G-20 Climate Talks Threatened by Clash over Coal Ahead of COP26 | Hacker News Reader

G-20 Climate Talks Threatened by Clash over Coal Ahead of COP26

wsj.com

36 pointsmelling55 comments

Nuclear solves all these problems and potentially buys enough time to figure out how to mitigate the worst effects of 2C+ degrees of warming which at this point is basically inevitable. France seems to be the only sane nation in the world right now while everyone else is doubling down on what brought us to this point. [1]

> France has 56 nuclear power reactors in operation, with two units closing in 2020 at Fessenheim (61 370 MW(e)) and one EPR reactor under construction at the Flamanville site. Nuclear power plants accounted for 70.6% of total French electricity generation in 2019, and about 90% of France’s electricity comes from low carbon sources (nuclear and renewable).

1: https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/France/France.htm

Takes to long to construct, overruns its coasts. Pushing it is just a stalling strategy from big coal, gas and oil.

Sure thing chief, cost is very important when facing a global existential crisis. That's why global CO2 output is now on the rise because people asking for more nuclear power plants (the only reliable low carbon source at this point in time) are stooges for big coal, gas, and oil.

That does not follow.

Exactly

If you construct reactors in fleet mode, a few will come online every year, first reactor comes online. Like China and India are doing. Bigger problem is nuclear fear in west and unavailability of finance in the rest. India could not avail loans from any banks for their new nuclear plants and had to fork out entire capex from govt budget.

There is very little interest in any large capex projects of any type, in any location, on the part of banks. They're buying US paper instead. To be expected, given the high inflation rate.

In an ideal world, one would expect nuclear tech or financing be addressed in global forums, like say cop26. But, from leaked reports, India was complaining that the cop report is demonizing nuclear and wants nuclear included in the solutions to climate change. Highly doubt India would get any traction on that.

"The fossil fuel industry starting from the 1950s was engaging in campaigns against the nuclear industry which it perceived as a threat to their commercial interests. Organizations such as American Petroleum Institute, the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and Marcellus"

Claims that it takes to long to construct and overruns costs are just FUD from the solar industry which relies heavily on coal and concentration camp labour to produce cheap panels that provide unreliable energy without some sort of storage system which doesn't exist at scale.

Solar Power May Be the Next Victim of China’s Coal Shortage

>Prices of silicon metal, used to make the material that comprises solar panels, have surged about 300% since the start of August after a top-producing province ordered production be slashed amid a power crunch. China dominates global solar production, with its coal generators powering many of the factories that make clean energy equipment.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/china-slashes-silico...

It's the other way around. Renewables without storage (which we don't have) need fossil fuels around, in the forms of gas peakers and whatnot. Pushing against nuclear is just strategy from big oil and coal and gas to stay relevant.

China is also constructing many new nuclear power plants. However they're also constructing new fossil fuel plants at the same time. It's tough to keep up with the increasing demand for electricity.

Smaller reactors (which may be, but are not necessarily, "modular") should help with both the build time and cost overrun issue.

The USA has been successfully building small reactors on time, on budget, more or less continuously since the 1950s - they've just been going into warships and submarines and not commercial generating stations.

One problem is that military nuclear reactors use more highly refined uranium in order to reduce reactor size. This makes them more valuable targets for terrorists and thus require greater security. Not hard to accomplish on an aircraft carrier, but this would increase cost for a civilian reactor.

From my experience military equipment is not designed to be efficient in terms of cost. I am pretty sure their designs can’t be used for commercially viable power.

They are also operated in super secure environments like submarines and aircraft carriers. Harder to secure a large number of commercial plants all over the country. Even accidents are much more forgiving out on the ocean vs on land.

So could we not just operate them on water? Many large cities are on water and already have ugly ports. Just build nuclear reactors in ships, park in port and connect to grid. Have coast guard/navy secure them.

Again, look at the economics. I bet it won’t work.

They have one in Russia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

That's the general thrust of the modular bit - it's easier to build ten 100 MWe plants (mostly) in a factory and ship them to the site of a power station than build a 1GWe monolith on the same site.

The global power consumption is around 25000 terawatt hours, so you would need to operate around 5000 nuclear power stations to cover that.

You would need 5000 locations, but then you would run out of uranium and exotic metals in a few years. They are non-renewable resources.

Nuclear is not going to happen in time. Every dollar put into it is a waste at this point. The focus should be on decommissioning existing reactors so that the harm is limited when society eventually falls apart, to give a chance for future generations.

I suspect that building and operating a nuclear plant is more complex than coal, however this table indicates there are currently 2445 operating coal plants currently, and approx 500 in pre-construction or construction. So is it really that hard to fathom operating 5000 nuclear plants? Especially if our existence might depend on it? I also don't think people are recommending replacing EVERY source of energy with nuclear... just the dirty ones.

1 - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kXtAw6QvhE14_KRn5lnG...

Nuclear power stations usually contain multiple reactorsand afaik there's no limit on how any of them you can have. So a lot less than 5000 locations.

> The focus should be on decommissioning existing reactors so that the harm is limited when society eventually falls apart, to give a chance for future generations.

And replace them with what? Energy instability sure as hell won't help current or future generations.

To give an order of magnitude: Germany is producing 11 times more CO2 to produce the same amount of energy than France.

But nothing is sure about what is going to happen in France. While Macron has announced some investments to develop small modular reactors, the path to get to carbon neutrality is still being discussed.

RTE, the electricity transmission system operator released a massive report last week with 6 possible pathways to get to Carbon Neutrality (1). 3 of them explore doubling down on nuclear while 3 others consist in divesting from nuclear and relying even more on renewables.

All scenarios are considered "realistic" despite each having some uncertainties. The projected costs of all scenarios is in the same order of magnitude (~10B euros). While the scenarios with nuclear seem slightly cheaper given median assumptions, it is a rounding error compared to the uncertainties regarding the cost of capital, the evolution of solar and wind prices, and the capability to deliver new nuclear plants).

Maintaining the existing 60GW of nuclear power would certainly make things easier, but the report makes it clear that it is more of a political decision than a technical constraint.

The report is clear about one thing though, renewables are not optional. There is no scenario where France gets to carbon neutrality in 2050 without massively scaling its production of renewable energy starting now.

1: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-10/Futurs-Ene... (see page 17 for the 6 scenarios)

Thanks for sharing that!

It is really interesting to see strategies from "shutting down all nuclear and building ~ 350 GW of solar and wind and 26 GW of storage" to "still build a lot of renewables but also 27 GW of new nuclear and no storage".

This seems one of the very few times I've seen the storage taken into account.

> To give an order of magnitude: Germany is producing 11 times more CO2 to produce the same amount of energy than France.

That sounds rather unbelievable. As per Statista, France produced 8.7 exajoules of energy in 2020; Germany produced 12.1 exajoules. Meanwhile France emitted 277 Mt of CO2 in 2020; Germany emitted 644 Mt in 2020. Unless I'm calculating something wrong, Germany's 53.2 Mt/EJ is worse than France's 31.8 Mt/EJ, but not by a factor of 11. More like by a factor of 1.7.

How many coal plants is China firing up this year? I lost track

Since you've lost track:

China added a net 29.8 GW of coal power to its grid in 2020. (~35 GW added, ~6 GW decomissioned)

It also added a net 71.6 GW of wind power, 48.2 GW of solar power. It's also adding ~6 GW of nuclear power/per year.

“ China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, generates one thousand gigawatts of coal power domestically, accounting for over half of the globe's total and more than four times that of the second- and third-largest users (India)”

Sounds like a big problem

China's per capita emissions are lower than the developed world [1], and most of India lives in absolute poverty.

Are you advocating for each country receiving the exact same emissions cap, disregarding population? Or do you think its fair for billions of people to remain in absolute poverty, while a few hundred million in the developed world pollute four times more than their fair share?

[1] Not to mention that much of the developed world's pollution is outsourced to China. Where do you think all the consumer goods you use are made?

Yes, 1.2 billion people need a lot of energy. India has another 1.3 billion. They’re going to need more power too. Coal?

I agree that 340 million Americans need to reduce emissions. Coal is now 20% of electricity. We seem to be waiting for renewables and batteries.

Globally, 40% of electricity comes from coal. At the end of the day, if we use all that coal for much longer, we are going to have a big problem

"Americans need to reduce emissions. Coal is now 20% of electricity."

Currently each American produces twice the emission each Chinese or French does

> we are going to have a big problem

Yes, we will. We need to tax the hell out of it, and tariff any country that does not institute an equivalent tax.

But we'd rather grouse about foreign use of coal, rather than install a tax - because any such tax, at the moment, would hurt us[1] a lot more than it hurts them.

[1] Well, some of us.

You’re right, it’s not fair but at the same time climate doesn’t care about per capita. Also, 87 % of Chinese emissions are attributable to domestic needs and production.

The only solution is geo-engineering and carbon capture. The Western world wants to lower emissions but it won’t matter because the majority comes from the developing world. And they want to keep growing, rightly so, negating the lower emissions from the West.

Thus we are left with only technical solutions.

This is the point where someone says that per capita isn't the right way to look at it because the atmosphere doesn't care about our arbitrary lines on the map.

They will be correct that the atmosphere does not care about such lines, but that is why per capita is a much better measurement than per country.

Suppose the total emissions the would can handle is T and there are C countries, and so the if you go by country fair share for each country is T/C. Suppose country X is having trouble staying under that. X can address that with a split into two countries, X1 and X2, carefully constructed so that half of what X emitted comes from each. Now each country's share is T/(C+1), and the X1 and X2 together have a limit of 2T/(C+1).

The ratio of what X1 and X2 together are allowed to what X was allowed is 2C/(C+1). Current C is ~200, giving a ratio of 1.99. If X had split into X1, X2, and X3 they would each get T/(C+2), for a combined 3T/(C+2) and a ratio of 3C/(C+2) which presently is around 2.97.

Split your high emission country into several smaller countries with the high emissions distributed approximately evenly between them, tie the countries together with trade agreements and various reciprocity treaties (kind of like the EU) and with no change in actual emissions you go from being over your quota for global emissions to being under.

Of course everyone else can do this also. Every time someone does it the per country quota for everyone else goes down slightly. As high emitters environmentally gerrymander their way under quota, that will eventually cause some countries that were under quota to be over, pressuring them to also split.

In the limit, you end up with something equivalent to per capita.

Neither emissions / capita or emissions / country account for the interleaving of production and trade. On an atomic level (pardon the pun) we measure carbon by footprint - compare buying a new car vs buying a used car with worse gas mileage, and almost always the used car is the greener option (due to the astronomical carbon footprint of producing and shipping all the components of a new car). I have yet to see a measure of country level carbon that captures this reality - neither C / country or C / capita account for the fact that the global supply chain is deeply interdependent and extraordinarily convoluted.

I almost feel as though the best solution would be Carbon / USD, or some other metric that captures the reality that it's neither countries or people creating carbon, but industry (the most relevant of which is currently multinational).

> and almost always the used car is the greener option

That's not actually true for EVs, they pay off pretty quickly depending on how green electricity is at whatever place.

(I guess you know that since you said 'almost', I just wanted to point it out to others.)

> Are you advocating for each country receiving the exact same emissions cap, disregarding population?

I would advocate for Western corporations to move their factories back to their country of origin.

29.8 is much less than stated in various outlets [1]. Where did you get that number from?

1: https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/commentary-china-is-buil...

And more in the future.

>It now has 97.8 GW of coal-fired power under construction, and another 151.8 GW at the planning stage.

https://www.reuters.com/article/china-coal-idUSL4N2E20HS

Hopefully they reevaluate that, since they already have coal shortages for the coal plants they already have.

What would they use instead? Coal power is an input into solar panels.

Solar Power May Be the Next Victim of China’s Coal Shortage

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/china-slashes-silico...

If it's true that solar is cheaper than coal, how is it possible that countries are reluctant to move away from coal?

Either countries and companies like to burn money. Or the statement that solar is cheaper than coal is deceptive.

Plunging Prices Mean Building New Renewable Energy Is Cheaper Than Running Existing Coal

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plu...

While solar is cheaper, the problems are regulatory.

Solar is cheaper than coal only when sun shines brightest in the noon, while the peak demand is generally around sunset. Solar energy generation is anywhere from 30-50% of nameplate capacity depending on location. This necessitates, additional solar equivalent capacity installation of peaker plants, or base load plants to cater to sunlight unavailable hours.

Newer storage tech is needed to address the situation like batteries, hydro or concentrated solar etc. Almost all of them are costlier than straight up burning coal or gas now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

There's a huge number of people in fossil fuel industries. Not only mining and refining, but gas stations and fuel oil truckers etc. It will be very disruptive to tell all those people that their jobs are obsolete and to find something else to do. And the land end equipment that all those companies had bought is now worthless, then they can't pay their loans, so you have to bail out them or at least their banks, so the banks have some money they can lend to other people.

We just survived the worst crisis of century. Perhaps it makes sense to put this plan on hold for couple of years. Or find something a bit more cost effective.

You think this crisis is bad, wait for the ones coming after we 'hold off'

We just survived the worst crisis of the century, which was totally foreseeable and would have been a lot less bad if we had properly prepared as the experts advised us to do for decades.

So let's definitely hold off on preparing for this other inevitable crisis that experts have been warning us about for decades.

You know what's not cost effective? Digging coal out of the ground for cents on the dollar that the crisis is actually gonna cost us in the next 50 years.

why can't anyone say it? these summits are useless. League-Of-Nations level useless. nothing is accomplished, none of the major players are committed to anything more than virtue signalling...

First define the ends which the conference should be useful towards.

Well, they can’t say it because it’s not true. The Paris agreement is associated with a substantial change in our “current policies” climate trajectory (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world...), and that was before a large paradigm shift in the cost of renewables.

Exactly! The Paris agreement provided an anchor. Now every climate policy is put in relation with how it helps to reach the 2 degree target. We hear about it all the time.

We might be off-track to meet the goal but it was nevertheless a massive step forward to frame the debate.

They provide an excellent opportunity for China to convince developed countries to buy its solar panels, all while China increases the number of coal plants every year.

So, in that sense it accomplishes a lot.

It's just a drinking club. Would you stop hanging out with your globalist buddies on the taxpayer's dime if no one had the power to stop you?

I think it'll ultimately be China who starts the greenvolution, but not in a grand way.

* it has started restructuring its economy to be more longterm oriented. Banning for-profit education, tightening mega corps, exploring ways to encourage child bearing.

* belt-and-road - as well as being a cashcow longterm, it also gives leverage to push your vision. And with that vision being free - china pays for it now - it'll be a much easier sell than trying to convince western world to give money to developing world as per paris climate accords (which by and large remain unimplemented).

Now certainly it'll take a while. US could do it now by imposing an import tax if the supply chain is dirty, but there's no heartfelt urgency.

And is there urgency really? I mean what do the timelines look like if nothing really changes?

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