5 ms·
Oh this is the oldest trick in the book. If you need to greenwash, then just burn the coal somewhere else. Easy. Los Angeles has been doing this for decades -
by therealrootuser 2y ago
Oh this is the oldest trick in the book. If you need to greenwash, then just burn the coal somewhere else. Easy.
Los Angeles has been doing this for decades - for years the largest single energy source for LAPW has been an 1800MW coal burning plant that they operated in Utah, which has very loose environmental regulations.
- bigiain 2y agoI sometimes wonder how directly some of the big flashy renewable energy projects in Australia are funded by coal exports to China...
- threeseed 2y agoBut it's offset by Australia being able to validate approaches e.g. South Australia's battery.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoYeah, unlike e.g. European countries or US states, Australia is an island and they can't import / export electricity or connect grids easily.
- adrianN 2y agoI was under the impression that China had large coal deposits of its own. Do they really import a lot of coal?
- shakna 2y agoYes, but not for power generation. The majority of Australia's coal exports are metallurgical coal, for manufacturing. Australia owns about 58% of the global trade for metallurgical coal, which means everyone imports it from us.
- onedognight 2y agoInteresting. It is as bad as you say (21% coal), but after a decade of planning, coal is about to be phased out next year[0]. > The Agency planned to build the third unit of 900 MW capacity. This unit was expected to go online in 2012; however, the project was cancelled after its major purchaser, the city of Los Angeles, decided to become coal-free by 2020. [0] > The plant includes a HVDC converter. It is scheduled in 2025 for replacement with an 840 MW natural gas plant, designed to also burn "green hydrogen."[0] (released by the electrolysis of water, using renewably generated electricity) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermountain_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermountain_Power_Plant [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Department_of_Water_and_Power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Department_of_Wa...
- cassepipe 2y agoSo they will replace coal with gas. Better (?) but not great overall. Hydrogen is a total joke of greenwashing (apart from some niche use cases) so I am not taking it into account
- organsnyder 2y agoYeah, I don't understand the use-case for hydrogen here. Why convert from electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity if everything is stationary? I suppose it could be useful for storage or long-distance transmission, but it seems like it would be much less efficient than other, simpler options.
- cassepipe 2y agoEven storage is a nightmare. That thing really wants to leak.
- philipkglass 2y agoIt's because hydrogen scales up to much greater energy capacity. "Chevron joins Mitsubishi in 300 GWh hydrogen storage project as construction continues" https://www.utilitydive.com/news/chevron-mitsubishi-hydrogen-storage-aces-delata-utah https://www.utilitydive.com/news/chevron-mitsubishi-hydrogen... The ACES project aims to use electrolysis to produce up to 100 metric tons of hydrogen per day, which will be stored in naturally occurring salt caverns at the site. The caverns have a potential storage capacity of 300 GWh of energy, according to Mitsubishi Power, which is developing ACES jointly with now Chevron-owned Magnum Development. For comparison, last year the largest battery system in the world was the Moss Landing project in California with 3 GWh of capacity: https://www.energy-storage.news/moss-landing-worlds-biggest-battery-storage-project-is-now-3gwh-capacity/ https://www.energy-storage.news/moss-landing-worlds-biggest-... The largest pumped hydro station in the US stores 24 GWh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... At 300 gigawatt hours this underground hydrogen storage system can store more energy than all utility scale batteries in the US combined.