
Mapped: The world’s coal power plants - acidburnNSA
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
======
Iv
Proud of my country for once (Nuclear France)

We decarbonated our electricity in a 20 years timeframe (while the consumption
was rising) thanks to nuclear power. I always wondered why no other country
went that road and why they are still hesitating.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#/media/File:Electricity_production_by_sources_in_France.png)

~~~
pilif
Same for Switzerland. And even better: We're privileged to have the Alps in
the middle of our country making hydroelectricity a very viable and renewable
option.

~~~
lnsru
Is Switzerland ready to destroy the nature for cheap hydroelectricity?

~~~
rdevsrex
I’m not sure about all hydropower in Switzerland but Grand Dixence is very
high up. I’ve been there myself and the nature doesn’t seem to be disturbed. I
don’t think there are any salmon swimming up from the Pacific like in a lot of
rivers in the US. What exactly are your concerns about wildlife being
disturbed?

~~~
lnsru
Where did I mention wildlife?? One just needs to flood lots of area to build
hydropower plants. Please look at this picture:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway#/media/File%3AAlta-
damm.jpg)

------
coconut_crab
In Vietnam the plan to build a nuclear power plant was shelved due to the lack
of fund and opposition from the people. Guess what replaced it? Three coal
power plants! As if that is any cleaner! Russia being embargoed isn't helping
either, as we intended to use Russian nuclear technology.

As a developing country, Vietnam's electricity consumption will triple around
2030, overtaking Great Britain around 2027. Coal will provide half of that, as
renewables alone is not enough. But what else can us developing countries do?
Stop developing and stay poor forever?

~~~
jamesknelson
> But what else can us developing countries do? Stop developing and stay poor
> forever?

This is sad to see, because many of the environmentalists that I've talked to
seem to expect that this is the path that the developing countries will
actually take.

It's totally unfair that the developed world was able to bootstrap themselves
into their current state using dirty power sources, _continue_ to generate a
lot of dirty power themselves, and now expect the developing world to somehow
leap-frog them and build clean generating capacity from the start. But it just
seems to be human nature – just like how the social safety net in the
developed world is being pulled out from under the younger generations, now
that the older generations no longer need it.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Solar panels weren't commercially viable until the mid 20th century. Nuclear
power the same. Lithium-ion batteries came even later. None of this stuff even
existed when first world countries were industrializing.

Now it's cheaper than coal. Look at the map and notice how many new coal
plants are being built in Europe or even the US -- none. The only reason it
still even exists is the existing installed base of power plants that have
already sunk their capital costs, and half of those are still getting shut
down because they can't compete even then. Coal is garbage. Building new coal
fired power plants is nonsense even _before_ the environmental impact is
considered.

Pretending that first world countries burned coal because it was in some way
better is revisionist. It was because the better alternatives we have now
didn't exist yet. The path to modern power generation doesn't inherently
require building a bunch of coal fired power plants and then knocking them
down to replace them with something actually good. They can just skip to the
end -- there isn't even any good reason _not_ to do that.

~~~
zzzcpan
They can't skip to the end, as solar, wind + storage is still not economically
viable compared to burning things.

~~~
Jedd
This a) clearly isn't true, b) goes against parent's claims, and most
importantly c) is contraindicated by the fact (as per parent) that 'first
world nation states' are _not_ currently building power plants that, as you
put it, burn things. This is because it's economically more viable to go
solar, wind, storage - than coal now (and perhaps, if not today, then clearly
within a year or two, gas).

~~~
zzzcpan
> This is because it's economically more viable to go solar, wind, storage

Sorry, but this is just ridiculous. If you need power all year long and only
have say 250 sunny days and even less predictable winds, you are really
looking at an order of magnitude higher price here than burning fossils. If
you only use a little bit of that power able to directly satisfy a little bit
of demand without storage, then it's not as expensive, but still overall
significantly more expensive than burning fossils. The only reason it can even
be deployed is if governments promise massive returns of investments and let
investors get rich, which of course ends up hurting consumers with huge
electricity prices. The rest of the non first world simply cannot afford that.

If it was economically viable, investors would just invest into solar and wind
farms everywhere in the world on their own to undercut all those fossil
competitors.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
You're assuming that countries with no existing infrastructure would build it
the same way we did.

If you're a small African village, having a couple of solar panels is way
better than a coal power plant. You don't need roads and trains to
continuously ship in coal or the lights go out. You can get more buildings
electrified before you have a stable power grid because you have decentralized
generation. You can have small/cheap storage batteries because you build
infrastructure to begin with that demand shifts to during the day --
pressurize a water tank during sunlight hours so that you have running water
through the night with no nighttime power consumption. Use high efficiency LED
lighting to minimize how much battery you need. And so on. All of which is
cheaper when you design for it from the start.

Whereas if you're at the stage of India or China with a real power grid where
you have to start worrying about baseload, that's when you build nuclear.
Assuming that declining storage costs don't eventually make even that
unnecessary.

About the only thing fossil fuels are still good for is as an emergency
battery for long periods of low generation from renewables. But then you're
not building them as baseload power generation and they only get run one week
out of the year. And even then it's _still_ not coal, because you can do that
with natural gas, which is currently cheaper (and cleaner and emits less
carbon).

~~~
zzzcpan
Ground up infrastructure can only recoup some of the energy storage costs and
mostly for home use. It's not going to help a steel factory, for example, or
help with industrial use in general which ultimately has to compete on cost
globally.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
When you're at early stages of development you don't have steel factories.
When you reach later stages you build nuclear. To the extent that an
intermediate stage even exists, it's very short, because once you have roads
and ports and a stable government you get foreign investment.

To get the first aluminum smelter the first world had to invent it. To get one
now you just have to build it -- or have someone else build it for you. Then
you power it with a ton of cheap solar panels and only run it during daylight
hours.

So why would waste money building a bunch of coal fired power plants that you
won't even need in a couple of years?

And why would it be uncompetitive on cost globally if everyone else stops
burning coal too?

------
disordinary
The Huntly power plant in New Zealand is mainly natural gas now. It does
maintain the last two coal generators in New Zealand but the intention of
these are to be used as an emergency supply when there's a shortfall from
hydro and wind. It's not fired consistently and it's usage fluctuates
renewable generation in NZ from ~95% when it's off to ~80% when it's running.
It was supposed to be shut down in 2016 but that was pushed back to 2025 when
NZ is supposed to be above 90% renewable generation consistently.

------
kzrdude
This does not include other industrial users who are burning coal.

For example the use of coal in Swedish steel industry (and steel industries
around the world). This energy use in coal is significant, the statistics in
the following link show that it is using around 13 TWh per year in Sweden,
which is approximately equivalent to 20 years of power consumption for
Stockholm's municipality.

[https://www.jernkontoret.se/en/the-steel-
industry/industry-f...](https://www.jernkontoret.se/en/the-steel-
industry/industry-facts-and-statistics/energy-use/)

------
tontonius
Let's see...

2024100 MW (2018) of coal power would translate to roughly 1,76 Gt of CO2
emissions (ballparking an average of 870g CO2 / kW produced). That's 1,76
billion tonnes of CO2 - a hefty environmental price for electricity.

If the same power was produced in nuclear power plants that figure would be
something like 0,02 Gt of CO2 (calculating at 0,012 kg CO2/kW) a 98.6%
reduction of emissions.

Sure nuclear is more expensive, but what is a global ecosystem worth?

Food for thought.

------
maciejw
I live in Poland which is one of the notorious coal using countries (roughly
0.5% of world's population and 1% of world's CO2 emissions). For Poland this
list of coal power plants is not complete - it does not contain smaller CHP
(combined heat and power) plants. However these facilities are cleaner and
more efficient than burning coal at individual households, so their
environmental impact is probably positive.

~~~
kmlx
“than burning coal at individual households” wait, what? who’s burning coal at
home? :) can you imagine the discussions in those households?

~~~
gambiting
What do you mean? There's still plenty of houses in Poland that use regular
coal for heating. There's been a lot of movement towards banning it but
there's always the "but what about poor people" argument. Sometimes you can
get funding for replacing a coal fired boiler with either one that burns eco-
pellets or a gas one, but people are often unwilling as both fuels are more
expensive than just buying a tonne of coal at the beginning of every winter -
the argument that made my grandparents switch(and only last year!) from a coal
fired boiler to a gas one was purely one of convenience, grandpa is too old
now to go to the boiler room every few hours to add some coal to the fire, so
a gas boiler makes it easier for them. But of course they complained about the
absolute fortune that gas will cost them over coal.

~~~
kmlx
"What do you mean? There's still plenty of houses in Poland that use regular
coal for heating."

you mean directly burning it? or indirectly from a coal plant that produces
electricity and/or heating? why not use wood? why coal of all things?

lived in a bunch of european countries. first time i hear about it.

is this common in poland? or more of an outlier?

~~~
gambiting
>>you mean directly burning it? or indirectly from a coal plant that produces
electricity and/or heating? why not use wood? why coal of all things?

Directly in coal fired boiler. As to why - because it's very cheap. Like I
said, my grandparents would usually buy a 1000kg of coal for the winter, it
would cost them.....800PLN? So like.....200 euro? And that was for a big
250sqm house. Wood would be easily quadruple that, but the bigger problem is
that it burns too quickly. With coal you could load up the boiler and it would
last a good 6-8 hours, so if you loaded it up just before going to sleep it
would keep you warm all night. Wood or eco-pellets burn much quicker, that's
why boilers for those usually use some kind of auto-feeding system, but
obviously it makes them much more expensive.

And no, it's still very common, I'd say on my residential street 2/3 of all
houses will be coal fired, unless someone renovated recently and put a gas
boiler in(but then we don't live in a city, small town of maybe 20k people).

~~~
kmlx
thank you for the reply!

------
i_feel_great
Was initially happy when looking at Australia (my home country) - small
circles and no planned stations (maybe Adani in Queensland).

Then I realized that the large circles in China and India almost certainly
burn Australian coal.

~~~
roenxi
They will, but if it makes you feel any better mostly they will burn Chinese
coal [0]. Australia is disproportionate.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_prod...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_production)

------
sm4rk0
Interesting map to compare with: [https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather-
maps/?variable=cams_so2...](https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather-
maps/?variable=cams_so2&level=surface&lines=none&mapcenter=39.5718N19.1602&zoom=3)

~~~
CriticalCathed
That large high concentration area in Siberia. Is that permafrost melt?

~~~
sm4rk0
Here's an article on that:
[https://robinwestenra.blogspot.com/2019/05/sulphur-
dioxide-e...](https://robinwestenra.blogspot.com/2019/05/sulphur-dioxide-
emissios-in-siberia.html)

And another one from NASA:
[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/36063/sulfur-
dioxid...](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/36063/sulfur-dioxide-from-
norilsk-russia)

~~~
CriticalCathed
I deeply appreciate your comment. Thank you.

Choice quote for others sourced from the first link:

>Whilst sulphur dioxide emissions are definitely associated with pollution
from the mining of nickel these emissions that Dave and Margo have observed
are far too extensive for this to be more than a partial explanation.

>It is simply much too large.

>Also of interest, the emissions are intermittent just as methane emissions
are.

>One very reasonable hypothesis is that there have been geological changes
which is leading to magma coming to the surface much as it did in the Permian
extinction.

------
hannob
They seem to have a very optimistic view on "closing" coal plants. E.g. all
the plants in germany are colored as "closing".

Germany has a vague plan for coal phaseout in 2038, which is a) still almost
20 years in the future and b) not in any way binding yet, it's jut a vague
plan.

(I do hope and actually believe that coal plants in germany will be closed
much earlier than 2038 though...)

~~~
Dumblydorr
They will be closed earlier. Renewables and batteries will be cheaper than
existing coal before 2038, meaning replacement will cost less than running
these old plants.

------
seabrookmx
How many of those grey dots representing "closing" plants are actually just
converting to another type of petroleum? Like natural gas?

Certainly an improvement but it's not like we're replacing them all with
renewables or nuclear.

~~~
disordinary
I'd say a good chunk of them, but hopefully at the same time other gas
stations are being decommissioned and replaced with sustainable generation.

If I look at NZ then in the last ten years pretty much all coal generation has
moved to gas but in the same period about the same amount of gas generation
was decommissioned and replaced with wind with thousand more MW of generation
from wind and tidal consented to be built.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Natural gas is likely as bad or in some cases worse than coal from a climate
change perspective (mostly due to pipeline leaks and leaks at the fracking
sites). Switching from coal to nat gas may be better for air pollution deaths,
but it's just as bad for climate change.

[https://scienceblog.com/509512/fracking-prompts-global-
spike...](https://scienceblog.com/509512/fracking-prompts-global-spike-in-
atmospheric-methane/)

~~~
disordinary
The article I read in NZ showed that natural gas had about half the emissions
of coal overall. New Zealand is very seismically active so there's a lot of
gas and most probably it's close to the generators. The intention is to move
from coal to gas to tide the country over until it can be replaced by wind and
tidal. The goal was recently raised from 90 - 95% renewable generation by
2025. Right now on average it sits at 83% renewable but in summer when
electricity usage is lower it can be more than 90%.

~~~
acidburnNSA
It's roughly half as bad as coal nominally, as in when combusted. It's when
you look at the whole system, including pipeline leaks and fracking-site leaks
that it starts getting bad. So changing infrastructure from coal to gas is
approximately worthless from a climate change perspective.

------
mattfrommars
I feel as if my nation has been the dumbest if not the most left behind
country in the world, Pakistan.

The nation is riddled with annual energy crisis and just falling behind in
world economic growth. Not only is the energy crisis with black outs an
occurrence but electricity itself is expensive. Far more expensive what the
end consumer ends up paying compared to nations here in the West or China.

et the nation's politicians continue to popularize the use of solar which is
stupidly expensive for scale of energy we need and far less reliant on local
resources.

It does indeed saddens me.

~~~
WhompingWindows
How much does electricity cost for you? What sort of blackouts/brownouts did
you experience?

It's around 10-20 cents per kWh in my state, for reference.

------
ninju
So what can be done about China?

They are going the wrong way and account for a sizable percentage. All
reductions done by the rest of world have been offset (and then some) by their
grown

------
lota-putty
Are there any statistics on cumulative coal burn estimates by countries till
date? (let alone per capita & country's resources)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining)

I'm sure adoption of coal along with petroleum was well praised in the west
during onset of industrial revolution.

------
abootstrapper
Those purple circles are pretty depressing.

------
pxi
Meanwhile in South Australia ... :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Sout...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_South_Australia)

------
consultutah
Where can I find other datasets like this?

~~~
acidburnNSA
This is ok but not as nice of a UI:
[https://www.eia.gov/maps/](https://www.eia.gov/maps/)

This one is incredible:
[https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=...](https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Tomorrow, the team behind Electricity Map, has a Slack team available to the
public. Also, anyone can contribute a parser to an electric grid not yet being
scraped for tracking and display.

------
amriksohata
India and China output a lot, but to manufacture items for the west. A lot of
Chinese and Indian government officials would turn around and say, show this
map 50 years ago when your industries were growing and you had the fast
economic growth. Now its their turn the are being curbed.

The solution is to help these countries build better infrastructure, rather
than blame them for our own demands.

------
gridlockd
Coal plants in Australia, the UK and Germany are "closing"? Yeah, sure.
They'll be "closing" for several decades to come, because neither country has
a solution for its energy needs.

There should be a financial instrument to bet against governments making good
on their grandiose plans for green energy. That might raise the odds of them
actually succeeding.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There should be a financial instrument to bet against governments making
> good on their grandiose plans for green energy.

Effectively, there is: you purchase securities relating to the industries that
would be negatively impacted if the plans were realized (e.g., for the things
you are talking about here, coal industry stocks.)

~~~
gridlockd
This isn't quite the same, because governments can simultaneously ruin these
businesses while still failing on their goals.

------
Aardwolf
Is there any relevant difference between the subcritical and supercritical
ones?

~~~
thinkcontext
Higher temps which means better efficiency and cleaner emissions. Ultra-
supercritical is the current latest technology, though there aren't many of
those.

------
kossmoboleat
It mentions the German plants are closing, but the plan is to do this in
2038...

------
Whatarethese
Why does China continue to lead the world in so many terrible categories.
Biggest polluter, tons of human rights violations. Just a terrible country
with awful leadership.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Imagine a world where China split in two, East China and West China with each
having 50% of the population. Each of those countries would have half the
pollution, half the human rights violations of the current China. Just as much
suffering, just as much pollution overall though.

If you want to make an informative comparison you have to do it on a per-
capita basis.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Indeed. Worth remembering that for these issues, China should be compared not
versus another country, but vs. all Europe, or whole North America.

------
ed_dantes99
Don't bother about it. Now, blame is all on Brazil.

