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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.cfm?t=epmt_1_

by cagenut 10y ago

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.cfm?t=epmt_1_02_a 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.

acchow 10y ago
> Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over' Grandparent post was just missing a comma: "Well, over 40% of US electricity is still from coal"
alex_stoddard 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    Residential solar is hard to pin down because it's "behind the meter"; it doesn't look like generation, it looks like demand reduction.
opo 10y ago
>...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 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-warns-methane-traps-much-more-heat-than-we-thought-9c2badf392df 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 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.
crdoconnor 10y ago
"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. " Wind and solar's bigger problem isn't really the intermittency of availability of electricity, it's the distribution of availability. It needs a more sophisticated grid. America's grid operators (who also own generators) would be shooting themselves in the foot by upgrading the grid since renewables eat into their bottom line (they want to sell natgas/coal/nuclear electricity, not buy solar from your rooftop or set up windfarms that makes a razor thin profit...). Utility operator lobbyists thus have a marked tendency to overstate the problem of renewable intermittency. Nuclear is cost competitive with solar and wind but it's only cost competitive if the liability is capped. Remove the liability cap and mandate that nuclear insurance cover the cost of a Fukushima style cleanup and there's no point in ever building a plant ever again. Whereas if you remove all the tariffs (e.g. things like the 40% solar import taxes) and subsidies, renewable prices probably wouldn't change all that much.
adventured 10y ago
> 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. Currently our known natural gas reserves will last over a century. And we're still finding vast new pockets of it: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Massive-Natural-Gas-Deposit-Discovered-In-The-Gulf-Coast-Basin.html http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Massive-Natural-Gas-D...

by cagenut 10y ago

acchow 10y ago

> Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over' Grandparent post was just missing a comma: "Well, over 40% of US electricity is still from coal"

alex_stoddard 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Residential solar is hard to pin down because it's "behind the meter"; it doesn't look like generation, it looks like demand reduction.

opo 10y ago

>...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 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-warns-methane-traps-much-more-heat-than-we-thought-9c2badf392df 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 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.

crdoconnor 10y ago

"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. " Wind and solar's bigger problem isn't really the intermittency of availability of electricity, it's the distribution of availability. It needs a more sophisticated grid. America's grid operators (who also own generators) would be shooting themselves in the foot by upgrading the grid since renewables eat into their bottom line (they want to sell natgas/coal/nuclear electricity, not buy solar from your rooftop or set up windfarms that makes a razor thin profit...). Utility operator lobbyists thus have a marked tendency to overstate the problem of renewable intermittency. Nuclear is cost competitive with solar and wind but it's only cost competitive if the liability is capped. Remove the liability cap and mandate that nuclear insurance cover the cost of a Fukushima style cleanup and there's no point in ever building a plant ever again. Whereas if you remove all the tariffs (e.g. things like the 40% solar import taxes) and subsidies, renewable prices probably wouldn't change all that much.

adventured 10y ago

> 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. Currently our known natural gas reserves will last over a century. And we're still finding vast new pockets of it: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Massive-Natural-Gas-Deposit-Discovered-In-The-Gulf-Coast-Basin.html http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Massive-Natural-Gas-D...