10 ms·

EPA rules would force coal-fired power plants to capture emissions or shut down

67 points by geox 3y ago

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
> Coal plants that plan to stay open beyond 2039 would have to cut or capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032, the EPA said. Plants that expect to retire by 2039 would face a less stringent standard but still would have to capture some emissions. Coal plants that are set to retire by 2032 would not be subject to the new rules. It's too little and too late, but there's still going to be a massive political fight about it. Depressing. Luckily, if any coal plants do last that long they'll not be running much due to economic factors.
- jajko 3y ago
  Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. I am all for env protection but if the effort is not global while the effects always are, poor folks that are also footing the bill get properly pissed off and then vote out do gooders for more extreme populists. EU green deal feeds off various extreme parties in all eastern EU for decade+ and sowing deep discontent. I dont think western part or EU leadership realized how badly they underestimated this.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Do you ever consider that you personally are helping the extreme parties by passing on memes like "but what about the foreigners!" and "poor folks are paying the bills!" when this topic comes up?
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Do you think its not true or should we mute certain truths dare it support the evil faction?
      - cbrozefsky 3y ago
        Noone has spoken facts on this matter. They made vague and incorrect statements, and "whattabouts". The energy price volatility is not due to green policies, or extreme parties in the EU, it's due to their reliance upon natural gas and oil from a global exporter who then decided to invade their neighbor and threaten all of Europe. That's the fact here.
      - adrianN 3y ago
        I believe we should refrain from reducing complex topics like international carbon policy to „but the other guy“ style arguments.
    - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
      Is your suggestion to not look at the full picture when discussing policy topics? If so, how do you propose rational policies? The impact of parties outside of direct political control can offset any good done locally. If the local policies are too restrictive it could have knock on effects that make people’s live materially and psychologically worse.
      - adrianN 3y ago
        Luckily environmental protections are extremely far from „too restrictive“ so there are no concerns about that.
        gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
        If the price of energy is too high, you will suffer economically. This will lead to mental health issues. That will lead to suicide and broken homes. That will lead to cycle of poverty and pain across generations. We’re seeing this play out in children due to Covid lockdowns. Their development was retarded. They started speaking later. They lost functionally three years. Many are pushed through school compounding the issue. At the same time violence at home rose during that time due to stressor. We need to avoid such policy shortcomings. Administrations at various levels need to think things out. I’m not saying do nothing. I am saying tread lightly while considering many issues.
        cbrozefsky 3y ago
        The politicians and policy makers are very aware of the energy price, so you are not introducing anything new to the policy makers decision making process. Read any of their materials and you will see the energy price sensitivity is a core measure for them. What you are doing, it bringing up a series of unrelated issue and trying to pin them on these policies, or suggest, in an ignorance, that they are not thinking about one of the core political realities of their career. This is all the more reason to speed up the transfer of renewables which have near zero marginal cost, and aren't emitting carbon and particles which damage the people around them. Speaking or cycle of pain and poverty, the particle pollution of coal plants and refineries is an ongoing public health crisis. This policy is an aspect of making them pay for the pollution they previously were making their neighbors pay for, in asthma, COPD, mercury poisoning, lung cancer and many other illnesses directly attributed to these plants emissions.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - tichiian 3y ago
      "Whataboutism" isn't a proper counter-argument. Shutting down a few plants in the west is maybe just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and asking about the iceberg and the cold water isn't "whataboutism" in that it doesn't distract from the issue at hand. It rather points to the really important part of the issue. More like a kind of "reverse whataboutism". Relative emissions and various kinds of cost factors matter a lot. The climate isn't going to improve by stupidly and blindly spending billions, goodwill and precious time on low-yield measures, when less resources could be spent on high-yield measures elsewhere. That is why stuff like banning plastic straws or kitchen gas stoves is actively harmful. Because the "what about those foreign big emitters" argument is very valid.
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        US per capita emissions are almost twice that of China, so a dollar spent on emissions reductions in the US has a bigger impact.
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        Total global warming is predicated on total CO2 emissions, which is the bottom line that is most significant. Yes, the US has higher per-capita emissions, and absolutely should reduce those. However US emissions have been flat or declining for decades now (since the 1970s or 1980s depending on how you look at it), whilst China's emissions, both total and per capita, have exploded in the past four decades as that country has industrialised and emerged as a mid-income nation. These facts re-hash arguments about planetary limits which have been ongoing since the 1970s if not before, and pit past growth, consumption, and pollution amongst western nations (the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia, largely), with the hopes for economic growth, still strongly coupled to consumption and emissions, of the rest of the world, quite notably China and India, but also Africa's future billion or so in coming decades. It's notable that despite the Industrial Revolution and carbon age being roughly 250 years old, half of all emissions date from the 1970s, a time at which Western emissions were slowing heavily following the 1970s oil shocks. It's not a case of either/or but both, the reality is complex, and simple, and most especially nationalistic simplifications, finger-pointing, or whataboutisms really don't advance the discussion. <https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions>
    - jajko 3y ago
      Man, I am not living in EU anymore so not personally affected by its policies, just mentioning that world and people are more complex than you would like it to be, not 'sowing' anything. Just relaying what I heard over and over in eastern part of EU, across multiple states, on personal but also institutional/government level. We all saw how quickly Brexit went, and neither UK nor Europe is better afterwards, you just need few skilled populists push the right levers at right time and its done, for good. Why feed them even more without even listening to their concerns? I am all for EU despite its dysfunctions and consider it overall a good institution in Europe, but ignoring problems and having tunnel vision only on efforts that you like ain't smartest approach, things will backfire. People and societies we form are complex in various ways, lets respect that a bit if we want some long term consensus and not constant infighting and ignored tensions which benefits just our enemies, like current one in the east.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    Well, it’s a hard problem to solve. The world requires a lot more immediate action than what the EU leadership ever proposed, yet we can’t even convince the fools sawing the branch we’re sitting on to at least swing the saw a little slower. And it’s not limited to Eastern Europe, the idiots are far and wide…
  - cbrozefsky 3y ago
    The number of coal plants doesn't count, it's their utilization rate and outputs that counts. See https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/ci/research-analysis/chinas-record-coal-capacity-approvals-in-2022-carbon-targets.html https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/ci/research-an... for a overview of utlization, projected emissions etc.. from one analysis. Stop carrying water for those who use oil and gas supply as weapons and blaming the radical price volatility of energy on renewaqbles. It's oil and gas that were the cause of those spikes. You aren't speaking for the people against extreme parties, you are parroting a propaganda line.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > but if the effort is not global while the effects always are The effect will never be global if the West doesn't start first, because the developing countries will never accept to hurt their economic development for something the rich countries isn't doing. But if the West starts, the rest of the world will follow, because their elite want to be like us: it is a status symbol! That's why for instance the elites in Southern countries wear western clothes despite their obvious inappropriateness to the weather. That's also why many dictators out there pretend to be “elected presidents”: because being a “president” is what makes you look like you're an western ruler. Humans are social animals, and status is probably the strongest driver for our behaviors. The day the West is all green, you can be sure that every country leader elsewhere world is going to flex about how green their country is too. The problem right now is that the West is all about green-washing, and so are they.
    - fwungy 3y ago
      Tell Putin and the Sauds. Do you think they'll give up trillions of wealth because "they aspire to be like Western elites"?
      - littlestymaar 3y ago
        It's about the demand side, not the supply side. Putin has zero leverage on Indian's energy policy and neither does MBS. If anything, sending money to Putin and MBS hurts Modi and Lula's own economic goals.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    China is reducing their CO2/kWh at a much faster rate than the US, mostly due to massive solar deployment. They're installing solar at a rate almost 10x the rate that the US is.
  - cbrozefsky 3y ago
    This is not about the EU or India or China. It's about the US and the EPA. The EPA cannot regulate those other places, but it can make coal plants in the US pay for the pollutants they previously externalized.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. China in particular is building out insane amounts of solar - hundreds of gigawatts a year [1]. India plans to pause new coal power plants and increase its capacity for solar [2] - Modi's government has it a bit easier than most Western countries, both due to the increasing authoritarianism and because the people see destructive weather events and their impact themselves. The rest of the world is already going solar thanks to cheap Chinese panels. In most of Africa, there isn't much of a working phone or electricity grid anyway for historical reasons (poverty, colonialism, theft, construction challenges, political, ...) so there's quite a lot of international aid programs going on [3] - after all, Africa has 60% of the solar energy potential of this entire rock floating in space, but only 1% of the worldwide production. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol... [2] https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-renewables-68b75402af663e4553434bc672fc9cda https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-ren... [3] https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start-ups-powering-africa%E2%80%99s-solar-energy-ecosystem https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start...
  - epgui 3y ago
    Yes you're right that it's a global problem, but that should not be an objection to taking initiative.
    - pxmpxm 3y ago
      No, that is wrong - if the outcome of this regulation is coal export with the same end use + co2 for transit + no sulfur scrubbing because emerging markets coal plants have lesser env standards, it doesn't make sense.
      - epgui 3y ago
        That would be a great argument if it were a response to a comment other than the one I made.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  This also applies to natural gas, which is a much bigger deal. The title here didn't say that, but the article's title did.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    I thought they'd softened this so it didn't apply to any existing gas plant? Did they change that again? edit: > The EPA’s new power plant pollution rule has a big, gassy hole in it https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/25/24139494/power-plant-pollution-epa-final-rule-climate https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/25/24139494/power-plant-poll...
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Yes, I see that's the case. I imagine that's because of all the existing combined cycle plants. The new rule also doesn't apply to peaker plants. The folks with the Allam cycle patents must be happy about this.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Peaker plants are not cost competitive with utility scale battery storage, storage which is currently supply constrained.
        pfdietz 3y ago
        They're not cost competitive with batteries for diurnal storage, but they are competitive for low duty cycle demand on much longer time scales (like covering Dunkelflauten).
  - SigmundA 3y ago
    Natural gas emits less than half the CO2 of coal per unit of energy due to its chemical makeup, NG is the "cleanest" fossil fuel. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296
- pxmpxm 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Tade0 3y ago
    China's coal usage is poised to peak around 2024-2025 - earlier than analysts expected as while they're increasing generation capacity, actual coal usage is not keeping up: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%. Most likely they're building all those plants because that contributes to the GDP figure.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Buried in the details there's a twist often missed. China has shut down thousands of small, old, relatively inefficant coal plants while at the same time building fewer, larger, more efficient, less polluting coal plants and while doing more than any other country to advance solar and related technologies. They have a massive population, which they worked hard (in questionable ways) to keep in check, as the associated energy demand has grown they've worked hard to meet it with the technology they had (coal) while also working to make that cleaner and working to replace it as rapidly as possible. > Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%. I'm unsure of your specifics here, I agree they're working hard to use less, FWiW though, the most recent IEA figure for China coal use was 60.6% of total energy supply in 2021 https://www.iea.org/countries/China/coal https://www.iea.org/countries/China/coal The IEA also asserts that globally we've reached "peak coal use" planet wide, despite the apparent foot dragging of China and India who are still bound by large populations, large energy demands, production energy usage for goods for much of the reast of the planet, and the difficulty of fast transition.
      - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
        Remember that 60% of primary energy supply includes the half of that energy that gets thrown away as heat when making electricity. So you'd only need to replace the actual useful final energy.
donw 3y ago
The entire grid would be nuclear and carbon-free if environmentalists hadn’t spent the last 70 years fighting against it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianN 3y ago
  For economic reasons it probably wouldn’t be fully nuclear.
  - donw 3y ago
    True! Hydro would contribute, and likely geothermal as well. Probably also some generation from the methane generated by composting garbage at scale.
- cbrozefsky 3y ago
  No, it would not, not even people who make their living building Nuclear plants would claim that. It's incredibly expensive and risk to build the plants, they couldn't even build them to meet the needs of the grid near unlimited money. It would require more than halving the capital requirements to get close to break even with renweables, and they cannot touch fossil plants. The shifting of blame to environmentalists is ludicrous. It's economic reality, that a much lower capital requirements, and zero marginal cost energy that has radically less complex engineering requirements and doesn't leave radioactive waste behind or blech it out when something goes wrong.
  - EricE 3y ago
    The majority of negative economics with nuclear are from asinine policy decisions as well as tilted markets with subsidies for other sources. Lithium reactors would burn fuel that we idiotically label as waste and try to bury. China has picked up what we abandoned in the 50's; woe be to us when they scale modern reactor designs. Cheap, reliable and sustainable energy built the west - we are pissing that away over a bunch of overactive fear mongering. And if you think emerging markets are going to abandon fossil fuels and the advantages they brought us "because feelings" you are utterly delusional. If the oceans are really in threat of rising, why did the Obamas buy multi-million dollar compound at sea level? Actions speak louder than words.
incomingpain 3y ago
[flagged]
- cbrozefsky 3y ago
  It's not politics to hold business accountable for the damage they do to their neighbors. That's called appropriately pricing previously externalized harms. Coal plants in the US are economically dead in the water anyways, their utilization rates are plummetting between renewables and natural gas peakers. Many still operating are subsidized by policitical handouts. If you want to talk about political decisions, perhaps look at Illinois and Ohio politicians being presecuted for bribery from the power industry for making tax payers pay for uneconomic plants. They are indeed being punished.
- epgui 3y ago
  You're throwing words around in apparent criticism, but there's no substance to it. Environmental protection policies should be about as controversial as the idea that we shouldn't shit where we eat. If you want to call that politics, then sure, I guess.
  - incomingpain 3y ago
    >You're throwing words around in apparent criticism, but there's no substance to it. I'm not from the USA. I kept my content brief because I knew I would be censored. I even said don't shoot the messenger! In my personal viewpoint, shutdown all coal plants tomorrow and send black roses to their accountants. >Environmental protection policies should be about as controversial as the idea that we shouldn't shit where we eat. If you want to call that politics, then sure, I guess. The conversation would be interesting if people were allowed to speak. At risk of further punishment I'll elaborate. Your political side believes this, which is totally fine and good. I even agree with you. But it's obvious the republicans dont agree with us. This is politics, and now the EPA is going to be heavily deregulated because of this move being done in the election year.
    - epgui 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
smitty1e 3y ago
One of the ideas informing representative democracy is that those wielding power stand for election. This means that if those making public decisions pursue folly, they pay a price at election time. Irrespective of whether this specific idea is a wise one, the notion of un-elected bureaucrats making policy with broad effect should terrify us. Also worrisome is the abdication of proper legislative power by Congress.
- kibwen 3y ago
  This is nonsense. Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA, which means that voters have the power to elect representatives to do just that if the EPA made a bad ruling. And in this particular case, this isn't even remotely a bad ruling. The inability for markets to properly price in their negative externalities is the reason for our current looming crisis, and making up for the failures of markets by properly imposing those externalities is one of the most important roles of government.
  - smitty1e 3y ago
    > Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA Console yourself with this theoretical point, by all means.
  - ImJamal 3y ago
    >Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA Maybe the congress should do this with everything. The president can just make any rule he wants. Or maybe congress should just do their job instead of just delegating away all of their responsibility.
    - smitty1e 3y ago
      My point is that the power has oozed into Article II over the last century, leaving facades in place for Articles I and III. High time for an Article V re-write.
- 3y ago
Kon-Peki 3y ago
My parents live in a very conservative area of the country that started a coal phaseout 5 years ago or so. Everyone was up in arms when they announced it, but the utility said "here's our data, these are the scenarios we've run, if we've made a mistake or there is a plausible scenario we've missed, let us know". Coal just isn't competitive anymore, financially.
- the_optimist 3y ago
  It’s not competitive because policy has been designed to make it expensive. This is underhanded and leads to circular reasoning. Nuclear is similarly expensive. Wind and solar would be even more expensive without extraordinary policy support.
  - erellsworth 3y ago
    Except that the US has been subsidizing fossil fuels, including coal, for decades.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Natural gas and wind turbines are cheaper now. Would coal be competitive if there were no emission controls? Maybe, but we like relatively clean air, so we want some of those controls.
  - cbrozefsky 3y ago
    You are myopic in a focus on subsidies, and you need to consider both current costs, and how they are externalized from coal plants to the population, and what the cost will be in the future from the pollutants (carbon and others). Policy has only started to make them pay for the cost of their pollution, and as they are being made too, it's become increasingly more expensive to run a coal fired power plant. Last one more than 100mw was built in 2013, and no more big ones are being built. The REAL market price of energy must include the cost of eliminating or mitigating these pollutants. This is also why policy in the US since 2016 has increased the subsidies to renewables: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pd... When the real price is considered, not just for global warming, but for public health impacts due to particulate and heavy metal and water pollution, coal is dead. It's only hope is to try and continue to externalize those costs on to all of us by crying about regulation and subsidies. Those subsidies are an investment to avoid paying a radically higher cost in the coming years for public health and climate change disruption. The science and economic are very clear on this. https://www.lancetcountdownus.org/2023-lancet-countdown-u-s-brief/ https://www.lancetcountdownus.org/2023-lancet-countdown-u-s-...
cbrozefsky 3y ago
According to the EIA, more than a quarter of the us coal fleet will be retired by 2029. This is 10 years before these regulations would be at full strength: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54559 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54559 The last large plant came online in 2013 and noone has plans to build more. This is the economic reality of coal power in the US. It cannot compete with renewables (even when coal gets more subsidies) or natural gas, and it certainly cannot once it has to price in the cost of the pollution (particle, heavy metals, and carbon) that it previously made all of us pay for. The hand wringing about politics in policy, or this EPA decision impacting energy prices are misguided and ignorant repetition of memes that the coal and other fossil fuel industries promote to perform a rear guard action and slow for their competitors who are beating them on most fronts with cheap, clean, zero marginal cost energy with very stable pricing.
bilsbie 3y ago
I’m confused how they are doing stuff like this in light of West Virginia vs EPA?
aranchelk 3y ago
> The rule was among four separate measures targeting coal and natural gas plants that the EPA said would provide “regulatory certainty” to the power industry Certainty? If Biden isn’t reelected doesn’t it all get immediately reversed?

67 points by geox 3y ago

> Coal plants that plan to stay open beyond 2039 would have to cut or capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032, the EPA said. Plants that expect to retire by 2039 would face a less stringent standard but still would have to capture some emissions. Coal plants that are set to retire by 2032 would not be subject to the new rules. It's too little and too late, but there's still going to be a massive political fight about it. Depressing. Luckily, if any coal plants do last that long they'll not be running much due to economic factors.

jajko 3y ago
Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. I am all for env protection but if the effort is not global while the effects always are, poor folks that are also footing the bill get properly pissed off and then vote out do gooders for more extreme populists. EU green deal feeds off various extreme parties in all eastern EU for decade+ and sowing deep discontent. I dont think western part or EU leadership realized how badly they underestimated this.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Do you ever consider that you personally are helping the extreme parties by passing on memes like "but what about the foreigners!" and "poor folks are paying the bills!" when this topic comes up?
  - peteradio 3y ago
    Do you think its not true or should we mute certain truths dare it support the evil faction?
    - cbrozefsky 3y ago
      Noone has spoken facts on this matter. They made vague and incorrect statements, and "whattabouts". The energy price volatility is not due to green policies, or extreme parties in the EU, it's due to their reliance upon natural gas and oil from a global exporter who then decided to invade their neighbor and threaten all of Europe. That's the fact here.
    - adrianN 3y ago
      I believe we should refrain from reducing complex topics like international carbon policy to „but the other guy“ style arguments.
  - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
    Is your suggestion to not look at the full picture when discussing policy topics? If so, how do you propose rational policies? The impact of parties outside of direct political control can offset any good done locally. If the local policies are too restrictive it could have knock on effects that make people’s live materially and psychologically worse.
    - adrianN 3y ago
      Luckily environmental protections are extremely far from „too restrictive“ so there are no concerns about that.
      - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
        If the price of energy is too high, you will suffer economically. This will lead to mental health issues. That will lead to suicide and broken homes. That will lead to cycle of poverty and pain across generations. We’re seeing this play out in children due to Covid lockdowns. Their development was retarded. They started speaking later. They lost functionally three years. Many are pushed through school compounding the issue. At the same time violence at home rose during that time due to stressor. We need to avoid such policy shortcomings. Administrations at various levels need to think things out. I’m not saying do nothing. I am saying tread lightly while considering many issues.
        cbrozefsky 3y ago
        The politicians and policy makers are very aware of the energy price, so you are not introducing anything new to the policy makers decision making process. Read any of their materials and you will see the energy price sensitivity is a core measure for them. What you are doing, it bringing up a series of unrelated issue and trying to pin them on these policies, or suggest, in an ignorance, that they are not thinking about one of the core political realities of their career. This is all the more reason to speed up the transfer of renewables which have near zero marginal cost, and aren't emitting carbon and particles which damage the people around them. Speaking or cycle of pain and poverty, the particle pollution of coal plants and refineries is an ongoing public health crisis. This policy is an aspect of making them pay for the pollution they previously were making their neighbors pay for, in asthma, COPD, mercury poisoning, lung cancer and many other illnesses directly attributed to these plants emissions.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tichiian 3y ago
    "Whataboutism" isn't a proper counter-argument. Shutting down a few plants in the west is maybe just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and asking about the iceberg and the cold water isn't "whataboutism" in that it doesn't distract from the issue at hand. It rather points to the really important part of the issue. More like a kind of "reverse whataboutism". Relative emissions and various kinds of cost factors matter a lot. The climate isn't going to improve by stupidly and blindly spending billions, goodwill and precious time on low-yield measures, when less resources could be spent on high-yield measures elsewhere. That is why stuff like banning plastic straws or kitchen gas stoves is actively harmful. Because the "what about those foreign big emitters" argument is very valid.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      US per capita emissions are almost twice that of China, so a dollar spent on emissions reductions in the US has a bigger impact.
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        Total global warming is predicated on total CO2 emissions, which is the bottom line that is most significant. Yes, the US has higher per-capita emissions, and absolutely should reduce those. However US emissions have been flat or declining for decades now (since the 1970s or 1980s depending on how you look at it), whilst China's emissions, both total and per capita, have exploded in the past four decades as that country has industrialised and emerged as a mid-income nation. These facts re-hash arguments about planetary limits which have been ongoing since the 1970s if not before, and pit past growth, consumption, and pollution amongst western nations (the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia, largely), with the hopes for economic growth, still strongly coupled to consumption and emissions, of the rest of the world, quite notably China and India, but also Africa's future billion or so in coming decades. It's notable that despite the Industrial Revolution and carbon age being roughly 250 years old, half of all emissions date from the 1970s, a time at which Western emissions were slowing heavily following the 1970s oil shocks. It's not a case of either/or but both, the reality is complex, and simple, and most especially nationalistic simplifications, finger-pointing, or whataboutisms really don't advance the discussion. <https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions>
  - jajko 3y ago
    Man, I am not living in EU anymore so not personally affected by its policies, just mentioning that world and people are more complex than you would like it to be, not 'sowing' anything. Just relaying what I heard over and over in eastern part of EU, across multiple states, on personal but also institutional/government level. We all saw how quickly Brexit went, and neither UK nor Europe is better afterwards, you just need few skilled populists push the right levers at right time and its done, for good. Why feed them even more without even listening to their concerns? I am all for EU despite its dysfunctions and consider it overall a good institution in Europe, but ignoring problems and having tunnel vision only on efforts that you like ain't smartest approach, things will backfire. People and societies we form are complex in various ways, lets respect that a bit if we want some long term consensus and not constant infighting and ignored tensions which benefits just our enemies, like current one in the east.
- 9dev 3y ago
  Well, it’s a hard problem to solve. The world requires a lot more immediate action than what the EU leadership ever proposed, yet we can’t even convince the fools sawing the branch we’re sitting on to at least swing the saw a little slower. And it’s not limited to Eastern Europe, the idiots are far and wide…
- cbrozefsky 3y ago
  The number of coal plants doesn't count, it's their utilization rate and outputs that counts. See https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/ci/research-analysis/chinas-record-coal-capacity-approvals-in-2022-carbon-targets.html https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/ci/research-an... for a overview of utlization, projected emissions etc.. from one analysis. Stop carrying water for those who use oil and gas supply as weapons and blaming the radical price volatility of energy on renewaqbles. It's oil and gas that were the cause of those spikes. You aren't speaking for the people against extreme parties, you are parroting a propaganda line.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > but if the effort is not global while the effects always are The effect will never be global if the West doesn't start first, because the developing countries will never accept to hurt their economic development for something the rich countries isn't doing. But if the West starts, the rest of the world will follow, because their elite want to be like us: it is a status symbol! That's why for instance the elites in Southern countries wear western clothes despite their obvious inappropriateness to the weather. That's also why many dictators out there pretend to be “elected presidents”: because being a “president” is what makes you look like you're an western ruler. Humans are social animals, and status is probably the strongest driver for our behaviors. The day the West is all green, you can be sure that every country leader elsewhere world is going to flex about how green their country is too. The problem right now is that the West is all about green-washing, and so are they.
  - fwungy 3y ago
    Tell Putin and the Sauds. Do you think they'll give up trillions of wealth because "they aspire to be like Western elites"?
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      It's about the demand side, not the supply side. Putin has zero leverage on Indian's energy policy and neither does MBS. If anything, sending money to Putin and MBS hurts Modi and Lula's own economic goals.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  China is reducing their CO2/kWh at a much faster rate than the US, mostly due to massive solar deployment. They're installing solar at a rate almost 10x the rate that the US is.
- cbrozefsky 3y ago
  This is not about the EU or India or China. It's about the US and the EPA. The EPA cannot regulate those other places, but it can make coal plants in the US pay for the pollutants they previously externalized.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. China in particular is building out insane amounts of solar - hundreds of gigawatts a year [1]. India plans to pause new coal power plants and increase its capacity for solar [2] - Modi's government has it a bit easier than most Western countries, both due to the increasing authoritarianism and because the people see destructive weather events and their impact themselves. The rest of the world is already going solar thanks to cheap Chinese panels. In most of Africa, there isn't much of a working phone or electricity grid anyway for historical reasons (poverty, colonialism, theft, construction challenges, political, ...) so there's quite a lot of international aid programs going on [3] - after all, Africa has 60% of the solar energy potential of this entire rock floating in space, but only 1% of the worldwide production. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol... [2] https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-renewables-68b75402af663e4553434bc672fc9cda https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-ren... [3] https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start-ups-powering-africa%E2%80%99s-solar-energy-ecosystem https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start...
- epgui 3y ago
  Yes you're right that it's a global problem, but that should not be an objection to taking initiative.
  - pxmpxm 3y ago
    No, that is wrong - if the outcome of this regulation is coal export with the same end use + co2 for transit + no sulfur scrubbing because emerging markets coal plants have lesser env standards, it doesn't make sense.
    - epgui 3y ago
      That would be a great argument if it were a response to a comment other than the one I made.
pfdietz 3y ago
This also applies to natural gas, which is a much bigger deal. The title here didn't say that, but the article's title did.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I thought they'd softened this so it didn't apply to any existing gas plant? Did they change that again? edit: > The EPA’s new power plant pollution rule has a big, gassy hole in it https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/25/24139494/power-plant-pollution-epa-final-rule-climate https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/25/24139494/power-plant-poll...
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Yes, I see that's the case. I imagine that's because of all the existing combined cycle plants. The new rule also doesn't apply to peaker plants. The folks with the Allam cycle patents must be happy about this.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Peaker plants are not cost competitive with utility scale battery storage, storage which is currently supply constrained.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        They're not cost competitive with batteries for diurnal storage, but they are competitive for low duty cycle demand on much longer time scales (like covering Dunkelflauten).
- SigmundA 3y ago
  Natural gas emits less than half the CO2 of coal per unit of energy due to its chemical makeup, NG is the "cleanest" fossil fuel. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296
pxmpxm 3y ago
[flagged]
- Tade0 3y ago
  China's coal usage is poised to peak around 2024-2025 - earlier than analysts expected as while they're increasing generation capacity, actual coal usage is not keeping up: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%. Most likely they're building all those plants because that contributes to the GDP figure.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Buried in the details there's a twist often missed. China has shut down thousands of small, old, relatively inefficant coal plants while at the same time building fewer, larger, more efficient, less polluting coal plants and while doing more than any other country to advance solar and related technologies. They have a massive population, which they worked hard (in questionable ways) to keep in check, as the associated energy demand has grown they've worked hard to meet it with the technology they had (coal) while also working to make that cleaner and working to replace it as rapidly as possible. > Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%. I'm unsure of your specifics here, I agree they're working hard to use less, FWiW though, the most recent IEA figure for China coal use was 60.6% of total energy supply in 2021 https://www.iea.org/countries/China/coal https://www.iea.org/countries/China/coal The IEA also asserts that globally we've reached "peak coal use" planet wide, despite the apparent foot dragging of China and India who are still bound by large populations, large energy demands, production energy usage for goods for much of the reast of the planet, and the difficulty of fast transition.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      Remember that 60% of primary energy supply includes the half of that energy that gets thrown away as heat when making electricity. So you'd only need to replace the actual useful final energy.

donw 3y ago

The entire grid would be nuclear and carbon-free if environmentalists hadn’t spent the last 70 years fighting against it.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
adrianN 3y ago
For economic reasons it probably wouldn’t be fully nuclear.
- donw 3y ago
  True! Hydro would contribute, and likely geothermal as well. Probably also some generation from the methane generated by composting garbage at scale.
cbrozefsky 3y ago
No, it would not, not even people who make their living building Nuclear plants would claim that. It's incredibly expensive and risk to build the plants, they couldn't even build them to meet the needs of the grid near unlimited money. It would require more than halving the capital requirements to get close to break even with renweables, and they cannot touch fossil plants. The shifting of blame to environmentalists is ludicrous. It's economic reality, that a much lower capital requirements, and zero marginal cost energy that has radically less complex engineering requirements and doesn't leave radioactive waste behind or blech it out when something goes wrong.
- EricE 3y ago
  The majority of negative economics with nuclear are from asinine policy decisions as well as tilted markets with subsidies for other sources. Lithium reactors would burn fuel that we idiotically label as waste and try to bury. China has picked up what we abandoned in the 50's; woe be to us when they scale modern reactor designs. Cheap, reliable and sustainable energy built the west - we are pissing that away over a bunch of overactive fear mongering. And if you think emerging markets are going to abandon fossil fuels and the advantages they brought us "because feelings" you are utterly delusional. If the oceans are really in threat of rising, why did the Obamas buy multi-million dollar compound at sea level? Actions speak louder than words.

incomingpain 3y ago

[flagged]

cbrozefsky 3y ago
It's not politics to hold business accountable for the damage they do to their neighbors. That's called appropriately pricing previously externalized harms. Coal plants in the US are economically dead in the water anyways, their utilization rates are plummetting between renewables and natural gas peakers. Many still operating are subsidized by policitical handouts. If you want to talk about political decisions, perhaps look at Illinois and Ohio politicians being presecuted for bribery from the power industry for making tax payers pay for uneconomic plants. They are indeed being punished.
epgui 3y ago
You're throwing words around in apparent criticism, but there's no substance to it. Environmental protection policies should be about as controversial as the idea that we shouldn't shit where we eat. If you want to call that politics, then sure, I guess.
- incomingpain 3y ago
  >You're throwing words around in apparent criticism, but there's no substance to it. I'm not from the USA. I kept my content brief because I knew I would be censored. I even said don't shoot the messenger! In my personal viewpoint, shutdown all coal plants tomorrow and send black roses to their accountants. >Environmental protection policies should be about as controversial as the idea that we shouldn't shit where we eat. If you want to call that politics, then sure, I guess. The conversation would be interesting if people were allowed to speak. At risk of further punishment I'll elaborate. Your political side believes this, which is totally fine and good. I even agree with you. But it's obvious the republicans dont agree with us. This is politics, and now the EPA is going to be heavily deregulated because of this move being done in the election year.
  - epgui 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

smitty1e 3y ago

One of the ideas informing representative democracy is that those wielding power stand for election. This means that if those making public decisions pursue folly, they pay a price at election time. Irrespective of whether this specific idea is a wise one, the notion of un-elected bureaucrats making policy with broad effect should terrify us. Also worrisome is the abdication of proper legislative power by Congress.

kibwen 3y ago
This is nonsense. Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA, which means that voters have the power to elect representatives to do just that if the EPA made a bad ruling. And in this particular case, this isn't even remotely a bad ruling. The inability for markets to properly price in their negative externalities is the reason for our current looming crisis, and making up for the failures of markets by properly imposing those externalities is one of the most important roles of government.
- smitty1e 3y ago
  > Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA Console yourself with this theoretical point, by all means.
- ImJamal 3y ago
  >Congress hasn't abdicated anything, they've delegated it, and they retain the power to overrule the EPA Maybe the congress should do this with everything. The president can just make any rule he wants. Or maybe congress should just do their job instead of just delegating away all of their responsibility.
  - smitty1e 3y ago
    My point is that the power has oozed into Article II over the last century, leaving facades in place for Articles I and III. High time for an Article V re-write.
3y ago

Kon-Peki 3y ago

My parents live in a very conservative area of the country that started a coal phaseout 5 years ago or so. Everyone was up in arms when they announced it, but the utility said "here's our data, these are the scenarios we've run, if we've made a mistake or there is a plausible scenario we've missed, let us know". Coal just isn't competitive anymore, financially.

the_optimist 3y ago
It’s not competitive because policy has been designed to make it expensive. This is underhanded and leads to circular reasoning. Nuclear is similarly expensive. Wind and solar would be even more expensive without extraordinary policy support.
- erellsworth 3y ago
  Except that the US has been subsidizing fossil fuels, including coal, for decades.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Natural gas and wind turbines are cheaper now. Would coal be competitive if there were no emission controls? Maybe, but we like relatively clean air, so we want some of those controls.
- cbrozefsky 3y ago
  You are myopic in a focus on subsidies, and you need to consider both current costs, and how they are externalized from coal plants to the population, and what the cost will be in the future from the pollutants (carbon and others). Policy has only started to make them pay for the cost of their pollution, and as they are being made too, it's become increasingly more expensive to run a coal fired power plant. Last one more than 100mw was built in 2013, and no more big ones are being built. The REAL market price of energy must include the cost of eliminating or mitigating these pollutants. This is also why policy in the US since 2016 has increased the subsidies to renewables: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pd... When the real price is considered, not just for global warming, but for public health impacts due to particulate and heavy metal and water pollution, coal is dead. It's only hope is to try and continue to externalize those costs on to all of us by crying about regulation and subsidies. Those subsidies are an investment to avoid paying a radically higher cost in the coming years for public health and climate change disruption. The science and economic are very clear on this. https://www.lancetcountdownus.org/2023-lancet-countdown-u-s-brief/ https://www.lancetcountdownus.org/2023-lancet-countdown-u-s-...

cbrozefsky 3y ago

According to the EIA, more than a quarter of the us coal fleet will be retired by 2029. This is 10 years before these regulations would be at full strength: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54559 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54559 The last large plant came online in 2013 and noone has plans to build more. This is the economic reality of coal power in the US. It cannot compete with renewables (even when coal gets more subsidies) or natural gas, and it certainly cannot once it has to price in the cost of the pollution (particle, heavy metals, and carbon) that it previously made all of us pay for. The hand wringing about politics in policy, or this EPA decision impacting energy prices are misguided and ignorant repetition of memes that the coal and other fossil fuel industries promote to perform a rear guard action and slow for their competitors who are beating them on most fronts with cheap, clean, zero marginal cost energy with very stable pricing.

bilsbie 3y ago

I’m confused how they are doing stuff like this in light of West Virginia vs EPA?

aranchelk 3y ago

> The rule was among four separate measures targeting coal and natural gas plants that the EPA said would provide “regulatory certainty” to the power industry Certainty? If Biden isn’t reelected doesn’t it all get immediately reversed?