Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

In related news: American electricity is artificially cheap.

The United States has an abundance of cheap natural gas and the will to drill it. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has allowed the US to lead the world in reducing CO2 emissions[1]. Yes, that's right, the US has reduced its emissions more than any other country in the last five years, thanks to technical innovations that have lowered the price of natural gas.

[1]http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/05/americas-f...

Reduced. In absolute terms you still lead. Negatively.

It's not gas, it's coal. Coal accounts for half of US electric production, versus a negligible amount of French production.

Coal, however, is only seemingly cheap. Most of the actual costs of coal are externalized, and not seen at the meter. Rather, they show up at the doctor's office:

http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_ful...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/hiding-the-costs-of-c...

The Princeton professor in the second article estimates that accounting for the externalities of coal would more than triple the meter price of coal power. The Harvard study in the first article estimates a somewhat greater cost based on looking at a wider range of factors.

Read the link. The fracking revolution has led to a substitution of gas for coal in the US. Meanwhile, pressure from green activists in Europe has led to obstacles to fracking and nuclear power and an increasing reliance on coal imports. Renewables still suck as an energy source.

The biggest piece of good news for the environment in Years is being driven by a "brown" industry in cowboy America, who woul have predicted it?

Wait a few years before proclaiming it good. And keep a good eye on the water table. Everything has a downside, and this one might be more costly than you suspect. Might be fine admittedly, but the US is not doing this because it has found the secret to everlasting energy, it is doing this because currently it's options are very limited and domestic fuel plays extremely well politically compared to most of the other options, which haven't been going that well.

Coal did account for half until about four years ago. Due to the explosion (no pun intended) in natural gas development and the increase in environmental regulation, its down to about a third now.

Do you have a better link? The Economist talks about reduced emissions in the past 5 years saying "much of the credit" should go to natural gas. Then it cites numbers going back 15 years that would give half the credit to natural gas and half the credit to renewables. I'm curious how those numbers change if you look back only 5 years.

(There was twice as much increase in natural gas as there was increase in renewables, but renewables produce approximately 0 carbon while natural gas produces 56.25% of the carbon coal produces: http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp )

Reply on news.ycombinator.com