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This ignores that coal actually contributes a meaningful amount of electricity around the clock. By the way, 100ppm of mercury or 10ppm of uranium aren't that
by gridlockd 6y ago
This ignores that coal actually contributes a meaningful amount of electricity around the clock.
By the way, 100ppm of mercury or 10ppm of uranium aren't that high, you can find that in nature as well.
- ben_w 6y agoFun fact: renewables produce more electricity than coal in the UK, even though the UK is worse for solar than anywhere in the contiguous USA. https://amp.ft.com/content/a05d1dd4-dddd-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc https://amp.ft.com/content/a05d1dd4-dddd-11e9-9743-db5a37048... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1355/measuring-solar-insolation https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1355/measuring-sola...
- clusterfish 6y agojeffbee's unsourced numbers are probably not for UK. Worldwide coal provides a lot more power than wind [1], although of course it still produces more waste and pollution and everything per TWh than renewables. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
- jeffbee 6y agoIndeed, my figure is for the US. It's been coming down in recent years though. https://www.acaa-usa.org/Portals/9/Files/PDFs/2018-Charts.pdf https://www.acaa-usa.org/Portals/9/Files/PDFs/2018-Charts.pd...
- ben_w 6y agoMy point is more of: if even the UK can make coal less relevant than renewables, almost everyone can. The exceptions are practically rounding errors, even though Siberia is one of those regions that is worse than the UK and has 33 million people in it.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoNote also the switch from fossil coal to fossil natural gas. Coal dying because of gas is not even remotely a climate win. It's like going from astoundingly awful to terrible.