
The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It - neuralFatigue
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/the-cheap-energy-revolution-is-here-and-coal-won-t-cut-it
======
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-...](http://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil-gas/)

~~~
cagenut
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...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_02_a)

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.

~~~
alex_stoddard
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.

~~~
yessql
Commercial and Residential solar are excluded. Those might add up to half a
percent or so. The other 9.5% is probably due to energy efficiency.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Residential solar is hard to pin down because it's "behind the meter"; it
doesn't look like generation, it looks like demand reduction.

------
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.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>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.

~~~
keebEz
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...

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

~~~
yessql
Exactly right. Coal mining as a job has declined much more than coal as fuel.
It's just easier to blame regulations and outsourcing than to admit that
people can't compete with machines in energy production and manufacturing.

------
strictnein
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.

~~~
lettergram
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphagnum)

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

~~~
lettergram
I have, I wasn't saying it's a great idea - just that there are alternatives
to coal that are more renewable and readily available.

------
Mendenhall
Was hard to get through the rhetoric and falsehoods like "When the wind is
blowing and the sun is shining, the marginal cost of that electricity is
essentially free"

I read on until "The natural gas that comes out of these wells is practically
free"

Then I had to give up because its obvious propaganda with no real interest in
the truth. I am all for clean energy, but unfactual propaganda isnt good for
anyone.

~~~
sfifs
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.

~~~
Mendenhall
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 efficiency of solar at this moment. Hence why I
used "rhetoric".

I could also say that is a falsehood in the practicle sense because of what it
left out but that wasnt my original intention. My falsehood statement was to
include the part about shale which since shale fields are limited its simply
not true.

We could further get into UV rays breakin down solar panels etc but that
really wasnt my point. I dont expect people to see the rhetoric and falsehoods
used in this article but it stood out to me like a sore thumb so I commented.

Nor was I somehow saying save coal or coal is more efficient etc. It was only
a comment on the rhetoric and falshoods I saw in a very short span of words.

~~~
Dylan16807
I don't understand. If someone is giving out free balloons but only during
certain hours, you shouldn't call it free?

~~~
Mendenhall
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.

~~~
Dylan16807
One balloon? Maybe if renewables exploded after half an hour.

The solar-power equivalent would be a balloon every few minutes every weekday,
but they run on a strange calendar and you can't predict when weekends happen.

I just don't see how a supply that's unpredictable on a short-term basis, but
very predictable on a long-term basis, disqualifies it from being "free".

------
mirko22
More and more people are turning to Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors, like Liquid
Fluoride Thorium Breeders, If Kirk Sorensen and others are right this will
revolutionize energy (and probably not just energy but mining, water
desalination etc.) as we know it unlike wind or solar ever could. Natural gas
and coal should die once and for all as they are as dirty as it gets. I
strongly believe we are ready for truly nuclear future.

~~~
matt4077
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 10 or so and is on a
clear trajectory to beat fossile fuels on costs, without subsidies.

I'm suspecting there is something cultural going on here–maybe some instinct
to seek out what others perceive as dangerous? Beats me...

~~~
erikpukinskis
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.

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

~~~
erikpukinskis
No, we don't need flying cars so that won't happen.

------
FussyZeus
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 their ship to come in while the politicians get ever fatter.

~~~
arnon
I fail to see how anyone would even think that it's possible to bring back
coal.

~~~
FussyZeus
You have the luxury of not depending on it coming back in order to earn a
living again.

I'm not saying it's a good thing they believe it, I'm saying the conned is
still the victim: it's the conartist that should be punished, and the GOP has
been conning Appalachia for decades.

~~~
bdavisx
The real solution is how do you get the people being conned to recognize that
they are being conned and quit voting for the people conning them. If there
wasn't a payout (e.g. people being (re)elected), then it wouldn't be
happening.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Oh, they know they're being conned, they're not stupid.

It's just that they believe that both sides are conning them, and they vote
for the most appealing set of lies.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Or for the side that displays some empathy along with the lies.

------
mrfusion
Solar appears to be on an exponential. If true, no one is prepared for where
that will take us in just two to four years!

------
xutopia
I disagree with the metrics here. In the US Hydro power is not considered
renewable yet it powers roughly a third of Canadians. Quebec's Hydro Power
also powers a large part of New York, Vermont and Massachusetts.

~~~
pc2g4d
I think they're focused on newly-built renewables rather than hydroelectric
which was built decades ago by massive government subsidy and seems unlikely
to see real expansion given environmental concerns re: fish spawning, etc.

~~~
snowwindwaves
In British Columbia over 50 new hydro electric plants have been built in the
last 30 years by private industry. People may say they are subsidized since
they often get $100/MWH for the first 30 years of operation but that is the
price that must be offered to mobilize investment and it isn't much higher
than the projected construction cost from the site C dam which would have much
better economies of scale and the Construction cost doesn't include the 30
years of studies and consultation BC hydro did whereas that is covered by the
100$/MWH for the private hydro plants.

Here is a list of Independent power producers in BC
[https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-
portal/...](https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-
portal/documents/corporate/independent-power-producers-calls-for-
power/independent-power-producers/ipp-supply-map.pdf)

------
finid
_And yet his energy plan is to cut regulations to resuscitate the one sector
that’s never coming back: coal._

Wait! Hold it right there! Are you trying to tell me that "clean coal" is not
coming back? </sarcasm>

