front and never again for the lifetime of the device.

The marginal cost is the price of producing one extra kilowatt-hour on your already-purchased panel.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#59

Post by Mendenhall »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #55
Mendenhall wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That falls under "rhetoric" the author takes a small unit of time "when sun is shining and wind is blowing" to then use the word "free". Thats cherry picking to the extreme and rhetoric 101. It is used to paint a picture that does not really exist. What happens to solar and wind when its night and the wind is still? By cherry picking and creating a scene which doesnt truly exist it paints a false picture of the effic…

I don't understand. If someone is giving out free balloons but only during certain hours, you shouldn't call it free?

As rhetoric I would compare it more with "I will be giving everyone free balloons all day while supplies last!" and the supply is one balloon. Sounds great but reality is vastly different.

Again though I dont expect everyone to see the rhetoric I see.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#60

Post by rz2k »

Mendenhall wrote: post #48
sfifs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you misunderstood what marginal cost means. It is the cost of generating one additional unit of power on an already​ existing infrastructure. It takes expense to mine an additional ton of coal, transport it to a power plant, burn it and convert it into electricity even after the underlying infrastructure is setup. It doesn't for solar and wind.

That falls under "rhetoric" the author takes a small unit of time "when sun is shining and wind is blowing" to then use the word "free". Thats cherry picking to the extreme and rhetoric 101. It is used to paint a picture that does not really exist. What happens to solar and wind when its night and the wind is still? By cherry picking and creating a scene which doesnt truly exist it paints a false picture of the effic…

I don't think anyone here is being fooled by the "rhetoric".

This is a forum for people who are inclined toward entrepreneurship, who understand basic economic terms like marginal cost without additional explanation.

Marginal cost is the only appropriate measure for discussing what even becomes a challenge where/when electric energy approaches non-scarcity — for example you may not have a use for it, but it requires resources if you wanted to sell that energy to a far away aluminum smelter.

I've had a discussion before where some one was convinced that "servicing debt" was a misleading term, because the debt wasn't being paid down at all. Hopefully we can agree that that is an absurd argument. Terms either mean what they do or not.

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