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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

#91

Post by dangerlibrary »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #81
dangerlibrary wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unfortunately for coal, not all of its problems are externalities as much as they used to be. If your customer is paying for it, even if not directly in the price you charge, that can alter their behaviour, as we are seeing around the world.

To the extent that customers actually change their behavior, that is a positive development. I'm not sure the effect size is particularly large.

Efficiency programs have been pretty successful, and the overall trend in power consumption (in the US) is negative for now, which is great. But relatively few people even know what fuels are used to supply their power, so I'm not sure how easily consumers can respond.

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

#92

Post by niftich »

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…

Moreover, what's driving low natgas prices in the US is the use of hydraulic fracturing -- 'fracking' -- which injects some fluid, often water, horizontally along an entire layer of shale to free the trapped gas. This technique enabled formations like the Marcellus Shale [1] in WV, PA, OH, NY to be economically viable to extract, and this formation grew to be the largest producer of natgas in the US.

There are many unanswered questions about the long-term impact of hydraulic fracturing on seismic stability and on groundwater, and the technique is under scrutiny in many parts of the world. Predictably favored by energy-lobbyists and opposed by environmentalists, fracking remains a contentious issue whose future in the US could depend on a "simple" party change -- hardly a sure bet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Formation

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

#93

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

derefr wrote: post #52
lettergram wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 home…

True, but the condensed energy of fossil fuels would allow for tansportation and communication between otherwise isolated settlements, and greatly increase mining efficiency. As I recall the first steam engine was used to clear out leaded mines using steam pressure. Keeping existing people networked together allows for the exchange of people, ideas, services, goods, etc, drastically accelerating development

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

#94

Post by kkylin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73
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.

My impression (from talking to engineers at my local electric utility here in the southwest US) is exactly that: renewables can be unpredictable, and not always available when demand is high. NG generators, unlike coal or nuclear, are relatively easy to spin up on demand. (Perhaps someone more knowledgeable out there could fill in details.)

I do think there are many experiments with different storage technologies to smooth out supply, so this particular advantage of NG could change in the next few years.

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

#96

Post by WalterSear »

keebEz wrote: post #85
enraged_camel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Trump can slow the decline of coal consumption but he can't reverse it. He doesn't want to reverse it. He doesn't give a shit about coal. He only wants their votes, and the votes of similar industries who will view him as a defender of old-school industry.

Same could be said for solar? The sunbelt is/was heavy on coal for energy production. Solar is a great fit for the sunbelt. The federal government subsidizing solar adoption is a direct transfer of money to southern states as well as a direct negative on WV/WY economies. What is the relative value of marginal votes from those different areas...

This isn't about the votes from coal miners. It's about what coal stands for in the minds of rural white voters.

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

#97

Post by alex_stoddard »

cagenut wrote: post #74
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 physic…

Data on national scale, like the eia stuff you link to, is vital to understanding and debate.

What I realize I don't understand is the meaning of "Generation at Utility Scale Facilities" in the header of the table. What does this exclude and how meaningful is the exclusion?

According to the table, net generation at utility scale has decreased 10% over the last decade. How much of that is driven by non-utility scale generation versus decreased energy usage? (Alternatively non-utility scale generation has outpaced total growth in energy use - I'm ignorant of total consumption data so I don't know what is really going on).

Either way, the numbers do seem to suggest a case for new nuclear generation overall.

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

#98

Post by opo »

cagenut wrote: post #74
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 physic…

>...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.

Citation? Unfortunately it looks like there are large proven reserves of natural gas:

>...The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that as of January 1, 2014, there were about 2,474 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of technically recoverable resources of dry natural gas in the United States. At the rate of U.S. dry natural gas consumption in 2014 of about 26.6 Tcf per year, the United States has enough natural gas to last about 93 years.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=58&t=8

It is unfortunate because for those who care about climate change, there are inevitable methane releases from fracking and from distribution of natural gas and those are now known to be much worse for the atmosphere than previously thought:

>...Back in August, a NOAA-led study measured a stunning 6% to 12% methane leakage over one of the country’s largest gas fields — which would gut the climate benefits of switching from coal to gas. We’ve known for a long time that methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned. But the IPCC’s latest report, released Monday (big PDF here), reports that methane is 34 times stronger a heat-trapping gas than CO2 over a 100-year time scale, so its global-warming potential (GWP) is 34. That is a nearly 40% increase from the IPCC’s previous estimate of 25. ...The IPCC reports that, over a 20-year time frame, methane has a global warming potential of 86 compared to CO2, up from its previous estimate of 72. Given that we are approaching real, irreversible tipping points in the climate system, climate studies should, at the very least, include analyses that use this 20-year time horizon. Finally, it bears repeating that natural gas from even the best fracked wells is still a climate-destroying fossil fuel. If we are to avoid catastrophic warming, our natural gas consumption has to peak sometime in the next 10 to 15 years, according to studies by both the Center for American Progress and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

https://thinkprogress.org/more-bad-news-for-fracking-ipcc-wa...

As we use more and more natural gas, we can expect more and more methane disasters like the leak from Aliso Canyon in CA which was the largest methane leak in US history. This released over 100,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere and required 11,000 residents to be evacuated.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35659947

>...It should be nuclear, but, sigh.

Yea, nuclear has so far been the safest form of base load power we have ever used. Unfortunately anything at all related to nuclear is covered by the media orders of magnitude more than other power sources so people have an understandable perception that it is much more dangerous than other sources of power. What if the Alison Canyon was a nuclear storage site (instead of a natural gas storage site) and 11,000 people had to be evacuated - how much would the media have covered that? Another recent example would be the evacuation at the Oroville dam - almost 200,000 people were forcibly evacuated since the worst case failure scenario would have have been a tidal wave of water 30 feet high rushing down stream. This made the news for maybe a day. I can't blame some for being afraid of nuclear power, but there are many who should know better.

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

#99

Post by delecti »

hjdivad wrote: post #57
delecti wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I see "political will" more as the motivation to actually do things. I don't see the GOP really doing anything on the front of advancing coal, they just say they're in the coal communities' corners. In that sense, being honest or not on the subject isn't an issue of political will.

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

#100

Post by stale2002 »

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…

It is not rhetoric, it is jargon.

Marginal cost is something that people who study economics would instantly understand, to the point where they would be confused as to why others are confused.

It means something very specific, but it is very common to talk about in economics.

I will throw around the term accidently, without even realizing that it would make some people confused.

Capital costs vs marginal costs is an important concept, and definitely appropriate to talk about in the energy sector. But you of course have to explain it.

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