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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

As we approach the third decade of the 21st Century, how is most electricity on the planet generated?

Coal.

The nice thing is that coal is starting to be less economical than other options. Solar and Wind are getting so cheap, and batteries are making their output variance less of an issue.

Nuclear is still, I feel, the best option for the base load the world needs but it seems that option has lost favor politically.

According to "The Shift project Data Portal"[0] coal accounts for 39% in 2014 (which is no doubt lower now considering the rise of solar and wind in the last 3 years). Carbon based fuel types are at 66% according to the same source, however take note that coal produces almost two times the carbon emissions of natural gas, and diesel almost 50% more than natural gas. [1]

Also you need to consider that in G-7 nations mains electricity use is actually declining. And in G-20 it has only gone up by 0.1% in the last year. [2]

And lastly consider than non obvious sources of global warming sources are things like cattle which globally account for nearly 18% (2006 UN Food and Ag Report) which is more than global transportation. [3]

So singling out coal is nowhere near a big win as your comment implies.

[0] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

[2] https://www.enerdata.net/publications/reports-presentations/...

[3] https://gizmodo.com/do-cow-farts-actually-contribute-to-glob...

> Also you need to consider that in G-7 nations mains electricity use is actually declining. And in G-20 it has only gone up by 0.1% in the last year. [2]

Unfortunately, slowing the growth of emissions does not actually save us, for two reasons:

1. We are still emitting. A linear growth curve for CO2 is better then a parabolic one, but will kill many of us all the same.

2. Even if we start decreasing our emissions in the coming years, we will almost certainly hit 500 PPM of CO2 by 2060.

3. Which will be ~3C of warming, not accounting for the methane gun hypothesis.

We need to take drastic action to reduce our energy usage - now. Alas, our institutions are unable to do so - by design.

Found the coal shill.

Look. We have a carbon budget problem. When you have a budget problem, you need to make a budget. Nobody with real problems ever solved them by looking at all of your outlays, trimming the biggest one and claiming victory. You have to trim every single one that doesn’t represent a reasonable fraction of the whole.

The opposite of “Singling coal out” is not “give it a free pass”. It needs to be cut. Along with everything else. It is indefensible that it is 40% of the energy mix but 60% of the carbon footprint. Full stop.

> Don't accuse others of astroturfing or shillage. Email us and we'll look into it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I strongly support reducing greenhouse gas emissions, both CO2 (which has very long term effects) and CH4 (which is more powerful greenhouse gas but shorter term effects, CH4 as a higher potential energy state compound decomposes in the atmosphere readily but typically to CO2).

I think coal has no place for future electricity generation investment. But you can't shut down the plants overnight; a more feasible option would be an accelerated phase out over 5 to 10 years. Natural gas also should be phased out but probably over a 10 to 20 year period.

Currently today for large segments in the world solar and/or wind is now cheaper than coal. There are some places where any of solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric are not an option but these are a very small minority. Hopefully molten salt reactors or fusion reactors will fill the void in such places.

Having said that just removing coal from the picture won't mean we'll make the necessary targets to keep warming to within tolerable limits. Coal for electricity production is a sizeable chunk of the problem but by no means the whole picture. Even on the issue of coal there is still cement production and steel production to worry about.

Coal is big enough to worry about it, especially in the developed countries (like the USA):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption (1)

"In 2014, world energy consumption for electricity generation was coal 40.8%, natural gas 21.6%, nuclear 10.6%, hydro 16.4%, 'others' (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.) 6.3% and oil 4.3%."

Also:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to... (2)

"in the United States, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions as compared to about 6% from animal agriculture (estimates from the World Resources Institute and Pitesky et al. 2009)."

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=77&t=11 (3)

"CO2 emissions from U.S. electric power sector by source, 2016"

"Coal 68%, Natural gas 30%, Petroleum 1%, Other <1%"

It is true, according to (2), beef is surely contributing more than other meat:

"Eschel et al. 2014 estimated that producing beef requires 28 times more land, 6 times more fertilizer and 11 times more water than producing pork or chicken. As a result, the study estimated that producing beef releases 4 times more greenhouse gases than a calorie-equivalent amount of pork, and 5 times as much as an equivalent amount of poultry."

and animal agriculture in total does have its 14 to 18 percent (2) of total human greenhouse gas emissions (you stated only the bigger number).

Short URL for (2): http://sks.to/meat

> Also you need to consider that in G-7 nations mains electricity use is actually declining.

Declining in relation to what, though? I mean, it's hopeful, and a good start, truly(!), but (admittedly) without knowing much about all this, I can't imagine the G7 'starting point' is less atrocious than the rest of the world. But please correct me if I'm wrong!

Declining electricity mains generation compared to previous years. If you want more details then read the reports I listed in my previous post, collectively they have more than enough information to bring you up to speed.

As far as I know, that isn't really true. Isn't coal well under 50% now? I suspect that it would be below 40% by this point and dropping. It isn't really reasonable to expect it to disappear too quickly, though.

> Isn't coal well under 50% now? I suspect that it would be below 40% by this point and dropping

Coal has remained around 29% of global primary energy consumption since 2005 [1]. I don't believe it's dropping.

[1] https://www.worldenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/World... Figure 1, page 4

You are saying something completely different. The discussion is not about all energy use but about the generation of electricity.

Pounds of CO2 emitted per million British thermal units (Btu) of energy for various fuels:

Coal (anthracite) 228.6 Coal (bituminous) 205.7 Coal (lignite) 215.4 Coal (subbituminous) 214.3 Diesel fuel and heating oil 161.3 Gasoline (without ethanol) 157.2 Propane 139.0 Natural gas 117.0

natural gas is a win over coal, but not a big one.

There still appears to be net growth in Asia Pacific region: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat... and the interactive chart: http://tools.bp.com/energy-charting-tool#/st/coal/dt/consump...

That region is consuming more than 7x North American consumption and accounts for 73% of overall consumption. Unfortunately, it’s also the area seeing the least drop as a percentage.

In other words, the rest of the world can completely get rid of coal and the total global coal emissions will still be higher than they were before 2003.

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