Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

seanmcdirmid

> Electricity has to be generated and in the US that's mainly coal.

Huh? Coal is only 30% of the USA’s energy production, natural gas is higher at 34%.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electrici...

The other points in your post are equally dubious, do you have sources?

View on HN

Are you suggesting natural gas generation is “Green”?

No, I’m only suggesting that natural gas isn’t coal.

From an air quality perspective, at least, natural gas is much better than coal. But it is far from carbon neutral.

Wikipedia lists energy consumption being 70% coal, I'm not sure why the large discrepancy there. I got my information about electrical engines from a website trying to talk up how great it was that we were moving away from oil based engines, but even there they admitted that until more power generation is switched over to renewable that emissions are higher with electric cars. Which makes perfect sense and is not dubious, the fewer times you need to convert energy the less energy wasted. Electricity does not store well, additionally.

> Wikipedia lists energy consumption being 70% coal, I'm not sure why the large discrepancy there.

Link?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Ge...

Yeah that'd be the link it's the first image on the page.

The image/graph you're referencing illustrates "United States total primary energy consumption by fuel in 2015". Total, not electric.

You were discussing production of electricity, which is shown in the table I linked on that page to be 32%.

Wait, how does that make sense?

What kind of energy if not electrical is coal being used to produce?

Blast furnaces, heating, other chemical processes.

Coal isn't used for heating much in the US, if at all. It is sometimes used for metal production, especially on the east coast, but oddly, not on the west, where hydro is used.

I think the Wikipedia image (at the top of the page [1]) is simply wrong. If you follow the link to the source, [2, page 43], you get 396.3/2280.6 = 17.4% for coal in the US, "Primary energy: Consumption by fuel."

[1] 1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States

[2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/stati...

I looked at the citation, someone put the wrong numbers in the pie chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Energy_in_the_Uni...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com