8 ms·

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.

by bryanlarsen 8mo ago

baron816 8mo ago
Coal also isn’t really energy dense since so much of the energy is wasted when converting to electricity
- marcosdumay 8mo ago
  It is still one of the densest sources. It's just not as dense as it naively seems.
- linksnapzz 8mo ago
  Rankine cycle efficiency can be up to 45%; monocrystalline solar panels ~25%? I suppose you aren't paying for the sunshine, but if cloudy days affected coal power, James Watt wouldn't be famous.
  - ok_dad 8mo ago
    Luckily solar panels work for 30+ years while coal works for only as long as you burn it. You can also recycle solar panels, but try reversing entropy to get your coal back and you’ll see what’s up. Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage, etc.
    - linksnapzz 8mo ago
      "Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage," Or, as Homer Simpson famously put it..."I dunno; Internet?" But seriously, there's no significant recycling of solar panels, coal extraction is a known process, and good luck running an industrial economy exclusively on renewables.
      - toraway 8mo ago
        > storage There’s the direct answer to your question, cost of installed grid battery storage are getting cheaper by the user and it’s completely viable option at present. It’s not some vague fantasy idea like power plants in space or something, just look at California’s energy mix during peaks that in just a few years has become dominated by solar+batteries. For longer periods of low-sun in a climate like Ireland see the other renewable options he mentioned. Plus a couple natural gas plants for fallback that can comfortably sit idle until needed. If some combo of renewables are used 90% of the time when possible, no one is going to be mad about modern clean-burning LNG plants compared to a toxic, expensive relic of the past like coal. Current trends make it clear the future will be renewables, grid battery storage, and however many natural gas plants are needed for reliability based on local climate (plus keeping nuclear online if you already have it). And that “future” is pretty much here already in places like California.
        linksnapzz 8mo ago
        I wonder how cheap one would have to make electricity to make up for CA's silly regulatory environment and confiscatory taxes. Places like California, which is right up there w/ Tunisia as the best-case scenario for solar, will have so much surplus electricity that USX and Tata are rushing to build steel mills there to take advantage. Any day now, for sure.
        toraway 8mo ago
        That’s called moving the goalposts. No one ever claimed CA would have “so much surplus electricity that USX and Tata are rushing to build steel mills”. Your “concern” was that there is no non-fantasy means to deal with transient output of solar or other renewables, I showed you how that is being implemented in the real world as we speak to deal with CA’s notorious peak evening load without blackouts. And it will only become more cost effective over time thanks to economies of scale. CA has just started bringing grid storage online in the last few years but it’s already making an appreciable difference during peak times that in the past years resulted in blackouts. It shows the clear, achievable path to a renewable + battery (+ nat gas) future that’s 95% renewables and highly resilient. Grid storage isn’t a “10 years away” fantasy like anti-renewable advocates might wish and it’s the critical piece to make those plans possible. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
  - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
    If you're going to make that comparison, you need to compare apples-to-apples and include solar efficiency in the coal too. After all coal's energy originally came from the sun. Plants converted the sunlight into energy at an efficiency of about 1%. A miniscule fraction of that energy went into the plant growth, and then a miniscule fraction of that energy was captured when the plant was converted into coal.
reillyse 8mo ago
This. Fossil fuels are not cheap in Ireland, I think we only produce a small quantity of natural gas, everything else is imported. Ireland should be running towards renewables, we have no indigenous fossil fuels industry to lose and every watt we generate from renewables is money that stays in Ireland. We should be focused on reducing nimbyism and building out renewables.
- redeeman 8mo ago
  does this renewable policy of wind farms etc also extend to the rain forest being cut down for balsawood? or the landfilles the massive chunks of fiberglass coated wings then get put into? I guess we need a new planet when we're done filling it with junk and have depleted all the rain forest etc
  - sensanaty 8mo ago
    Like fossil fuels are somehow ecologically clean and don't cause massive deforestation themselves? Sure, renewables aren't a silver bullet and there's a real conversation to be had about proper disposal of turbine blades and PV cells, but it's pretty convenient how that same scrutiny never seems to get applied to fossil fuels.
    - hunterpayne 8mo ago
      That's because the EROEI of FF are in the 100s. The EROEI of renewables is 4. I'm sorry that the laws of physics are inconvenient to your politics but they don't care about your politics (or mine). If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25. That's about Barcelona in Europe and SF in the US. If you put solar PV somewhere with less sun, you are actually making AGW worse.
      - sensanaty 8mo ago
        Now this is just moving goalposts. The comment I replied to stated that the problem with renewables was that they too pollute and cause waste that isn't easy to dispose of, and they also affect the environment in a negative light. I didn't even dispute that point, as I said renewables aren't a silver bullet and we should be pursuing as much variety as we can with our energy production & grids, whether it be fossil fuels, renewables or especially nuclear. But we should preferably be moving more towards the latter two and away from fossil fuels except in situations where they make the most sense, and also considering all the facts that usually get conveniently ignored when discussing fossil fuels, like their disastrous effects on the environment. > The EROEI of renewables is 4 Saying "renewables" have an EROEI of 4 is disingenuous at best. "Renewables" isn't one technology, it covers everything from wind to solar to geothermal to hydro. That 4 figure comes from worst-case transitional modelling of buffered wind specifically, and even then it's a temporary system-wide dip, not a measurement of what these technologies actually deliver[1]. Wind and solar individually come in at >=10:1 and rising as the tech matures[2]. Geothermal actually is in the hundreds, but that obviously isn't globally applicable. Lumping all of that together and slapping a "4" on it is either ignorant or deliberately misleading. And the "hundreds" figure for fossil fuels is pure fantasy. Conventional oil sits at roughly 18-43:1, and US fossil fuel discovery EROI has cratered from ~1000:1 in 1919 to about 5:1 in the 2010s[3]. A paper in Nature Energy last year took it further and showed that when you measure EROI at the useful energy stage - accounting for all the waste heat from combustion - fossil fuels drop to about 3.5:1, while wind and solar beat the equivalent threshold even with intermittency factored in[4]. So "the laws of physics" are actually making a pretty strong case for renewables here. > If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25 I think you mean albedo. And that claim has been tested[5], a satellite study of 352 solar sites found the actual albedo reduction was much smaller than what's typically assumed, and the warming effect was offset by avoided emissions within roughly a year at most sites. A separate study of 116 solar farms found a net cooling effect on land surface temperature[6]. The idea that solar north of Barcelona is "making AGW worse" just doesn't survive contact with the data. > ...but they don't care about your politics (or mine) What a deeply unserious tone to take in a discussion like this. Where in my comment did I mention politics of any kind? Is any mention of renewables in a positive light political to you, or is it where I questioned whether the same scrutiny gets applied to fossil fuels? Because that's not politics, that is just reality which you seem to care so much about. Newsflash, you don't need to be a leftist (which is what I assume you're insinuating) to realize that relying solely on a very finite, heavily polluting fuel source that has already caused disastrous effects to the Earth is maybe not the smartest long-term play. That's not politics, that's just common sense and basic risk management. Not to mention the decades of propaganda, lies, bribery and other bullshittery that big oil has wrought upon us. You'd think people who call themselves true conservatives and free-market capitalists would be the first ones evangelizing against all of that, but apparently not. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915303815 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800919320543 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218... [3] https://westernresourceadvocates.org/publications/assessment-of-energy-roi-of-oil-shale/ https://westernresourceadvocates.org/publications/assessment... and also just the wikipedia page on the ROI of various energy sources [4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01518-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01518-6 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01619-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01619-w [6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X23008320 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X2...
rs999gti 8mo ago
> Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland. But it is abundant in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and Poland. Also, there is nuclear power in France. However, Russia and Ukraine are at war. Germany is willing to go green and destroy itself. EU hates Poland and other east European countries. And EU and the rest of the world can't disassociate nuclear power with weapons. So I guess EU can enjoy their limited and expensive green energy.
linksnapzz 8mo ago
Coal is cheap and abundant in the English Midlands, which explains much of the industrial revolution starting there. Said collieries, which if put back into service, would be able to cheaply get coal to Ireland via barge at no great cost or latency.
- TheOtherHobbes 8mo ago
  The UK's deep mines would be spectacularly uneconomic. Some have been sealed permanently (for expensive values of permanent) and the supporting knowledge and infrastructure would have to be rebuilt. Coal makes as much sense as a modern fuel as horse drawn buses do for transport.
  - linksnapzz 8mo ago
    ...and, oddly enough, coal provides over half of China's electricity supply. I suppose nobody told them about the future, where bauxite reduction can be done w/ wind energy.
    - avianlyric 8mo ago
      Oh no somebody told China about the future. That’s why they sell everyone cheap PV panels, and are now building out the equivalent of the entire UKs existing solar and wind capacity every year. Plus they’re getting faster. In 20 years time China gonna be entirely powered by renewables while we’re still having this silly argument about what the future is going to look like.
      - bdangubic 8mo ago
        probably more like 15
- ianburrell 8mo ago
  Coal was abundant. British coal was mined out. The coal that is left isn’t economical to mine.

> Coal is cheap, abundant, energy dense. Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland.

baron816 8mo ago

Coal also isn’t really energy dense since so much of the energy is wasted when converting to electricity

marcosdumay 8mo ago
It is still one of the densest sources. It's just not as dense as it naively seems.
linksnapzz 8mo ago
Rankine cycle efficiency can be up to 45%; monocrystalline solar panels ~25%? I suppose you aren't paying for the sunshine, but if cloudy days affected coal power, James Watt wouldn't be famous.
- ok_dad 8mo ago
  Luckily solar panels work for 30+ years while coal works for only as long as you burn it. You can also recycle solar panels, but try reversing entropy to get your coal back and you’ll see what’s up. Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage, etc.
  - linksnapzz 8mo ago
    "Cloudy days are solved by wind, ocean energy, geothermal, storage," Or, as Homer Simpson famously put it..."I dunno; Internet?" But seriously, there's no significant recycling of solar panels, coal extraction is a known process, and good luck running an industrial economy exclusively on renewables.
    - toraway 8mo ago
      > storage There’s the direct answer to your question, cost of installed grid battery storage are getting cheaper by the user and it’s completely viable option at present. It’s not some vague fantasy idea like power plants in space or something, just look at California’s energy mix during peaks that in just a few years has become dominated by solar+batteries. For longer periods of low-sun in a climate like Ireland see the other renewable options he mentioned. Plus a couple natural gas plants for fallback that can comfortably sit idle until needed. If some combo of renewables are used 90% of the time when possible, no one is going to be mad about modern clean-burning LNG plants compared to a toxic, expensive relic of the past like coal. Current trends make it clear the future will be renewables, grid battery storage, and however many natural gas plants are needed for reliability based on local climate (plus keeping nuclear online if you already have it). And that “future” is pretty much here already in places like California.
      - linksnapzz 8mo ago
        I wonder how cheap one would have to make electricity to make up for CA's silly regulatory environment and confiscatory taxes. Places like California, which is right up there w/ Tunisia as the best-case scenario for solar, will have so much surplus electricity that USX and Tata are rushing to build steel mills there to take advantage. Any day now, for sure.
        toraway 8mo ago
        That’s called moving the goalposts. No one ever claimed CA would have “so much surplus electricity that USX and Tata are rushing to build steel mills”. Your “concern” was that there is no non-fantasy means to deal with transient output of solar or other renewables, I showed you how that is being implemented in the real world as we speak to deal with CA’s notorious peak evening load without blackouts. And it will only become more cost effective over time thanks to economies of scale. CA has just started bringing grid storage online in the last few years but it’s already making an appreciable difference during peak times that in the past years resulted in blackouts. It shows the clear, achievable path to a renewable + battery (+ nat gas) future that’s 95% renewables and highly resilient. Grid storage isn’t a “10 years away” fantasy like anti-renewable advocates might wish and it’s the critical piece to make those plans possible. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
- bryanlarsen 8mo ago
  If you're going to make that comparison, you need to compare apples-to-apples and include solar efficiency in the coal too. After all coal's energy originally came from the sun. Plants converted the sunlight into energy at an efficiency of about 1%. A miniscule fraction of that energy went into the plant growth, and then a miniscule fraction of that energy was captured when the plant was converted into coal.

reillyse 8mo ago

This. Fossil fuels are not cheap in Ireland, I think we only produce a small quantity of natural gas, everything else is imported. Ireland should be running towards renewables, we have no indigenous fossil fuels industry to lose and every watt we generate from renewables is money that stays in Ireland. We should be focused on reducing nimbyism and building out renewables.

redeeman 8mo ago
does this renewable policy of wind farms etc also extend to the rain forest being cut down for balsawood? or the landfilles the massive chunks of fiberglass coated wings then get put into? I guess we need a new planet when we're done filling it with junk and have depleted all the rain forest etc
- sensanaty 8mo ago
  Like fossil fuels are somehow ecologically clean and don't cause massive deforestation themselves? Sure, renewables aren't a silver bullet and there's a real conversation to be had about proper disposal of turbine blades and PV cells, but it's pretty convenient how that same scrutiny never seems to get applied to fossil fuels.
  - hunterpayne 8mo ago
    That's because the EROEI of FF are in the 100s. The EROEI of renewables is 4. I'm sorry that the laws of physics are inconvenient to your politics but they don't care about your politics (or mine). If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25. That's about Barcelona in Europe and SF in the US. If you put solar PV somewhere with less sun, you are actually making AGW worse.
    - sensanaty 8mo ago
      Now this is just moving goalposts. The comment I replied to stated that the problem with renewables was that they too pollute and cause waste that isn't easy to dispose of, and they also affect the environment in a negative light. I didn't even dispute that point, as I said renewables aren't a silver bullet and we should be pursuing as much variety as we can with our energy production & grids, whether it be fossil fuels, renewables or especially nuclear. But we should preferably be moving more towards the latter two and away from fossil fuels except in situations where they make the most sense, and also considering all the facts that usually get conveniently ignored when discussing fossil fuels, like their disastrous effects on the environment. > The EROEI of renewables is 4 Saying "renewables" have an EROEI of 4 is disingenuous at best. "Renewables" isn't one technology, it covers everything from wind to solar to geothermal to hydro. That 4 figure comes from worst-case transitional modelling of buffered wind specifically, and even then it's a temporary system-wide dip, not a measurement of what these technologies actually deliver[1]. Wind and solar individually come in at >=10:1 and rising as the tech matures[2]. Geothermal actually is in the hundreds, but that obviously isn't globally applicable. Lumping all of that together and slapping a "4" on it is either ignorant or deliberately misleading. And the "hundreds" figure for fossil fuels is pure fantasy. Conventional oil sits at roughly 18-43:1, and US fossil fuel discovery EROI has cratered from ~1000:1 in 1919 to about 5:1 in the 2010s[3]. A paper in Nature Energy last year took it further and showed that when you measure EROI at the useful energy stage - accounting for all the waste heat from combustion - fossil fuels drop to about 3.5:1, while wind and solar beat the equivalent threshold even with intermittency factored in[4]. So "the laws of physics" are actually making a pretty strong case for renewables here. > If you want solar PV to help with AGW, they must be sited somewhere with an solar albino > .25 I think you mean albedo. And that claim has been tested[5], a satellite study of 352 solar sites found the actual albedo reduction was much smaller than what's typically assumed, and the warming effect was offset by avoided emissions within roughly a year at most sites. A separate study of 116 solar farms found a net cooling effect on land surface temperature[6]. The idea that solar north of Barcelona is "making AGW worse" just doesn't survive contact with the data. > ...but they don't care about your politics (or mine) What a deeply unserious tone to take in a discussion like this. Where in my comment did I mention politics of any kind? Is any mention of renewables in a positive light political to you, or is it where I questioned whether the same scrutiny gets applied to fossil fuels? Because that's not politics, that is just reality which you seem to care so much about. Newsflash, you don't need to be a leftist (which is what I assume you're insinuating) to realize that relying solely on a very finite, heavily polluting fuel source that has already caused disastrous effects to the Earth is maybe not the smartest long-term play. That's not politics, that's just common sense and basic risk management. Not to mention the decades of propaganda, lies, bribery and other bullshittery that big oil has wrought upon us. You'd think people who call themselves true conservatives and free-market capitalists would be the first ones evangelizing against all of that, but apparently not. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915303815 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800919320543 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218... [3] https://westernresourceadvocates.org/publications/assessment-of-energy-roi-of-oil-shale/ https://westernresourceadvocates.org/publications/assessment... and also just the wikipedia page on the ROI of various energy sources [4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01518-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01518-6 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01619-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01619-w [6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X23008320 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X2...

rs999gti 8mo ago

> Coal is neither cheap nor abundant in Ireland. But it is abundant in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and Poland. Also, there is nuclear power in France. However, Russia and Ukraine are at war. Germany is willing to go green and destroy itself. EU hates Poland and other east European countries. And EU and the rest of the world can't disassociate nuclear power with weapons. So I guess EU can enjoy their limited and expensive green energy.

linksnapzz 8mo ago

Coal is cheap and abundant in the English Midlands, which explains much of the industrial revolution starting there. Said collieries, which if put back into service, would be able to cheaply get coal to Ireland via barge at no great cost or latency.

TheOtherHobbes 8mo ago
The UK's deep mines would be spectacularly uneconomic. Some have been sealed permanently (for expensive values of permanent) and the supporting knowledge and infrastructure would have to be rebuilt. Coal makes as much sense as a modern fuel as horse drawn buses do for transport.
- linksnapzz 8mo ago
  ...and, oddly enough, coal provides over half of China's electricity supply. I suppose nobody told them about the future, where bauxite reduction can be done w/ wind energy.
  - avianlyric 8mo ago
    Oh no somebody told China about the future. That’s why they sell everyone cheap PV panels, and are now building out the equivalent of the entire UKs existing solar and wind capacity every year. Plus they’re getting faster. In 20 years time China gonna be entirely powered by renewables while we’re still having this silly argument about what the future is going to look like.
    - bdangubic 8mo ago
      probably more like 15
ianburrell 8mo ago
Coal was abundant. British coal was mined out. The coal that is left isn’t economical to mine.