9 ms·

Will this lead to more coal plants shutdown?

acidburnNSA 6y ago
Yes and nuclear. Gas is better than coal for air pollution and slightly better (but still very bad) for climate. Nuclear is low carbon and doesnt have air pollution so it is terribly counterproductive to build gas in its place.
- echelon 6y ago
  There was a sharp dive in coal stock prices around the turn of the year, and unlike oil they have not had a turnaround. Are the coal companies going to zero?
  - thephyber 6y ago
    Peabody Energy[1] operates the largest coal mine in the world (North Antelope Rochelle coal mine in Wyoming). Stock is trading around $2.80 down from ATH of $47 in Oct 2018. A Chinese company recently abandoned plans to invest nearly $7billion in an Austrialian coal mine[2]. > A $6.7 billion Chinese mega mine coal project adjacent to the Adani venture in Queensland's Galilee Basin is in doubt after the company abandoned its bid for a mining lease. > The company will not explain why it abandoned the process, but analysts believe the project is no longer aligned with China's interests in coal and is financially "unviable" given the difficulty companies face obtaining finance for coal developments. Even the famous "Belt and Road" won't risk large investments in coal under the current conditions. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=NYSE:+BTU https://www.google.com/search?q=NYSE:+BTU [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-23/macmines-abandons-mining-lease-applications/11138310 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-23/macmines-abandons-min...
  - brightball 6y ago
    My understanding has always been that the same companies with mineral rights for oil have the rights for natural gas, so their bets are hedged a little with the uptick in CNG for trucking.
- imglorp 6y ago
  Gas is also laden with hidden costs. In particular, bad things happen when drilling shale and then more bad things building and running pipeline transports such as Dakota, Keystone, and Mariner. These things are all getting rammed through legislatures in a manner that bypasses all of the normal democratic process. For example, Mariner East somehow got declared a public utility which gives Sunoco rights to eminent domain whatever they want along the route to maximize profits with minimal oversight. They ruin neighborhoods and property values, literally bulldozing through apartment complexes, under schools, through little league fields, contaminating aquifers, causing sinkholes, and this is before anything is pressurized. There are no disaster plans like you see for nuclear plants. All these downsides so Sunoco can offshore the product. Late stage capitalism.
  - 37r6r6u3u3u 6y ago
    What gas doesn't suffer from though is expensiveness (environmentalism sounds great until you realize you're largely advocating economically regressive policies that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable) and scalability. EU countries might be able to run their industrial sectors on renewables but call me when Russia, India, China, Indonesia, Brazil or even the US are able to do it without costs going up.
    - taneq 6y ago
      > environmentalism sounds great until you realize you're largely advocating economically regressive policies that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable Global warming is going to 'disproportionately impact the most vulnerable' even more. (Is there anything at all that won't? People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact.)
      - eru 6y ago
        > Is there anything at all that won't? Yes. Decline in stock prices or real estate for example. > People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact. Yes, that's almost true by definition. Even in my examples, in general the people who start out rich will still be better off after a stock market crash than the people who started out poor. Look on the bright side though: by symmetry any disaster averted or condition improved also helps the vulnerable more.
- asdfadsfgfdda 6y ago
  Natural gas is not slightly better, it's significantly better than coal for climate. Emissions are about half as much as coal per kWh. Switching from coal to natural gas has probably reduced America's CO2 footprint more than all new renewable generation combined. In the short term and without cheap storage, renewables just cannot scale compared to natural gas.
  - bradbot 6y ago
    Does this take into account the amount of methane released from burn off and leaks?
    - acidburnNSA 6y ago
      No. When you consider those it's about as bad as coal. Even at half coal, 490 gCO2-eq/kWh is tremendously incompatible with a climate solution. All the gas companies are trying to greenwash and say they're the perfect partner for renewables but they're terrible high-carbon fossil emitting beasts. Still way better than coal on the deaths-from-air-pollution metric. But not a reasonable or good option. We need to stop celebrating the transition from coal to fracked gas and get on with actual low carbon energy like solar, hydro, nuclear, wind. Nuclear being the best of those :)
  - sunstone 6y ago
    Actually renewables can scale very well by covering much more area and thereby averaging out the wind and solar fluctuations across the country. The technology for achieving this is High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) a technology that has also been rapidly getting cheaper along with renewable technologies because its costs are driven by semiconductor technologies getting cheaper every year.
    - acidburnNSA 6y ago
      Permitting transmission lines will get much, much harder with scale needed to do what you're saying. With nuclear you don't need to build vast new storage and transmission, or cover the landscape with energy harvesters.
- prostoalex 6y ago
  Why nuclear? Isn't it high-capex but low-opex type of operation?
  - loeg 6y ago
    Nuclear is also low land footprint (energy dense) and low physical waste.
    - packetlost 6y ago
      I'm generally in favor of nuclear power, but you can't argue that the (relatively) small amount of waste isn't super nasty. Last I heard we still don't have a good way of dealing with it.
      - petre 6y ago
        Dealing with waste is a policy challenge that's tied to non proliferation, not so much a technical one.
        worik 6y ago
        There is no known way to store anything safely for ~100,000 years like what the most problematic nuclear waste (and some parts of reactors, IIRC) have to be stored. It is a small amount, but a insoluble problem Selling out the future generations for cyrrent greed. Nice one
        evgen 6y ago
        > There is no known way to store anything safely for ~100,000 years Sure there is. You may not like it, but here it is: encase it in a concrete block and put it on a boat, sail boat to middle of ocean, dump it overboard. Done and dusted. That block of problematic nuclear waste is now going to kill less people over the next 100K years than solar will kill this month.
        6y ago
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Nuclear has high capital costs and many plants are aging out as they reach 40+ years old. Natural gas is a very strong possibility when replacing these plants unless the government steps in somehow to alleviate multiple financial risks (beyond continue to provide cheap accident indemnification).
  - eru 6y ago
    Yes. Though the high capital costs for nuclear are mostly down to policy, less so to technology.
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      I’m not sure. Even the Chinese haven’t been able to bring costs down, and that’s saying something. Are French reactors much more affordable?
      - eru 6y ago
        Oh, interesting question! Let me check out what data I can find on the Chinese. Do keep in mind that public opinion demands nuclear to be ridiculously safe. And even the Chinese government cares about domestic popular opinion, even if they don't run a democracy. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-lo... supports that public opinion interpretation to some extent. I did a bit of Googling, and eg https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... suggests that nuclear is orders of magnitude safer in terms of fatalities per Joule than most other energy sources. See https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy for an alternative source or https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#17e7ffee709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... If we scaled down the safety of nuclear to eg the safety of natural gas generation (still miles ahead of oil and coal), we could surely safe a lot of money. And we could probably replace lots of oil and coal generation, thus saving lives as well. TL;DR: policy forces nuclear power to be ridiculously safer than other power sources. But governments are at most indirectly to blame: they are just following public opinion. Democracy at work.

Yes and nuclear. Gas is better than coal for air pollution and slightly better (but still very bad) for climate. Nuclear is low carbon and doesnt have air pollution so it is terribly counterproductive to build gas in its place.

echelon 6y ago
There was a sharp dive in coal stock prices around the turn of the year, and unlike oil they have not had a turnaround. Are the coal companies going to zero?
- thephyber 6y ago
  Peabody Energy[1] operates the largest coal mine in the world (North Antelope Rochelle coal mine in Wyoming). Stock is trading around $2.80 down from ATH of $47 in Oct 2018. A Chinese company recently abandoned plans to invest nearly $7billion in an Austrialian coal mine[2]. > A $6.7 billion Chinese mega mine coal project adjacent to the Adani venture in Queensland's Galilee Basin is in doubt after the company abandoned its bid for a mining lease. > The company will not explain why it abandoned the process, but analysts believe the project is no longer aligned with China's interests in coal and is financially "unviable" given the difficulty companies face obtaining finance for coal developments. Even the famous "Belt and Road" won't risk large investments in coal under the current conditions. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=NYSE:+BTU https://www.google.com/search?q=NYSE:+BTU [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-23/macmines-abandons-mining-lease-applications/11138310 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-23/macmines-abandons-min...
- brightball 6y ago
  My understanding has always been that the same companies with mineral rights for oil have the rights for natural gas, so their bets are hedged a little with the uptick in CNG for trucking.
imglorp 6y ago
Gas is also laden with hidden costs. In particular, bad things happen when drilling shale and then more bad things building and running pipeline transports such as Dakota, Keystone, and Mariner. These things are all getting rammed through legislatures in a manner that bypasses all of the normal democratic process. For example, Mariner East somehow got declared a public utility which gives Sunoco rights to eminent domain whatever they want along the route to maximize profits with minimal oversight. They ruin neighborhoods and property values, literally bulldozing through apartment complexes, under schools, through little league fields, contaminating aquifers, causing sinkholes, and this is before anything is pressurized. There are no disaster plans like you see for nuclear plants. All these downsides so Sunoco can offshore the product. Late stage capitalism.
- 37r6r6u3u3u 6y ago
  What gas doesn't suffer from though is expensiveness (environmentalism sounds great until you realize you're largely advocating economically regressive policies that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable) and scalability. EU countries might be able to run their industrial sectors on renewables but call me when Russia, India, China, Indonesia, Brazil or even the US are able to do it without costs going up.
  - taneq 6y ago
    > environmentalism sounds great until you realize you're largely advocating economically regressive policies that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable Global warming is going to 'disproportionately impact the most vulnerable' even more. (Is there anything at all that won't? People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact.)
    - eru 6y ago
      > Is there anything at all that won't? Yes. Decline in stock prices or real estate for example. > People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact. Yes, that's almost true by definition. Even in my examples, in general the people who start out rich will still be better off after a stock market crash than the people who started out poor. Look on the bright side though: by symmetry any disaster averted or condition improved also helps the vulnerable more.
asdfadsfgfdda 6y ago
Natural gas is not slightly better, it's significantly better than coal for climate. Emissions are about half as much as coal per kWh. Switching from coal to natural gas has probably reduced America's CO2 footprint more than all new renewable generation combined. In the short term and without cheap storage, renewables just cannot scale compared to natural gas.
- bradbot 6y ago
  Does this take into account the amount of methane released from burn off and leaks?
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    No. When you consider those it's about as bad as coal. Even at half coal, 490 gCO2-eq/kWh is tremendously incompatible with a climate solution. All the gas companies are trying to greenwash and say they're the perfect partner for renewables but they're terrible high-carbon fossil emitting beasts. Still way better than coal on the deaths-from-air-pollution metric. But not a reasonable or good option. We need to stop celebrating the transition from coal to fracked gas and get on with actual low carbon energy like solar, hydro, nuclear, wind. Nuclear being the best of those :)
- sunstone 6y ago
  Actually renewables can scale very well by covering much more area and thereby averaging out the wind and solar fluctuations across the country. The technology for achieving this is High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) a technology that has also been rapidly getting cheaper along with renewable technologies because its costs are driven by semiconductor technologies getting cheaper every year.
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    Permitting transmission lines will get much, much harder with scale needed to do what you're saying. With nuclear you don't need to build vast new storage and transmission, or cover the landscape with energy harvesters.
prostoalex 6y ago
Why nuclear? Isn't it high-capex but low-opex type of operation?
- loeg 6y ago
  Nuclear is also low land footprint (energy dense) and low physical waste.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    I'm generally in favor of nuclear power, but you can't argue that the (relatively) small amount of waste isn't super nasty. Last I heard we still don't have a good way of dealing with it.
    - petre 6y ago
      Dealing with waste is a policy challenge that's tied to non proliferation, not so much a technical one.
      - worik 6y ago
        There is no known way to store anything safely for ~100,000 years like what the most problematic nuclear waste (and some parts of reactors, IIRC) have to be stored. It is a small amount, but a insoluble problem Selling out the future generations for cyrrent greed. Nice one
        evgen 6y ago
        > There is no known way to store anything safely for ~100,000 years Sure there is. You may not like it, but here it is: encase it in a concrete block and put it on a boat, sail boat to middle of ocean, dump it overboard. Done and dusted. That block of problematic nuclear waste is now going to kill less people over the next 100K years than solar will kill this month.
        6y ago
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Nuclear has high capital costs and many plants are aging out as they reach 40+ years old. Natural gas is a very strong possibility when replacing these plants unless the government steps in somehow to alleviate multiple financial risks (beyond continue to provide cheap accident indemnification).
- eru 6y ago
  Yes. Though the high capital costs for nuclear are mostly down to policy, less so to technology.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    I’m not sure. Even the Chinese haven’t been able to bring costs down, and that’s saying something. Are French reactors much more affordable?
    - eru 6y ago
      Oh, interesting question! Let me check out what data I can find on the Chinese. Do keep in mind that public opinion demands nuclear to be ridiculously safe. And even the Chinese government cares about domestic popular opinion, even if they don't run a democracy. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-lo... supports that public opinion interpretation to some extent. I did a bit of Googling, and eg https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... suggests that nuclear is orders of magnitude safer in terms of fatalities per Joule than most other energy sources. See https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy for an alternative source or https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#17e7ffee709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... If we scaled down the safety of nuclear to eg the safety of natural gas generation (still miles ahead of oil and coal), we could surely safe a lot of money. And we could probably replace lots of oil and coal generation, thus saving lives as well. TL;DR: policy forces nuclear power to be ridiculously safer than other power sources. But governments are at most indirectly to blame: they are just following public opinion. Democracy at work.