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Fossil fuels power the world, and is the only thing that can do so unless every country converted totally to NUKE.
China certainly thinks so.....and it makes closing ours look silly
March, 2019 China’s power industry calls for hundreds of new coal power plants by 2030
Under the proposal, the country could add a large coal power plant every 2 weeks for the next 12 years
The largest power producers in China have asked the government to allow for the development of between 300 and 500 new coal power plants by 2030 in a move that could single-handedly jeopardise global climate change targets.
The cap would enable China to build 2 large coal power stations a month for the next 12 years, and grow the country’s capacity by an amount nearly twice the size of Europe’s total coal capacity.
As hard as they may try, they will never get rid of coal.
'Never' is a pretty bold prediction when many countries are rapidly reducing electricity generation by coal and some have ashtray eliminated it completely. The German situation is pretty unique in that they made a knee-jerk reaction after Fukushima to take their nuclear plants off line so they had to use more coal in the time gap when enough renewables weren't in place to fill the hole.
The UK went its first day without any coal generated electricity a couple of years ago and has last week just gone a full 7 days without any coal power. Give it a couple of years and that will be a month without coal generation, then a couple of months, and then coal will be gone altogether from the mix within a decade or so.
Quote:
In 1882, the Edison Electric Light Company opened the world’s first commercial coal-fired power station at an unlikely central London address. The facility at 57 Holborn Viaduct burnt the fossil fuel to drive a steam turbine that powered some of the first electric street lights nearby, as well as private residences.
For the next century, the UK was reliant on coal to light its streets and heat its homes. As recently as six years ago, burning the black stuff provided 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs. But that has been changing, and the country is on an unprecedented streak for continuous energy generation without coal.
At around 2PM on May 1, the UK stopped burning coal to generate power. It smashed the previous record of 90 hours, set in April, during the long weekend, and at around 2PM on Wednesday, May 8, the country reached the landmark of seven days without using coal.
A longer than usual spell of sunny and windy weather has played a part, but this is the fruit of a long-term plan to edge the UK away from coal, and towards renewables and natural gas. “As more and more renewables come onto our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to increasingly seem like the ‘new normal,’ says Julian Leslie, head of national control at National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO). “We believe that by 2025 we will be able to fully operate Great Britain’s electricity system with zero carbon.”
Climate change activist Greta Thunberg was critical of Britain’s record on climate change in a speech to Parliament last month, but the country has been a pioneer of onshore and offshore wind power, which has picked up some of the slack lost from coal.
The UK has more installed offshore wind power than any other country, and the cost of offshore wind has fallen by half since 2015 – according to RenewableUK, it’s now cheaper than building new gas and nuclear power stations. Offshore wind alone can provide enough power for 4.5 million homes, and there are huge projects under construction off the coasts of East Anglia and Scotland.
The Germans are also phasing out the rest of their nuclear fleet in the next few years, which will make them even more dependent on French nuclear and Polish coal fired generation.
So in exchange for paying the second highest prices in the world, they're still burning as much lignite because renewables aren't reliable. That's "good progress"?
Many would agree that the German policy of abandoning nuclear and therefore needing more electricity from lignite is a dumb policy, but that's one country, plenty of others are rapidly increasing renewables without decommissioning nuclear and while reducing coal generation, why not look at what they are doing instead of just focusing on Germany and saying that proves anything when it clearly doesn't?
As I type this, 60% of the electricity generated in California coming from renewables, mostly solar and wind.
Germany's problem is that it has a cold, cloudy climate that is poor for solar power. One idea that's been talked about is for Greece, which has plenty of sun but not much money, to build solar plants and sell the energy to Germany. But the grid in Europe is nonexistent to poor due to different standards and bureaucratic turf wars.
It's almost always sunny or windy somewhere. Renewables can make up a larger share of world consumption if it can be distributed.
'Never' is a pretty bold prediction when many countries are rapidly reducing electricity generation by coal and some have ashtray eliminated it completely.
"These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal,"
"Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent."
"The UK went its first day without any coal generated electricity a couple of years ago and has last week just gone a full 7 days without any coal power. Give it a couple of years and that will be a month without coal generation, then a couple of months, and then coal will be gone altogether from the mix within a decade or so."
March, 2019
"Britain’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years has been given the go-ahead by Cumbria county council,"
That one small coal mine will produce virtually nothing, and doesn't change the fact that coal is very rapidly becoming less and less important in the country's electricity generation mix.
That one small coal mine will produce virtually nothing, and doesn't change the fact that coal is very rapidly becoming less and less important in the country's electricity generation mix.
At current burn rates there is a 300 year supply of coal in the USA alone. 50 years from now, when the entire planet is struggling to support 20 billion humans, they will still be burning it because they will have no choice.
The only way to avoid that scenario is for people to stop having so many babies now, and to make huge investments to move to a thorium nuke and hydrogen based energy system.
At current burn rates there is a 300 year supply of coal in the USA alone. 50 years from now, when the entire planet is struggling to support 20 billion humans, they will still be burning it because they will have no choice.
We have absolutely no idea what the choices of 50 years out will be.
the grid in Europe is nonexistent to poor due to different standards and bureaucratic turf wars.
That's not the case everywhere, I'm sure connections from Greece to Germany are pretty much non existent due to Greece being on the periphery but in many cases there are strong connections between countries which help to manage fluctuating demand and generation. The UK already has interconnects to France, Ireland, Netherlands, it's building up the capacity of those old creating new links to Norway, Belgium, Denmark.
Current capacity of UK interconnecters is 4gW, with the current projects that will be up to nearly 12gW by 2022.
We have absolutely no idea what the choices of 50 years out will be.
Sure I do. Without a game changing discovery in fundamental physics, there are only so many large scale choices out there. Coal will be burned because it's cheap and easy.
The real solution to a sustainable future is not to have an unsustainable population.
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