6 ms·

US, other G7 countries to phase out coal by early 2030s

52 points by Klaster_1 2y ago

lentil_soup 2y ago
cool visualisation of electricity generation source per country https://app.electricitymaps.com https://app.electricitymaps.com
- jimbob45 2y ago
  This deserves its own post on HN because this is really neat.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  This data seems wrong. I'm looking at Nevada and they state that the majority of the power being generated is by gas. Doesn't the Nevada area get power from a wide array of nuclear + the Hoover Dam? To be fair it does say that at the time of access the data is an estimate but still...
  - cinnamonteal 2y ago
    Nevada has no nuclear power plants, and gas accounts for 56% of its power. The Hoover Dam only provides about 4% of the state's energy. Partly because the power from the Hoover Dam is split up between the surrounding states, and Las Vegas only gets about a quarter of it.
kibwen 2y ago
Necessary, but I'll believe it when I see it. As recently as 2016, the leading Republican presidental candidate was promising to bring back the coal industry.
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  Didn't Germany open up more coal mines to cope with the shortage in natural gas from the Russian boycott and lack of electricity from shutting down their nuclear plants?
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    They did, though according to the yearly trends on https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/ the carbon intensity is back down to 2020 levels — and very similar to America. Britain and Spain are impressive for the recent reductions in carbon emissions, and France for their long-term nuclear power use.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    I'll just leave this here. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfarm-coalmine-keyenberg-turbines-climate https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfar...
  - alphager 2y ago
    No, mining is proceeding according to the plan to end in 2035. You might confuse it with the protests surrounding Lützerat, where the existing mining activities encroached (as planned) the village. Germany kept 4 coal plants online in 2022 and 2023 that should have been shut down.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  But was he able to actually achieve anything? Turns out the POTUS doesn't have the power to revitalize an industry bound for extinction due to much more powerful economical forces. Decarbonization is a big wheel already turning and cannot be stopped, never mind its direction reversed. All he could do was get himself elected, and honestly that's probably all he wanted.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Now he wants revenge.
    - Sharlin 2y ago
      He's likely even less concerned with actual political issues or doing anything to improve his voters' lifes, and much more concerned with single-mindedly trying to retaliate against anyone who he feels has slighted him personally.
      - acdha 2y ago
        Yes, but he counts environmentalists and the mythical “deep state” as reasons why he accomplished so little and I expect his revenge dreams include plenty of reversals, the harder to recover from the better. Last time, he ran it like one of his businesses but from the sounds of Project 2025 he’s more receptive to letting competent people do their thing while he’s going after his top enemies.
Analemma_ 2y ago
Renewables are helping to kill coal, but ironically what's really strangling it is cheap natural gas. Amusingly, if Coal Country really wants to revive the coal industry, they should start voting for Democrats and hope for a fracking ban.
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  Gas took over coal not only because it is cheaper due to fracking, but because it is a less damaging fossil fuel. There is no scenario in my mind where coal displaces natural gas, except in the event of an unavoidable supply issue with NG such as supply chain disaster.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- taylodl 2y ago
  Cheap natural gas has been strangling coal generation for over 15 years now. There's a reason there are no new coal plants being built in the US, and it's not for environmental reasons. It's all about economics. Now that the power companies have reduced their coal generation by 50% they are taking the opportunity to market themselves as being "green." Hogwash. They're not green - they're going after cheaper power sources. Power sources such as natural gas, wind, and solar. Notice what isn't in that list - nuclear. Nuclear in the US is simply too expensive and requires too long of an investment commitment for it to be attractive. So, it's not being done.
ecshafer 2y ago
Bet. When we look at the increased demand due to population growth, electric vehicles, crypto and AI, I am going to disbelieve this goal until I see it. I would go as far as to bet we see a higher amount in MW produced from coal, but perhaps a smaller percentage. It takes like 20 years to build a nuclear power plant in the US. Maybe if we somehow fix our endemic construction issues and are able to put up a couple nuke plants a year for the next decade we will reach it. Or at best we just replace coal with natural gas, and in which case who cares, our CO2 production is still going up?
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Electric vehicles are a net reduction in energy use — you could burn the oil to make electricity and still come out ahead.
- acdha 2y ago
  > Or at best we just replace coal with natural gas, and in which case who cares, our CO2 production is still going up? The rate of change matters: every bit of carbon emitter now makes it worse, so any form of power less polluting than coal buys a little time to deal with the hard problems like heavy industrial processes which take more time to convert. The big thing you’re leaving out is the growth curve on renewables, especially solar. We’re already seeing major economies (Germany, California) hitting periods of completely running their power grids on renewables, and as the cost goes down it’s going to be even less economically viable to burn coal. One of the big questions is who will figure out how to use peak overproduction effectively since that has the potential to make things like EVs even cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives. This is also why we need some kind of tax or an outright ban on proof of waste cryptocurrencies. Everything else will improve as cheap renewables become widespread but the whole point of something like bitcoin is to show that you’re wasting the most power, and that scales with production in a way nothing else does. Given the minimal economic impact, a ban would be most beneficial but a general carbon tax would be effective on a slower scale.
- LUmBULtERA 2y ago
  There is enough wind, solar, and batteries in our interconnection queues right now to make a net zero electric grid: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues https://emp.lbl.gov/queues. Many of those specific projects will not be built, but others will as some of those drop and others are added. Check out CAISO.com right now to see the massive decline in natural gas use on a daily basis in April of 2024 vs. April of 2023 -- batteries are already crushing natural gas use in the afternoon peak, in just one year. As others point out, switching to EVs will result in an overall decline in energy use, and those EVs can also be set to charge when renewable resources are abundant and might otherwise be curtailed.
caseyy 2y ago
Oh yeah, if the G7 agree on climate change, that's definitely happening. Just don't look at the Kyoto Protocol, Copenhagen Accord or the Paris Agreement.
debacle 2y ago
Natural gas is replacing coal for various reasons. If you are anti-coal, you are likely pro-natural gas whether you know it or not. The economics of coal just don't make as much sense anymore. It's labor intensive, it requires much more future remediation at the generation site, it's burdensome to store, etc.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Yes, natural gas is the obvious intermediate step that can bridge renewables implementation to a completely renewable generation. The one other viable option is oil, but it's way worse on all aspects. Anybody that is anti-natural gas is working to perpetuate fossil fuels (either knowingly or not).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Qiu_Zhanxuan 2y ago
Fifteen years have passed since the Copenhagen Summit, yet the G7 nations, particularly the United States and Germany, have failed to eliminate coal usage. This is disheartening. This is a significant failure from the Western world to both present and future generations globally, especially to India, Latin, America, Africa and South East Asia and Islanders in the Indian and Pacific ocean who cumulatively had a minimal impact in all this but will bear the brunt of the consequences.
- jbm 2y ago
  Everytime I hear a local complain about third world emissions, and local small minded politicians mirror that, I start to feel that democracy is a failed experiment. What really irks me is that, if China succeeds in decarbonization while Canada fails, I would suddenly need to ask oneself if I was on the wrong side of the international divide.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Democracy didn't fail. We are just holding it wrong.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Democracies have the issue of needing majority consent which can be tricky and very time consuming to get, as there will always be a sleezy opposition politicians who will be against something just to get overs on his side and veto it at every step of the way, even if he's against something that's for the common good. My favorite example is how Austria was the last EU country to ban indoor smoking, all the way in 2019, because of a moron party that kept shooting it down posturing as if they're fighting for the small business owner on the basis of "think of the small business owners who will loose clientele and their business making them homeless, due to the smoking ban, vote for me so I can protect you and yur business".
      - r00fus 2y ago
        The solution to "save democracy" would be have more of it. The problem with our model is that everything relies on representatives who don't actually do the representation part. We should have more direct democracy. For all it's warts, propositions like in CA, FL, etc have really moved forward the actual will of the people.
aaroninsf 2y ago
Joe "Mansion" has entered the chat.
throw0101a 2y ago
The province of Ontario (in Canada) did so in 2017: * https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal The current (live) grid mix can be found at: * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply

52 points by Klaster_1 2y ago

cool visualisation of electricity generation source per country https://app.electricitymaps.com https://app.electricitymaps.com

jimbob45 2y ago
This deserves its own post on HN because this is really neat.
nebula8804 2y ago
This data seems wrong. I'm looking at Nevada and they state that the majority of the power being generated is by gas. Doesn't the Nevada area get power from a wide array of nuclear + the Hoover Dam? To be fair it does say that at the time of access the data is an estimate but still...
- cinnamonteal 2y ago
  Nevada has no nuclear power plants, and gas accounts for 56% of its power. The Hoover Dam only provides about 4% of the state's energy. Partly because the power from the Hoover Dam is split up between the surrounding states, and Las Vegas only gets about a quarter of it.

kibwen 2y ago

Necessary, but I'll believe it when I see it. As recently as 2016, the leading Republican presidental candidate was promising to bring back the coal industry.

sickofparadox 2y ago
Didn't Germany open up more coal mines to cope with the shortage in natural gas from the Russian boycott and lack of electricity from shutting down their nuclear plants?
- Symbiote 2y ago
  They did, though according to the yearly trends on https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/ the carbon intensity is back down to 2020 levels — and very similar to America. Britain and Spain are impressive for the recent reductions in carbon emissions, and France for their long-term nuclear power use.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  I'll just leave this here. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfarm-coalmine-keyenberg-turbines-climate https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfar...
- alphager 2y ago
  No, mining is proceeding according to the plan to end in 2035. You might confuse it with the protests surrounding Lützerat, where the existing mining activities encroached (as planned) the village. Germany kept 4 coal plants online in 2022 and 2023 that should have been shut down.
Sharlin 2y ago
But was he able to actually achieve anything? Turns out the POTUS doesn't have the power to revitalize an industry bound for extinction due to much more powerful economical forces. Decarbonization is a big wheel already turning and cannot be stopped, never mind its direction reversed. All he could do was get himself elected, and honestly that's probably all he wanted.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Now he wants revenge.
  - Sharlin 2y ago
    He's likely even less concerned with actual political issues or doing anything to improve his voters' lifes, and much more concerned with single-mindedly trying to retaliate against anyone who he feels has slighted him personally.
    - acdha 2y ago
      Yes, but he counts environmentalists and the mythical “deep state” as reasons why he accomplished so little and I expect his revenge dreams include plenty of reversals, the harder to recover from the better. Last time, he ran it like one of his businesses but from the sounds of Project 2025 he’s more receptive to letting competent people do their thing while he’s going after his top enemies.

Analemma_ 2y ago

Renewables are helping to kill coal, but ironically what's really strangling it is cheap natural gas. Amusingly, if Coal Country really wants to revive the coal industry, they should start voting for Democrats and hope for a fracking ban.

unethical_ban 2y ago
Gas took over coal not only because it is cheaper due to fracking, but because it is a less damaging fossil fuel. There is no scenario in my mind where coal displaces natural gas, except in the event of an unavoidable supply issue with NG such as supply chain disaster.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
taylodl 2y ago
Cheap natural gas has been strangling coal generation for over 15 years now. There's a reason there are no new coal plants being built in the US, and it's not for environmental reasons. It's all about economics. Now that the power companies have reduced their coal generation by 50% they are taking the opportunity to market themselves as being "green." Hogwash. They're not green - they're going after cheaper power sources. Power sources such as natural gas, wind, and solar. Notice what isn't in that list - nuclear. Nuclear in the US is simply too expensive and requires too long of an investment commitment for it to be attractive. So, it's not being done.

ecshafer 2y ago

Bet. When we look at the increased demand due to population growth, electric vehicles, crypto and AI, I am going to disbelieve this goal until I see it. I would go as far as to bet we see a higher amount in MW produced from coal, but perhaps a smaller percentage. It takes like 20 years to build a nuclear power plant in the US. Maybe if we somehow fix our endemic construction issues and are able to put up a couple nuke plants a year for the next decade we will reach it. Or at best we just replace coal with natural gas, and in which case who cares, our CO2 production is still going up?

Symbiote 2y ago
Electric vehicles are a net reduction in energy use — you could burn the oil to make electricity and still come out ahead.
acdha 2y ago
> Or at best we just replace coal with natural gas, and in which case who cares, our CO2 production is still going up? The rate of change matters: every bit of carbon emitter now makes it worse, so any form of power less polluting than coal buys a little time to deal with the hard problems like heavy industrial processes which take more time to convert. The big thing you’re leaving out is the growth curve on renewables, especially solar. We’re already seeing major economies (Germany, California) hitting periods of completely running their power grids on renewables, and as the cost goes down it’s going to be even less economically viable to burn coal. One of the big questions is who will figure out how to use peak overproduction effectively since that has the potential to make things like EVs even cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives. This is also why we need some kind of tax or an outright ban on proof of waste cryptocurrencies. Everything else will improve as cheap renewables become widespread but the whole point of something like bitcoin is to show that you’re wasting the most power, and that scales with production in a way nothing else does. Given the minimal economic impact, a ban would be most beneficial but a general carbon tax would be effective on a slower scale.
LUmBULtERA 2y ago
There is enough wind, solar, and batteries in our interconnection queues right now to make a net zero electric grid: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues https://emp.lbl.gov/queues. Many of those specific projects will not be built, but others will as some of those drop and others are added. Check out CAISO.com right now to see the massive decline in natural gas use on a daily basis in April of 2024 vs. April of 2023 -- batteries are already crushing natural gas use in the afternoon peak, in just one year. As others point out, switching to EVs will result in an overall decline in energy use, and those EVs can also be set to charge when renewable resources are abundant and might otherwise be curtailed.

caseyy 2y ago

Oh yeah, if the G7 agree on climate change, that's definitely happening. Just don't look at the Kyoto Protocol, Copenhagen Accord or the Paris Agreement.

debacle 2y ago

Natural gas is replacing coal for various reasons. If you are anti-coal, you are likely pro-natural gas whether you know it or not. The economics of coal just don't make as much sense anymore. It's labor intensive, it requires much more future remediation at the generation site, it's burdensome to store, etc.

marcosdumay 2y ago
Yes, natural gas is the obvious intermediate step that can bridge renewables implementation to a completely renewable generation. The one other viable option is oil, but it's way worse on all aspects. Anybody that is anti-natural gas is working to perpetuate fossil fuels (either knowingly or not).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Qiu_Zhanxuan 2y ago

Fifteen years have passed since the Copenhagen Summit, yet the G7 nations, particularly the United States and Germany, have failed to eliminate coal usage. This is disheartening. This is a significant failure from the Western world to both present and future generations globally, especially to India, Latin, America, Africa and South East Asia and Islanders in the Indian and Pacific ocean who cumulatively had a minimal impact in all this but will bear the brunt of the consequences.

jbm 2y ago
Everytime I hear a local complain about third world emissions, and local small minded politicians mirror that, I start to feel that democracy is a failed experiment. What really irks me is that, if China succeeds in decarbonization while Canada fails, I would suddenly need to ask oneself if I was on the wrong side of the international divide.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Democracy didn't fail. We are just holding it wrong.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Democracies have the issue of needing majority consent which can be tricky and very time consuming to get, as there will always be a sleezy opposition politicians who will be against something just to get overs on his side and veto it at every step of the way, even if he's against something that's for the common good. My favorite example is how Austria was the last EU country to ban indoor smoking, all the way in 2019, because of a moron party that kept shooting it down posturing as if they're fighting for the small business owner on the basis of "think of the small business owners who will loose clientele and their business making them homeless, due to the smoking ban, vote for me so I can protect you and yur business".
    - r00fus 2y ago
      The solution to "save democracy" would be have more of it. The problem with our model is that everything relies on representatives who don't actually do the representation part. We should have more direct democracy. For all it's warts, propositions like in CA, FL, etc have really moved forward the actual will of the people.

aaroninsf 2y ago

Joe "Mansion" has entered the chat.

throw0101a 2y ago

The province of Ontario (in Canada) did so in 2017: * https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal The current (live) grid mix can be found at: * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply