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Does Bloomberg also have a plan to replace them with something else that will serve as reliable base load? Otherwise this is just a plan to turn the US into Sou

by htss2013 3y ago

Does Bloomberg also have a plan to replace them with something else that will serve as reliable base load? Otherwise this is just a plan to turn the US into South Africa with perpetual brown outs.

elzbardico 3y ago
People here extensively drank the kool-aid, and they don't even have the beginning of the required understanding of the economics and the physics of grid scale electricity production and distribution. Maybe they will understand when they pay the same for energy as in Germany.
nicole_express 3y ago
In the US it generally seems to end up being natural gas; still a pretty big emissions improvement but not zero carbon by any means.
- robotnikman 3y ago
  I'm hoping nuclear power makes a comeback in the future. The new reactor opened in Georgia this year seems promising.
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    What about 7 years late and $17 billion dollars over budget is promising?
purpleflame1257 3y ago
Even replacing those power plants with LNG would be a net benefit.
zamalek 3y ago
South Africa stopped investing in energy infrastructure. This is $500m investment. That is a substantial difference.
- Innominate 3y ago
  At the scale needed to matter, $500m might as well be $0.
  - megabless123 3y ago
    source?
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    So whip out that Amex and get cracking pal
  - robotresearcher 3y ago
    This money isn’t buying power stations, it’s funding efforts to influence policy.
- caseysoftware 3y ago
  From the article: > "The financing is intended to support research, including studies and analysis to deliver accurate data to partnering organizations and officials for better decision-making. It will also fund local policy and advocacy, along with litigation brought against power companies." The $500M is NOT an investment, it is a media campaign.
- ilyt 3y ago
  ...in shutting down plants. Investment into lowering power production
kawhah 3y ago
...as opposed the alternative, a plan to turn the US into somewhere that has perpetual and disastrous wildfires and hurricanes.
- adventured 3y ago
  There's absolutely nothing the US can do to stop that. You could drop US emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn't stop it. China's extreme emissions growth is guaranteeing this only ends one way. And that's just one entity. Next is India. And then after that is Africa. Those two will add 1.5 billion people (another China) over the next 50 years and they will want to emit and consume like everybody else. India will end up with emissions growth that looks a lot like China, with hundreds of millions more people than what China has today. If you believe in the existing projections on global climate change and what it will do, the end is already settled. The US reducing its emissions by eg 1/4 or 1/3 is entirely meaningless against the increases elsewhere. It's not like we could just go hyper green and be spared, it doesn't work that way. It's global climate change.
  - kawhah 3y ago
    No, the US is responsible for 15% of global CO2 emissions. China emit around twice as much (with around 4x the population), but their emissions aren't growing over the last 10 years. In fact, they have increased their energy consumption by a lot in that decade (commensurate with becoming much richer), partly with renewables and partly by replacing bad uses of fossil fuels with better ones. Neither is their population growing. India and Africa together emit less than the US for around 6x the pop. They have a lot of population growth ahead of them, and a fair amount of getting wealthier, before they start to eat up a 1/4 drop in US emissions. A bit ridiculous to claim that global warming is caused by the dirt poor and the not yet born 'wanting to consume like Americans' when it's obvious that at least half of Americans are determined to continue consuming like Americans whatever the cost. Your argument basically seems to boil down to "the most polluting country can't reduce use of its most polluting energy source because other countries exist and emit anything at all".
    - 3y ago
Dylan16807 3y ago
You don't need specific plants that act as perfectly reliable base load. If a bunch of auxiliary fossil fuel plants come online for 10 days per year, that's almost as good as never using them. There's a maintenance cost, of course, but as far as carbon goals it's very doable.
- DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
  The economics of that don’t even come within the same universe as working out. Those plants wouldn’t just be losing money, they’d be losing unfathomably huge amounts of money.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    I mean y'all can downvote all you like but that doesn't change the financials of shuttering a powerplant. How tf you gonna retain the skilled employees required to run the damn thing when they're furloughed 300 days out of the year?
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      So don't furlough people...? Maintenance can be spread over the entire year, and you can use designs that don't need a big workforce just to run. Peaker plants already exist, this isn't a crazy new realm in the operational sense.
      - forgetfreeman 3y ago
        I dunno, seems pretty wild to me. If the thing isn't generating electricity you're sitting there with a huge labor bill and nothing to show for it. That this sort of thing might make sense from a purely technical perspective seems reasonable to me but I don't see how you'd fund it.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        If you're worried strictly about profits, and not a strong desire to avoid CO2 emissions, we can imagine a carbon tax. $100 per ton would cost a coal plant 10¢/kWh on top of operating costs. So if a carbon-free source gets even close for operating costs, then that's a lot of money to fund a backup plant and still come out ahead. And this doesn't really require a tax. We could imagine an electrical company pricing out their aversion to carbon in cents per kWh out of their own volition or because of customer demand.
vkou 3y ago
You're being nakedly dishonest by drawing a false equivalence between this and the entirely different category of problems that SA power infrastructure is facing.
tivert 3y ago
> Does Bloomberg also have a plan to replace them with something else that will serve as reliable base load? Otherwise this is just a plan to turn the US into South Africa with perpetual brown outs. He doesn't need one. He's a retired billionaire, whose retirement hobby is social engineering. Brown outs aren't his concern, as I'm sure his home will have adequate back-up power.
benatkin 3y ago
How about the jobs? I would like reducing coal mining to be high on the priority list but wouldn't want a lone billionaire deciding to shut down a bunch of jobs in my area.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  A lone billionaire pulling the plug on regional jobs is just another Tuesday.
- gffrd 3y ago
  And don't forget the property values!
- not2b 3y ago
  Those jobs are going away anyway. There's less market for coal and automation means fewer miners are needed, so even in the absence of any push to transition to green energy almost all coal miners are going to lose their jobs.
- coldpie 3y ago
  There's roughly 50,000 coal mining jobs in the US[1]. Saving those is not worth setting the world on fire. I would happily support giving every single one of them an immediate, life-time, full-wage pension, if it means ending coal power plants tomorrow. It would pay for itself immediately. [1] https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/coal-mining-united-states/ https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/coa...
  - adventured 3y ago
    Setting the world on fire, yeah right. Please show me the total emissions of US coal, stacked up against global emissions, and then China's emissions and their emissions growth (ideally with a break-out on their coal emissions expansion, which is ongoing). China added a hundred new coal plants in 2022 alone. That's half as many coal plants in the US, added in just a single year. And they're still going. Those are new plants, they no doubt plan to operate them for decades. What do you think about China adding 500 new coal plants over the next ten years? US coal is not going to make a difference whether it continues or not.

Does Bloomberg also have a plan to replace them with something else that will serve as reliable base load? Otherwise this is just a plan to turn the US into South Africa with perpetual brown outs.

elzbardico 3y ago

People here extensively drank the kool-aid, and they don't even have the beginning of the required understanding of the economics and the physics of grid scale electricity production and distribution. Maybe they will understand when they pay the same for energy as in Germany.

nicole_express 3y ago

In the US it generally seems to end up being natural gas; still a pretty big emissions improvement but not zero carbon by any means.

robotnikman 3y ago
I'm hoping nuclear power makes a comeback in the future. The new reactor opened in Georgia this year seems promising.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  What about 7 years late and $17 billion dollars over budget is promising?

purpleflame1257 3y ago

Even replacing those power plants with LNG would be a net benefit.

zamalek 3y ago

South Africa stopped investing in energy infrastructure. This is $500m investment. That is a substantial difference.

Innominate 3y ago
At the scale needed to matter, $500m might as well be $0.
- megabless123 3y ago
  source?
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  So whip out that Amex and get cracking pal
- robotresearcher 3y ago
  This money isn’t buying power stations, it’s funding efforts to influence policy.
caseysoftware 3y ago
From the article: > "The financing is intended to support research, including studies and analysis to deliver accurate data to partnering organizations and officials for better decision-making. It will also fund local policy and advocacy, along with litigation brought against power companies." The $500M is NOT an investment, it is a media campaign.
ilyt 3y ago
...in shutting down plants. Investment into lowering power production

kawhah 3y ago

...as opposed the alternative, a plan to turn the US into somewhere that has perpetual and disastrous wildfires and hurricanes.

adventured 3y ago
There's absolutely nothing the US can do to stop that. You could drop US emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn't stop it. China's extreme emissions growth is guaranteeing this only ends one way. And that's just one entity. Next is India. And then after that is Africa. Those two will add 1.5 billion people (another China) over the next 50 years and they will want to emit and consume like everybody else. India will end up with emissions growth that looks a lot like China, with hundreds of millions more people than what China has today. If you believe in the existing projections on global climate change and what it will do, the end is already settled. The US reducing its emissions by eg 1/4 or 1/3 is entirely meaningless against the increases elsewhere. It's not like we could just go hyper green and be spared, it doesn't work that way. It's global climate change.
- kawhah 3y ago
  No, the US is responsible for 15% of global CO2 emissions. China emit around twice as much (with around 4x the population), but their emissions aren't growing over the last 10 years. In fact, they have increased their energy consumption by a lot in that decade (commensurate with becoming much richer), partly with renewables and partly by replacing bad uses of fossil fuels with better ones. Neither is their population growing. India and Africa together emit less than the US for around 6x the pop. They have a lot of population growth ahead of them, and a fair amount of getting wealthier, before they start to eat up a 1/4 drop in US emissions. A bit ridiculous to claim that global warming is caused by the dirt poor and the not yet born 'wanting to consume like Americans' when it's obvious that at least half of Americans are determined to continue consuming like Americans whatever the cost. Your argument basically seems to boil down to "the most polluting country can't reduce use of its most polluting energy source because other countries exist and emit anything at all".
  - 3y ago

Dylan16807 3y ago

You don't need specific plants that act as perfectly reliable base load. If a bunch of auxiliary fossil fuel plants come online for 10 days per year, that's almost as good as never using them. There's a maintenance cost, of course, but as far as carbon goals it's very doable.

DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
The economics of that don’t even come within the same universe as working out. Those plants wouldn’t just be losing money, they’d be losing unfathomably huge amounts of money.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  I mean y'all can downvote all you like but that doesn't change the financials of shuttering a powerplant. How tf you gonna retain the skilled employees required to run the damn thing when they're furloughed 300 days out of the year?
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    So don't furlough people...? Maintenance can be spread over the entire year, and you can use designs that don't need a big workforce just to run. Peaker plants already exist, this isn't a crazy new realm in the operational sense.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      I dunno, seems pretty wild to me. If the thing isn't generating electricity you're sitting there with a huge labor bill and nothing to show for it. That this sort of thing might make sense from a purely technical perspective seems reasonable to me but I don't see how you'd fund it.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        If you're worried strictly about profits, and not a strong desire to avoid CO2 emissions, we can imagine a carbon tax. $100 per ton would cost a coal plant 10¢/kWh on top of operating costs. So if a carbon-free source gets even close for operating costs, then that's a lot of money to fund a backup plant and still come out ahead. And this doesn't really require a tax. We could imagine an electrical company pricing out their aversion to carbon in cents per kWh out of their own volition or because of customer demand.

vkou 3y ago

You're being nakedly dishonest by drawing a false equivalence between this and the entirely different category of problems that SA power infrastructure is facing.

tivert 3y ago

> Does Bloomberg also have a plan to replace them with something else that will serve as reliable base load? Otherwise this is just a plan to turn the US into South Africa with perpetual brown outs. He doesn't need one. He's a retired billionaire, whose retirement hobby is social engineering. Brown outs aren't his concern, as I'm sure his home will have adequate back-up power.

benatkin 3y ago

How about the jobs? I would like reducing coal mining to be high on the priority list but wouldn't want a lone billionaire deciding to shut down a bunch of jobs in my area.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
A lone billionaire pulling the plug on regional jobs is just another Tuesday.
gffrd 3y ago
And don't forget the property values!
not2b 3y ago
Those jobs are going away anyway. There's less market for coal and automation means fewer miners are needed, so even in the absence of any push to transition to green energy almost all coal miners are going to lose their jobs.
coldpie 3y ago
There's roughly 50,000 coal mining jobs in the US[1]. Saving those is not worth setting the world on fire. I would happily support giving every single one of them an immediate, life-time, full-wage pension, if it means ending coal power plants tomorrow. It would pay for itself immediately. [1] https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/coal-mining-united-states/ https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/coa...
- adventured 3y ago
  Setting the world on fire, yeah right. Please show me the total emissions of US coal, stacked up against global emissions, and then China's emissions and their emissions growth (ideally with a break-out on their coal emissions expansion, which is ongoing). China added a hundred new coal plants in 2022 alone. That's half as many coal plants in the US, added in just a single year. And they're still going. Those are new plants, they no doubt plan to operate them for decades. What do you think about China adding 500 new coal plants over the next ten years? US coal is not going to make a difference whether it continues or not.