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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

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-...
  - DoctorOetker 2y ago
    I'm interested in the link you posted but the modal dialog is off-putting. perhaps what is really happening is an entire generation of would-have-been-concerned-citizens has been spammed into disinterest?

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-...
- DoctorOetker 2y ago
  I'm interested in the link you posted but the modal dialog is off-putting. perhaps what is really happening is an entire generation of would-have-been-concerned-citizens has been spammed into disinterest?