In the US, coal consumption is down 60% since the peak year of 2008.[1] The trend looks linear. Hits zero sometime in the 2030s. Coal is over in the US. Even the coal industry thinks coal is over.[2] Conversion of coal plants to natural gas is proceeding rapidly.
China, though, is still adding coal capacity.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/243934/coal-consumption-...
[2] https://ieefa.org/resources/nowhere-go-down-us-coal-capacity...
> China, though, is still adding coal capacity.
It's a bit misleading because China is mostly _replacing_ old coal power plants now.
China has probably passed the peak coal consumption this year, or it will in 2025.
The one thing where dictatorship is very efficient. One man says that let's reduce the pollution and others will do it.
Let's see if democracy is ever able to do the same.
I disagree.
Pollution in China was terrible. Pretty much everybody hated it, and it was not possible to hide or whitewash it.
The US was in the same position during 60-s and 70-s, and it fixed the worst of the pollution rapidly. The EPA was established during the freaking Nixon administration.
Employment in coal extraction is also an interesting graph. Although a lot of it has dropped due to mechanization over the generations (like, from ~1910 on downwards) it's still pretty clear that the old heights of job-creation people might remember with nostalgia are never[0] coming back.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021210001
[0] Barring a discovery that coal can be converted into the elixir of youth, etc.
Coal has peaked globally, there's no global expansion, 190+ countries are winding back coal save for both India and China which are still expanding at a declining rate and expected to peak and decline in the mid term.
WRT China, they can't over produce renewable energy and be the largest global supplier of green energy without coal .. at least not yet.
China’s growing coal capacity could be seen as a mix of welfare and bureaucratic waste. Each prefecture is incentivized to build its own redundancy, and in a flagging economy, government spending is up to keep the economy going. The resulting overcapacity could be used for ‘peaking’ to offset intermittency in renewable power, something that’s being experimented with currently. And in the shorter term, coal can have less warming effect than gas, but I’m not sure this would be true of China’s coal plants in particular
China’s growing coal consumption is part of Cina's growing energy demands, their middle class is growing and exceeds the entire popultion of the USA in size.
While that middle class has a per capita energy and consumption figure that is lower than the USA per capita figures it is the case that the US has set an aspiration life style expectation that sees demand grow.
China's coal use has become increasingly more efficient; much is made of additional new modern coal power houses, little mention is made of the larger numbers of older inefficient far dirtier coal plants have been closed down and are still being closed down.
Nuclear and renewables are part of overall energy production in China to a far greater proportion and absolute number than in the US.
The scale of China's energy production is substantial and not easily characterised.
Nuclear and renewables are part of overall energy production in China to a far greater proportion and absolute number than in the US.
China has a smaller nuclear fleet capacity than the US and meets a much smaller percentage of its electricity needs with nuclear power:
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails....
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails....
As of 2023 US got 18.55% of electricity from nuclear power (775 terawatt hours) while China got 4.86% (433 TWh).
As of 2023 China does get a larger share from renewables:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#Pr...
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
It's 29.1% renewables in China (2,756 TWh) vs. 21.4% (894 TWh) in the United States.
Grouping nuclear and renewables together as low-emissions sources, the US gets 47.65% of its electricity from low-emissions sources and China gets 33.96% from low-emissions sources.
China is building nuclear and renewable sources faster than the US, so will narrow the gap over the rest of the decade, but it's also growing its total electricity consumption faster.
China's coal plants are running at steadily reduced capacity (while their renewables capacity is growing exponentially).
> In the first decade of the 2000s, plants were running around 70% of the time. They’re now running around 50%.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/i/141628065/chinas-c...
In India, coal just dipped below 50% for the first time since the 1960s. https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/power/coals-shar...
EDIT: but apparently it went back up in April. Installed coal capacity is 49.3% but since hydro dropped in April it went up again
China is also massively building nuclear with 29 reactors being built in parallel.
Source: https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstruction...
Are they varied, or mostly the same model?
It's worth contextualizing that the decline of coal in the US has been fuelled (sorry) more than anything by the rapid expansion of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas extraction. The US is now the world's largest natural gas producer with 60% of that gas being produced by hydraulic fracturing. This isn't going to be easily accessible — or acceptable — everywhere around the world.
Solar and batteries are getting so cheap so fast it won’t matter for the rest of the world. China installed a 3GW solar facility in 14 months, just turned up, second largest in the world [1] [2]. 14 months. And they are not slowing down.
[1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/11/12/worlds-second-largest...
Is there any data on the lifecycle of large-scale solar batteries? Are they any better than the small-scale ones? If they aren't, it would seem impractical to rely on them, because of the costs to replace/recycle them every few years.
Just to be clear, I'm referring to the use of electrical batteries for the temporary storage of solar power, so that the power can be available when the sun is not.
Non-electrical storage techniques (gravity, hydro) would seem better suited for long-term reliability.
Lithium batteries typically have a 10-15 year service life, depending on who you buy from (I am most familiar with Tesla's Megapack and Autobidder product in this regard; Tesla will warranty for up to 20 years [1]). CATL has a battery they warranty for 1M miles in EV applications [2], extrapolate to daily stationary storage cycles. Sodium ion is moving very fast, and is likely superior for this use case (both in regards to cost and service life) [3].
Scale up manufacturing, scale up deployment, scale up recycling, and you've got a circular supply chain system. At end of life, new (very likely better) batteries are installed and the old ones (in decades) are shipped back for recycling. In the US, this is Redwood Materials [4], founded by JB Straubel (former Tesla CTO). They have agreements to both recycle batteries with major automakers as well as supply feedstock for new battery components [5]. I'm unsure if this circular supply chain system exists in China yet, but I presume it is straightforward with their nation state resources to encourage along.
Pumped hydro is great where you can build it and it is cost superior to batteries, but batteries can be shipped and installed anywhere a concrete pad is waiting for them, very rapidly.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/megapack ("Each Megapack unit ships fully assembled and ready to operate, allowing for quick installation timelines and reduced complexity. Systems require minimal maintenance and include up to a 20-year warranty.")
[2] https://electrek.co/2024/09/16/catl-launches-new-ev-battery-... ("CATL launches ultra-high-energy-density EV bus battery that lasts nearly 1 million miles")
[3] https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/china-first-large-scale-sodiu... ("China’s first large-scale sodium-ion battery charges to 90% in 12 minutes")
[4] https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ ("Redwood Materials: We’re building a circular supply chain to power a sustainable world")
[5] https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/#partners ("Redwood Material: Partners")
Thank you.
As I understand it, the Tesla warranty was factored into the purchase price as a way to stabilize the TCO, and has little to do with the physical lifecycle of the lithium cells.
Sodium looks very promising, but it's "not there yet."
> Pumped hydro is great where you can build it and it is cost superior to batteries
Given the dramatic price decline of LFP cells in the past year, I'm not sure this is still the case.
I cannot speak authoritatively as to whether LFPs have enabled stationary storage to be cost superior in all cases compared to both short and long duration pumped hydro, hence the caveat. I have no doubt we'll get there, just not sure we're there yet.
Probably something for Lazard's next LCOE report, to act as a canonical reference for such discussions.
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
The reason it's over is because wind and solar have become cheaper than anything else. Solar is currently around $23/MWhr.
Nuclear is around $70/MWhr, one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity.
Solar is highly distributeable so it can be placed closer to where the power is used, reducing transmission losses. It doesn't need to be very carefully sited in terms of where it goes on the grid, and nobody needs to worry about the long term geological stability of the area. It doesn't need to be partnered with another plant for cold starts. It has no safety concerns. It doesn't need any labor to operate - mostly occasional repairs to damage and cleaning. It has no capacity to cause any sort of disaster. It does not generate toxic waste in operation.
Nobody has ever said "don't shoot tank rounds near that solar farm or you might cause thousands of square miles of land to be uninhabitable for centuries."
Nobody has ever said "we need to be concerned about the potential for that solar farm to be used in a program to create weapons of mass destruction"
The administration kowtowing to industry lobbyists to fund nuclear energy when the market was already adding seven times as much renewables as it is decommissioning nuclear capacity...is just corporate welfare, pure and simple.
Solar and wind definitely make the most sense wherever feasible, but it's important to keep in mind you can't just build solar and wind farms anywhere. China has moderately good solar capacity in the north, but generation there will be seasonal due to how far north it is. The north of China is also not close to the majority of the population, so transmission will be an issue.
China's high to moderate quality solar capacity will be built out very quickly, and it won't provide enough to close the gap from fossil-based generation. From there, the cost of solar generation will rise as low quality capacity is developed.
China will need a way to import some of their energy generation, possibly through by importing goods like iron and steel that have a high energy production cost, from countries like Australia that can produce them using renewable energy (green iron / green steel) using Australia's almost limitless solar resources.
Since much of Australia's coal is also used in places like China to smelt their local and imported iron and steel, this could further drive down production of coal.
> Nobody has ever said "we need to be concerned about the potential for that solar farm to be used in a program to create weapons of mass destruction"
Well, if hydrogen from electrolysis really takes off, it would be possible to piggyback an exchange tower on the system to also get heavy water production.
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980IJHE....5..409H/abstra...
(that's an old reference; the CECE process has since been driven to maturity by Canada.)
A proper evaluation includes the financial cost of the coal's climate impact. Climate change is very expensive. That cost affects,
* The investor's return, without subsidies.
* The cost to the public of replacing coal with something else.
The article says,
> the cost per tonne of CO2 emissions avoided is just $34.
Does anyone grasp what they mean exactly, and where that number comes from?
One of the ways China is killing coal is of course with coal, aaaand the worlds largest ultra high voltage transmission power lines~30000 km's, which is so extensive that moving power from supply to demand works over several time zones. Enabling maximisation of solar and wind production by sending noon solar in one place to power the end of day surge somewhere else and coal is playing a role by bieng run at full efficiency, with no need for load dumping. Currently more than half of the load on the ultra high voltage transmissiin network is bieng provided for by renewables, and a mad mix of anything and everything to fill in the gaps. kind of like finding anything to put in empty shipping cans going back to china driving American production of Hay, watered from aquifiers,ending up in China or possibly mountains of wierd suspect corn,bieng shipped and then burned as fuel in a coal plant.Thermal plant here in Nova Scotia, burns wood to make electricity. And then back to hay, which is pelletised and used as fuel.World wide the use of bio fuels is going to be in the millions of tons, so it is too soon to close the book on carbon.
I thought the article on the meaning of "energy transition" was more interesting. The idea that oil is reliant on steel and steel on coal is a thought. https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/10/energy-transiti...
No one really believes installed capacity of solar will keep doubling every 3 years, as it has the past 15. But literally everyone has been wrong about how fast solar would grow. And if it keeps going on this pace for another 15 years, it will exceed the energy production of all other energy sources.
It is my opinion that this should be a global roadmap. Double installed capacity every three years. It’s doable. We should do it.
Coal is already dying by degrees:
https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/energy/whats-driving...
Someone in China drew an interesting picture of a slow rotating skyscraper shaped like a vertical axle wind turbine. Tall but the proportions of a bucket. Say such a thing has half a million ton in mass and 500 m diameter. The fun part is that losses are less than zero if there is some wind.
Build more nuclear power plants since wind and solar do not provide dispatchable baseload and batteries don’t scale enough.
No other technology comes even close to the energy density of nuclear power.
I don't think I'm anti-nuclear power. The only thing that works against nuclear, in my opinion, is the time it takes to build. A lot of solar and wind and battery can be built in the decade (if not more) that it seems to take a nuclear power station to be built.
Having said that, given the increasing power demands of civilization, why not both in parallel?
Why does it take time to build though? Is it a technical reason, or economic and regulatory reasons? If the latter, we could probably go faster if as a society we prioritized it.
I have heard the argument that the standard nuclear plant have the inefficiencies of any large building project, like building a big bridge. You never get the optimizations of mass production that you get in a factory that produces tens of thousands of solar panels or lots of wind turbines. I guess that is what SMR is trying to solve. I don’t know how that is going.
I think nuclear power should be expanded.
I don't think nuclear power centrals should be rushed.
Baseload power comes at the expense of renewable power, the latter of which is much cheaper, much faster, and less riskier to deploy than nuclear. Peaking gas plants are much quicker to build than nuclear and should tide us over until grid storage (of all kinds) catches up – which looks to be around 1-2 decades at current scaling and about the lead time for a nuclear power plant
> No other technology comes even close to the energy density of nuclear power.
The dollar density is also huge.
Trying to get new reactor design actually deployed in the US is brutally expensive. And figuring in the cost of nuclear waste disposal kills the project.
All other means of grid power generation are able to externalize expenses. Our society, for better or worse, won't let anything "nuclear" get away with that.
Japan has converted all of their largest hydroelectric plants to pumped storage, as far as I can tell:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Japa...
Presumably countries with a higher proportion of electricity from hydropower, like Canada and Brazil, could get even more out of this than Japan does in terms of stabilizing renewables.
Off topic but I saw in a YouTube video how they suspect one of the earths greatest extinction events was partly driven by volcanic material igniting massive coal beds, the combination of the vulcanism and the coal burning killed like 90% of life on earth.
The Permian-Triassic extinction. A massive intrusion of basaltic magma into the The Tunguska Basin that also created the Siberian Traps. The intrusion heated organic-rich sediments and evaporites (salt, anhydrite) and caused eruption of gases. Siberia is littered with enormous pipes as much as 1 km in diameter that erupted massive amounts of gas during the event. In addition to CO2 and methane, the gas was loaded with chlorinated hydrocarbons from the salt, which could have devastated the ozone layer.
I've seen an estimate that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere may have reached as high as 30,000 ppm (3%).
It was bad luck for the Paleozoic world that this massive mantle plume came up in perhaps the worst possible place.
Some of these pipes became filled with magnetite and as a result are mined for this rich iron ore.
I feel like coal is really useful for new steel
There are two types of coal, metallurgical and thermal.
Energy for steel production can come from coal, but doesn't need to, coal bound with iron to make steel is a different reaction to burning coal for energy.
"Green steel" (as odd as that sounds) is an active area of research ATM, promising but there's a looong way to go to reduce the emissions from a billion+ tonnes of steel per annum (and concrete production and other resource processing).
Steel uses so much carbon that it’s been a target for using hydrogen as a reducing agent. There are a couple ironworks that have already started converting.
That’ll still leave concrete as one of the next largest sources, even if the rebar gets a smaller footprint.
Fun fact: carbon footprint was an expressions put forward by Exxon decades ago to shift blame for global warming to the consumers of energy.
Electrocatalytic production or using electrolytically produced hydrogen can also make new steel.
Article mainly talks about stopping coal, when the goal should be increased generation of power.
China does it well - they are building out nuclear, coal, and carpeting entire rooftops with solar and mountain ridges with wind turbines.
The goal should be increased generation of power while mitigating worst climate change scenarios. Coal deserves to die.
Coal is key to current steel manufacturing process. There are experimental green steel processes but very nascent. If you're building stuff, you need coal.
Better eliminate all other coal-burning as fast as possible, then, to minimize the damage done while the hydrogen-based steelmaking industry grows up.