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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

> "The headline basically implies "total fossil fuel generation has stopped growing, while renewables have grown substantially," which is both accurate and interesting."

It's not accurate, it's bullshit. Look at the graph here, which is based on the official US government figures:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31892

Does it look like fossil fuel usage is slowing down to you?

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According to your own link, "In 2016, fossil fuels accounted for 81% of total U.S. energy consumption, the lowest fossil fuel share in the past century." Of course you'd need additional data to show that the absolute amount of electricity generated from fossils, and not just its share of the pie, had declined.

Here is that additional data:

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

The sums of the fossil fueled columns (1-5), by yearly GWh, are:

2007 2992238

2008 2926731

2009 2726451

2010 2883361

2011 2788867

2012 2775025

2013 2745968

2014 2750572

2015 2727246

2016 2654468

Total fossil fueled generation is well below where it was a decade ago. The rapid rise of natural gas generation has been more than offset by an even faster decline in generation from other fossil fuels, coal in particular.

> "Total fossil fueled generation is well below where it was a decade ago. The rapid rise of natural gas generation has been more than offset by an even faster decline in generation from other fossil fuels, coal in particular."

That's the problem I'm trying to highlight. The decline of coal is the ideal opportunity for renewables to rise to become a greater portion of the energy mix. Instead, we see natural gas taking its place. Natural gas is abundant and cheap, and causes less pollution than coal, but is still a polluting source of energy. Renewables now have to fight against a new, stronger incumbent, rather than taking the place of a dying one.

You originally said that the claim "total fossil fuel generation has stopped growing" was bullshit. Those numbers show it's not bullshit.

Renewables have been rising. See the same table I linked before. Maybe you'd prefer if all that declining coal generation had been replaced by non-combustion sources instead of mostly gas. So would I, but global solar manufacturing capacity in particular has grown so rapidly and recently that it wasn't even theoretically feasible until just a few years ago.

Gas plants are cheap to build and currently have low fuel costs too. But even at today's low fuel costs, most of their operating expenses come from fuel. As renewable and storage construction costs continue to decline, their very low marginal costs provide ample opportunity to steal more share from gas, even if gas prices stay low. It's already happening in California.

http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-puente-gas-...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/a-new-era...

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/battery-storage...

Fossil fuels and renewables are just categories. If you take away those categories you'll see that the growth in solar, wind and other sources that are classed as "renewables" are not significantly outpacing the growth of natural gas. The reason this is significant is because the growth of natural gas is as a result of those who see it as a long term investment. The new natural gas power plants/generators were almost certainly built to return a multi-year profit to their investors. Don't let the drop in coal distract you from the growth in natural gas, it represents a long term shift in the energy mix of the US, and will be almost certainly harder to shift than the coal industry.

What you should be asking is, why are individuals investing more in natural gas rather than renewables? If we were being honest with ourselves, the problem is still battery technology. Investment in electricity storage is costly, and the batteries we have today become less effective the more they get used, resulting in regular replacements being required to maintain storage capacity. There are groups working on the grid storage problem, but it's far from resolved. Without it being resolved, there's a ceiling beyond which solar and wind are not likely to grow, as the most important factor in grid electricity is reliability, and storage is the only way to make a grid with the majority of energy coming from wind and solar to be reliable.

Yes, actually. It looks like the increase in petroleum and gas in the last 5 years is more or less nullified by the drop in coal, while renewables is steadily increasing. What do you see?

I see that the drop off in coal is masking the growth in other fossil fuel sources. It should be renewables that take the place of coal, not natural gas and petroleum.

I don't disagree, but it does mean that the original claim is accurate.

Natural gas is ~1/2 as carbon intense as coal. It's a good thing when it displaces coal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_intensity#Published_d...

Of course renewables are much lower, as that table shows. But meeting current demand with new natural gas generation is still a big improvement over old coal generation.

You appear to have mistaken generation capacity (discussed in the Electrek article) with usage (cited by you).

How do you think we get additional usage of fuel types? By growing the generation capacity.

The point is, there's no sign of the expansion of natural gas usage slowing down. Install base of power plants/generators running off natural gas is growing.

I haven't got all the figures to hand, but consider this report, which covers changes in electricity production in the southern states of the US:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33992

In particular, look at this graph:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2017.12.05/chart4.p...

Can you at least admit that, in 2017, natural gas capacity grew faster than renewable capacity in southern US states?

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