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That reverses the causality. The opportunity existed 12-15 years ago; coal mining concerns going bankrupt is at the end of the process. Natural gas being able t

That reverses the causality. The opportunity existed 12-15 years ago; coal mining concerns going bankrupt is at the end of the process. Natural gas being able to beat the pants off coal on both price and pollution while also being generated in the US is the reason that natural gas plants opened and coal ones closed.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
Price and pollution yes, but carbon no. Natural gas plants, while nominally 490 gCO2-eq/kW vs. coal's 800, are still very high carbon. Add in methane leaks from pipeline distribution and then LNG compression energy as the export market from the US rapidly increases in the gulf and it's parity. Fracked natural gas is a disaster from a climate change perspective. This is why we need to price in carbon externalities in energy markets.
- elgenie 7y ago
  Agreed that pricing in carbon externalities is a necessary step, but that will only make solar / wind / hydro more attractive with respect to natural gas. My point was more that the reasons that the coal industry is dead is that natural gas won exclusively on short-term economic thinking with zero contemplation of externalities.
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    I'm more concerned about nuclear being more attractive wrt natural gas, since huge low-carbon nukes are getting shut down right after coal to be replaced with fracked natural gas. This is backwards from a climate change perspective. Damn fracking pulled the bottom out of electricity prices, screwing over nuclear plants whose O&M is pretty high. They were fine when electricity revenue was normal. But fracking dropped it off.
    - elgenie 7y ago
      There was pretty much nothing going on in terms of nuclear power development in the US between 1990 and 2008 or so, and Watts' Bar is the only reactor to come online in the US in the last 25 years. Fracking wasn't the cause of that lull.
      - acidburnNSA 7y ago
        People stopped building new reactors in that time but they were also doing license extensions and operating and making good money. Today they are shutting down early in deregulated markets because natural gas brought electricity revenue below O&M costs.

acidburnNSA 7y ago

Price and pollution yes, but carbon no. Natural gas plants, while nominally 490 gCO2-eq/kW vs. coal's 800, are still very high carbon. Add in methane leaks from pipeline distribution and then LNG compression energy as the export market from the US rapidly increases in the gulf and it's parity. Fracked natural gas is a disaster from a climate change perspective. This is why we need to price in carbon externalities in energy markets.

elgenie 7y ago
Agreed that pricing in carbon externalities is a necessary step, but that will only make solar / wind / hydro more attractive with respect to natural gas. My point was more that the reasons that the coal industry is dead is that natural gas won exclusively on short-term economic thinking with zero contemplation of externalities.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  I'm more concerned about nuclear being more attractive wrt natural gas, since huge low-carbon nukes are getting shut down right after coal to be replaced with fracked natural gas. This is backwards from a climate change perspective. Damn fracking pulled the bottom out of electricity prices, screwing over nuclear plants whose O&M is pretty high. They were fine when electricity revenue was normal. But fracking dropped it off.
  - elgenie 7y ago
    There was pretty much nothing going on in terms of nuclear power development in the US between 1990 and 2008 or so, and Watts' Bar is the only reactor to come online in the US in the last 25 years. Fracking wasn't the cause of that lull.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      People stopped building new reactors in that time but they were also doing license extensions and operating and making good money. Today they are shutting down early in deregulated markets because natural gas brought electricity revenue below O&M costs.