Global coal demand is set to return to its all-time high in 2022
iea.org
iea.org
It’s 50 years later, half a century, and we’re still burning all that coal.
The single worst form of energy…
And coal likely brings in a few tens of thousands in swing district votes.
They also deserve to develop, and in fact nothing can stop them from developing. In an ideal world, we are all powering the world from nuclear reactors and a reliable grid, but we haven't gotten there yet.
Wind and Solar are not -- and have never been -- a replacement for reliable energy sources, because the energy storage problem has not been solved for them. This is not what solar advocates want to hear, but it's the truth.
Nuclear, on the other hand, is a reliable source of energy. Hydro and geothermal are also reliable, but their supply is limited.
It takes 100t of new Uranium at ~3.5% to bring an AP1000 online. Reprocessing reduces this by up to 15%
It takes 7.4kg of natural Uranium to produce 1kg of 3.5% enriched Uranium.
World production of Natural Uranium is 45,000t. Doubling this would allow bringing 6GW of new NPP on line per year. Increasing it tenfold would almost match the net power additions of renewables this year, but after one year of additions your new fleet would have under a decade worth of fuel.
Storage is only 'not solved' insofar as renewables + storage cost almost as much as nuclear for the same level of availability.
By all means invest in breeders, but the very precious U235 reserves should be kept for CANDUs to produce necessary isotopes for other purposes until there is one that works.
Those are both huge economies and I guess a big part of the problem is that they need (cost-effective) energy today, not tomorrow, so coal is their immediate solution. So I’d assume that will hold as long as Russia is still at war and other energy tech is still being developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China#/media/File:Chin...
Why are you surprised? China in particular has enormous reserves of coal (or at least, reportedly). How do you think all of that cheap but energy-intensive stuff we buy from China gets made?
Not true at all. Only if you look in the west yeah.
Globally, coal burning has been going higher and higher thanks to China's growth who's now burning more than ever, and now so is Europe.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants/
The US rate was falling. India and China were rising. China probably would have leveled off and declined shortly after. India would likely have continued to rise but not enough to have offset losses on other sides.
The loss of Russian gas to Europe increases LNG prices for everyone because now there’s a much smaller supply because shipping it is harder and there’s a big competition for the smaller amounts that are floating about.
"By launching a bloody invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has done more than almost any other single human being to speed up the end of the fossil fuel era."
The ebullience of that article actually kind of made me feel sick.
OPEC: which stabalised and enriched some of the shittiest regimes in the world
China's one child policy
Both horrific. Both had 10 times more effect on emissions than all the targets and initiatives and other play acting combined.
Yeah, maybe in ~20 years time in the future when renewables have reached massive scale and much investment were made by the EU to get us off fossil fuels, but their wording sounded like the EU had a leaver with which they could switch from fossil fuels to renewables overnight.
Not the case at all.
It just has led to a massive increase in fossil fuels imported form other places in the world that are not Russia, while causing a shortage in poorer countries, and a resurgence of coal burning in Europe.
Not groovy, not groovy at all.
They did have such a lever, and they finally pulled it this year:
Heat pumps.
Even if the power plant is burning fossil fuels, they greatly reduce emissions vs. the alternatives.
Some governments are offering large subsidies to install them, but, more broadly, people are voting with their wallets.
It is too little, too late, but it is a start.
I think the whole planet should be in a WWII-style mobilization, with every factory we can spare converting to clean energy / energy-conserving appliances.
I also think we should divert a significant fraction of our military budget to clean energy infrastructure (TVA- and CCC-style), and tax fossil fuels at 2x the cost of direct air carbon capture (~ $1-2/gallon).
None of these things would be as disruptive as climate change has been for the last few years.
You're making it sound like those can just magic their way into your home whenever the government snaps their fingers. They don't. Heatpumps and other building upgrades like insulation rollouts are slow, vey slow, and will take years if not decades to complete.
Where I live, one of the richest countries in the EU, many old buildings in the city center are uninsulated and still heated by gas or burning wood, while many homes in the suburbs/countryside are heated by oil and fire wood. By the time they'll all have heatpumps, my grandkids's kids will probably enjoy them.
Meanwhile in the real world, while we dream about heatpumps in our homes, coal and fossil fuel usage in Europe, and globally, has reached an all time high.
New buildings have to be built with a total energy demand on par with Passivhaus standards, and renovated buildings (which includes adding an extension) have to be brought close to it. And of course, you cannot burn fossil fuels (which includes gas) for heating of newly built or renovated buildings.
Yes this makes buildings a bit more expensive, and yes we are a poor country compared to Western Europe, but it works. If it can work here, there is no reason why it can't work anywhere else in Europe - the only reason why it hasn't been done elsewhere is because the politicians don't want to piss off their buddies in the construction sector.
We have a lot of Soviet apartment blocks ("Khrushchyovka") which are basically just concrete and were built when gas was effectively free. These are being renovated up to modern standards as well, by wrapping them with external insulation. This of course changes the 'character' of the building, but I'm sure people said the same when wooden buildings were replaced with brick buildings.
https://innovations.mitsubishi-les.com/en/mr-slim
Installation shouldn't take more than a day (per room).
Units with coefficients of power greater than 4 (> 400% "efficient") are common these days. Insulation would be nice for many reasons, but that's often much harder.
Legally, you are not allowed to drill and install your own heatpump/AC in apartment buildings in some EU countries, even you're the owner. You're also not allowed to make any modifications to the façade, as in install additional insulation or swap out your windows. All these need to be done for the whole building all at once with planning and funds ahead of time. Things move super slow. Then there's the issue of money (we don't have much right now) and another bottleneck is the shortage of skilled certified contractors for installations, which are also very expensive. My balcony door broke and I got an appointment with a handyman almost 2 months out.
I've mostly seen heatpumps grow in popularity in newer homes or where people are well off to own their house and also to upagrade it with latest tech. In the cities where most people rent or in homes where people don't have much money, they aren't upagrading anything, so still use wood, gas and oil burning for heating. Telling people who can barely afford heating bills to install heatpumps is like telling people who can barely afford gas to buy Teslas.
Current EU efforts are securing enough cheap fossil fuels to burn through the existing infrastructure, rather than completely swap out old infrastructure so EU heatpump adoption is nowhere near as high as what you imagine (otherwise please provide some numbers with sources).
So no, just because you can drill a hole in the wall, doesn't mean heatpumps now magically appear in every home overnight, otherwise it would have been done already.
Isn't methane a much worse greenhouse has than CO2? If Russia could vent it safely without burning it, that might be another way to put pressure on the EU: undermine their climate change goals, which they surely care about far more than Russia does. It might nudge green/environmentalist parties towards opposing further support for Ukraine and a negotiated peace on Russia's terms.
If they did make a deal, I don't think they'd do so happily. But if you think that climate change is an existential threat and and addressing it now is the highest priority, then you may have very little choice but to make a deal like that or suffer a major priority inversion error (like pausing an airplane's fly-by-wire application mid-flight to defrag its book disk).
It sets a precedent.
The only option is the Coasian threat.
> It sets a precedent.
Yeah, but so what? Is "not setting a precedent" a higher priority than failing to address the "existential threat" of climate change?
> The only option is the Coasian threat.
https://www.google.com/search?q="Coasian+threat": Your search - "Coasian threat" - did not match any documents.
That is where the Coasian threat comes in. If one party decides that the price needed to pay off the whole world to not leak methane is too high, they could just kill anyone who leaks methane. Or at least incapacitate the malicious actor's infrastructure enough to prevent them from acting maliciously.
There is also a discussion to be had about credible commitments when bargaining with malicious and untrustworthy actors such as Putin. If Putin promises not to leak methane, bomb hydroelectric infrastructure, or invade Poland, how can we be sure he will stay true to his promise? Why wouldn't Putin just wake up tomorrow and demand more money or else he will start leaking methane again?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organi...