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China did it with coal, which is highly polluting and emits a lot of greenhouse gas. We have another goal in the world of having Net Zero Greenhouse emissions

China did it with coal, which is highly polluting and emits a lot of greenhouse gas. We have another goal in the world of having Net Zero Greenhouse emissions by 2050/2060

maxglute 2y ago
New US energy production since 2000s heavily leans fossil/shale (crude + lng), both ~doubled in past 20 years. Issue is, much of new extracted fossil energy is being exported. US generating more dirty energy than ever, it's just being consumed abroad, not in US. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.05.06/chart2.svg https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.05.06/chart2.s... Recent studies on LNG infra leaks show it's potentially no better to much worse than coal in terms of emissions. Meanwhile at least PRC is replacing old dirty coal plants with cleaner coal plants. And they stopped exporting coal overcapacity - stopped building coal plants abroad, vs US propping up global crude/lng use. And will continue to until shale fields run dry. TLDR is US produces a lot excess dirty energy already, it simply prioritizing exporting that dirty energy due to geopolitics than consuming it domestically.
zbrozek 2y ago
That's beside the point and misses it entirely. Solar and wind are the cheapest thing to build right now, so it's not going to be coal going forward. We have an absolutely enormous interconnection queue because it's impossible to build infrastructure. We'd be much further along with the energy transition if we could stop tripping over ourselves and get on with erecting pylons and wires.
- melling 2y ago
  Yeah people have been saying wind and solar are cheaper for a few years now. Texas has gotten to about 30% wind power on a good day. However, the world is still building a significant amount of coal so I’m not sure why this is. We still need better batteries?
  - zbrozek 2y ago
    The article is about the US, so I'm limiting my scope to that market. I would need to do more research to competently talk about the rest of the world. There is definitely inertia in construction; it takes many years to design, permit, build, interconnect anything. Stuff coming online now was conceived years ago, often more than a decade. So if you want to see what the economics favors going forward, you look to the interconnection queue rather than what's booting up. Right now in the US, the interconnection queue is completely dominated by wind, solar, and batteries. Gas is significant, but tailing off. Everything else is ~noise: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues https://emp.lbl.gov/queues
    - melling 2y ago
      It’s a global problem. The US is 4% of the world population. If we can’t get China, India, etc Anyway, the US is still 60% fossil fuel for electricity https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 And natural gas doesn’t appear to be tailing off. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184319/us-electricity-generation-from-natural-gas-since-2000/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184319/us-electricity-ge...
      - zbrozek 2y ago
        As we can see from the interconnection queue, gas-powered generation will continue to go up. It just isn't going to go up as fast as it has in the past, and that growth is thoroughly overshadowed by growth from solar and wind. If we want the transition to happen faster, we should execute on the existing queue with urgency. Regarding the rest of the world, again, I'm not sufficiently well-educated to have a useful conversation. This article is about providing for US demand, not rest-of-the-world cleanliness. You do appear to be correct, however, that there's significant new coal going up at least in some places. India, for example, is building a lot of it and I'm not entirely sure why. China, by contrast, is building more than twice as much wind and solar as it is coal and is also taking oil and gas plants offline. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#how-much-is-consumption-of-energy-sources-changing-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#how-much-is-...
conradev 2y ago
They installed quite a lot of coal capacity while also installing the most renewables of any country (by far): https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/net-solar-pv-electricity-capacity-additions-by-country-or-region-2022-2024 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/net-solar-pv-...
- melling 2y ago
  Yes, China installed more solar last year than the US did in its entire history. But I need to stop you because we are trying to get to Net Zero by 2050/2060 so we need to stop with the happy feel good shit because it isn’t sufficient Show us a chart for absolute coal power compared to renewables 80% of electricity globally is fossil fuels.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Renewables are about 30% and Nuclear about 10%, so closer to 60% fossil than your 80% https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time=latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time... And it's trending in the right direction for the last couple of decades.
    - melling 2y ago
      2050. 26 years away from Net Zero. Vaclav Smil doesn’t think we’re going to make it https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vaclav-smil-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vacl...
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        Well that's good news as he's not great at predictions.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Having run the numbers myself, at current trends I'd say there's a 50-50 chance we'll reach electrical net-zero by 2032, and add heating and transport to the net-zero bucket by 2038 (and one of the things which may prevent the former by 2032 is the increasing electrification of the latter; I am much more confident that we will reach ~2 TW-years/year of renewable production by 2032 than I am that this will balance electrical demand in 2032). The rest of the emissions are things like "Can we stop cow methane? And get a replacement for cement that don't inherently emit CO2 as part of the chemistry of the stuff itself?", which I have no frame of reference for with regard to the difficulty, and may or may not happen concurrently.

China did it with coal, which is highly polluting and emits a lot of greenhouse gas. We have another goal in the world of having Net Zero Greenhouse emissions by 2050/2060

maxglute 2y ago

New US energy production since 2000s heavily leans fossil/shale (crude + lng), both ~doubled in past 20 years. Issue is, much of new extracted fossil energy is being exported. US generating more dirty energy than ever, it's just being consumed abroad, not in US. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.05.06/chart2.svg https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.05.06/chart2.s... Recent studies on LNG infra leaks show it's potentially no better to much worse than coal in terms of emissions. Meanwhile at least PRC is replacing old dirty coal plants with cleaner coal plants. And they stopped exporting coal overcapacity - stopped building coal plants abroad, vs US propping up global crude/lng use. And will continue to until shale fields run dry. TLDR is US produces a lot excess dirty energy already, it simply prioritizing exporting that dirty energy due to geopolitics than consuming it domestically.

zbrozek 2y ago

That's beside the point and misses it entirely. Solar and wind are the cheapest thing to build right now, so it's not going to be coal going forward. We have an absolutely enormous interconnection queue because it's impossible to build infrastructure. We'd be much further along with the energy transition if we could stop tripping over ourselves and get on with erecting pylons and wires.

melling 2y ago
Yeah people have been saying wind and solar are cheaper for a few years now. Texas has gotten to about 30% wind power on a good day. However, the world is still building a significant amount of coal so I’m not sure why this is. We still need better batteries?
- zbrozek 2y ago
  The article is about the US, so I'm limiting my scope to that market. I would need to do more research to competently talk about the rest of the world. There is definitely inertia in construction; it takes many years to design, permit, build, interconnect anything. Stuff coming online now was conceived years ago, often more than a decade. So if you want to see what the economics favors going forward, you look to the interconnection queue rather than what's booting up. Right now in the US, the interconnection queue is completely dominated by wind, solar, and batteries. Gas is significant, but tailing off. Everything else is ~noise: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues https://emp.lbl.gov/queues
  - melling 2y ago
    It’s a global problem. The US is 4% of the world population. If we can’t get China, India, etc Anyway, the US is still 60% fossil fuel for electricity https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 And natural gas doesn’t appear to be tailing off. https://www.statista.com/statistics/184319/us-electricity-generation-from-natural-gas-since-2000/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184319/us-electricity-ge...
    - zbrozek 2y ago
      As we can see from the interconnection queue, gas-powered generation will continue to go up. It just isn't going to go up as fast as it has in the past, and that growth is thoroughly overshadowed by growth from solar and wind. If we want the transition to happen faster, we should execute on the existing queue with urgency. Regarding the rest of the world, again, I'm not sufficiently well-educated to have a useful conversation. This article is about providing for US demand, not rest-of-the-world cleanliness. You do appear to be correct, however, that there's significant new coal going up at least in some places. India, for example, is building a lot of it and I'm not entirely sure why. China, by contrast, is building more than twice as much wind and solar as it is coal and is also taking oil and gas plants offline. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#how-much-is-consumption-of-energy-sources-changing-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#how-much-is-...

conradev 2y ago

They installed quite a lot of coal capacity while also installing the most renewables of any country (by far): https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/net-solar-pv-electricity-capacity-additions-by-country-or-region-2022-2024 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/net-solar-pv-...

melling 2y ago
Yes, China installed more solar last year than the US did in its entire history. But I need to stop you because we are trying to get to Net Zero by 2050/2060 so we need to stop with the happy feel good shit because it isn’t sufficient Show us a chart for absolute coal power compared to renewables 80% of electricity globally is fossil fuels.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Renewables are about 30% and Nuclear about 10%, so closer to 60% fossil than your 80% https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time=latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time... And it's trending in the right direction for the last couple of decades.
  - melling 2y ago
    2050. 26 years away from Net Zero. Vaclav Smil doesn’t think we’re going to make it https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vaclav-smil-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vacl...
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      Well that's good news as he's not great at predictions.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Having run the numbers myself, at current trends I'd say there's a 50-50 chance we'll reach electrical net-zero by 2032, and add heating and transport to the net-zero bucket by 2038 (and one of the things which may prevent the former by 2032 is the increasing electrification of the latter; I am much more confident that we will reach ~2 TW-years/year of renewable production by 2032 than I am that this will balance electrical demand in 2032). The rest of the emissions are things like "Can we stop cow methane? And get a replacement for cement that don't inherently emit CO2 as part of the chemistry of the stuff itself?", which I have no frame of reference for with regard to the difficulty, and may or may not happen concurrently.