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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

#71

Post by Animats »

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US.

What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's created the illusion that the energy problem is over.

Nuclear is discouraging. After Fukushima, nuclear plants are scary. Fukushima was a reasonably good plant which got hit by a larger than expected tsunami and lost site power. That was enough to cause a major disaster. Nuclear now looks like a technology where every decade or two you lose a city. The small-nuclear enthusiasts are a bit scary; some argue they need fewer safety precautions because their reactors can't melt down. What could possibly go wrong? Big, expensive containment vessels are a good thing; when Three Mile Island failed, the containment held it in.

Battery technology will help. Wind and solar are intermittent, and can't carry too much of the load until there's more storage. But it's going to take a lot of batteries.

[1] http://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil-...

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

#72

Post by dangerlibrary »

ben_w wrote: post #61
dangerlibrary wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were an arms manufacturer you would be thoroughly unconcerned.

While your witty retort made me laugh, unless you are suggesting that coal power stations are weapons designed to kill people living near them, I think you are missing the point.

I'm suggesting that, pretty much by definition, externalized costs do not get factored into economic decisions.

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

#73

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

Natural gas is great as an energy that can be used "on demand", combined with wind and solar, there is a lot of synergy (use NG when wind and solar can't meet demand). We could build out renewables so that we don't deplete NG for just routine energy uses.

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

#74

Post by cagenut »

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over': https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...

But you are absolutely right that its entirely due to natgas and that will maybe last us a decade or two but certainly not three.

In fact its just enough time to build a fleet of nuclear plants, but as you also point out, fear rules that decision far more than physics.

Wind and solar and batteries are awesome, but even in very optimistic case scenarios we need an alternative to coal and the temporary surge of natgas to handle baseload between here and ~2040. It should be nuclear, but, sigh.

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

#76

Post by gph »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #64
matt4077 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and fusion is just around the corner... I wonder why the tech community has this infatuation with nuclear power. Ever since I registered my three-digit slashdot account, I've been reading exactly this post, just that the type of reactor people dream of seems to change every five years or so. Good to know it's "Liquid Fluoride Thorium Breeders", right now. Meanwhile, solar power has lowered prices by a factor of…

A new generation of students who grow up doing math in VR will solve the plasma containment geometry problem, which is one of the major fusion hurdles.

Just like a new generation of engineers doing math on computers would give us flying cars?

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

#77

Post by Dylan16807 »

acqq wrote: post #68
Dylan16807 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The "free" balloons were paid for to be produced before being given away as ads. The production of energy has always the costs, and some interested parties attempt to hide them to make them an easier sell.

It's not about hiding costs, it's about capital cost vs. marginal cost. When marginal cost is near-zero, you get significantly different economic behavior from something that has a balance of capital and marginal costs.

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

#78

Post by hannob »

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

peat extraction is extremely harmful to the environment due to large amounts of carbondioxide and methane released by the extraction process. Calling it "semi-renewable" is highly misleading. It's a really destructive source of energy.

(As far as I'm aware most peat extraction happens not for energy usage, but for gardening and agricultural use - but the harm is the same.)

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

#79

Post by jartelt »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #15
shuntress wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't I believe them? Assuming they are pointing to the datacenter equivalents of wind/solar/nuclear energy as the reason why datacenter use is shrinking. Edit: Did you mean to imply that Coal is not actually going away because the 'cheaper alternatives' are fake?

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

If coal is so great and cheap, then why is no one building new coal plants? Over the past few years wind and solar account for ~40% of new generation capacity and natural gas makes up the rest. Based on your comment, one would expect to either see only natural gas capacity being built out or some mix of natural gas and coal. That is not what is happening and it's because wind and solar are cheaper than coal in several areas of the country.
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