Wind and solar are now beating coal in the US
electrek.co
electrek.co
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
In 2022 coal generated electricity was down to 854 terawatt hours from 2,016 terawatt hours in 2007. It's declining even more this year:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960
In our March Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast the wind share of the U.S. generation mix will increase from 11% last year to 12% this year. We forecast that the solar share will grow to 5% in 2023, up from 4% last year. The natural gas share of generation is forecast to remain unchanged from last year (39%); the coal share of generation is forecast to decline from 20% last year to 17% in 2023.
Your link is about capacity, and it is not clear how much it has been used.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
Yes, much more than half of it. But renewables absorbed a visible share of it.
Gas absorbed about 60 percent, while renewables absorbed about 40. The numbers are in billion kilowatthours. Coal usage was reduced by 1117, in the same time period gas went up with 678 and renewables went up with 473.
However, despite coal's decline, let's not discount the impressiveness of this achievement. Renewable sources have made huge strides over the past few years, and the growth of renewables is accelerating year-over-year. It feels like we've hit an inflection point WRT to renewable adoption, where it's simultaneously economical, politically popular, and proven to be practical.
The world have an ever increasing demand for more electricity. Even though we add lots of wind and solar generation every year. It is not enough to meet the increase in demand. However, we are very close, and 2023 [1] could be the year where we could see an actual decline of fossile fuel usage for electricity generation for the first time.
[1] https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electrici...
Or 3 years if you include hydro.
The issue is steel, which is a cornerstone of "green" energy. That steel must be made with metallurgical coal and while there are alternative processes, they require hydrogen.
Hydrogen is currently impossible to generate efficiently (from an energy perspective), much less a cost-effective manner. Hydrogen will also need to be generated without fossil fuels, which is how most hydrogen today is generated.
I see prices going up in the "green" future.
Thermolysis of water at high temperature directly driven by a nuclear reactor. Roughly a thousand tonnes of hydrogen per gram of uranium. Admittedly, this is somewhere between entirely theoretical and barely prototyped at the kilowatt scale in research reactors. But Atomic Energy Ltd. of Canada was investigating it as an application of their next generation CANDU design before it was shelved.
Or use some other source of heat. Concentrated solar power has been proposed.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-th...
The economics are not necessarily favourable vs. fossil fuels. But they're not horrible either. Even something more conservative, like standard electrolysis of water, driven by traditional nuclear power, would be something like 2x - 5x more expensive than current hydrogen sourced from natural gas. In locations where electricity is very cheap, it is sometimes competitive already.
Fossil fuel prices never really represented their full cost. We were paying far more than we thought.
Even the commercial hydrogen that comes from natural gas at the pump costs $26/ KG in California - up from only $13 this time last time.
As much as I would like to see a robust hydrogen economy we are long way from using hydrogen for proper energy storage .
From my experience, density and leaks are major problems that is going to be hard to solve at scale cheaply, commercial hydrogen i. buy is already at 10,000 psi and 5kg tank(carbon fiber no less) my car has is massive .
The pumps usually have dedicated buildings just to store <1000 kg .
Low energy efficient hydrogen will work if electricity is sufficiently cheap at purchase and hydrogen is sufficiently expensive at sale. Those factors will probably come to dominate more than conversion efficiency. Steel production just adds another potential customer to the mix.
When we do that, I'll start getting concerned about industrial use of carbon.
Losing sleep about the cost of green steel is like worrying about traffic jams on Mars. Utterly irrelevant in our current timeline.
Transportation is a bigger problem. Not only people are still buying new cars, ships, and aircraft that use fossil fuels, but businesses continue designing new models. It's likely that transportation's share of total emissions will increase, as electricity, heating, and industrial processes decarbonize.
Europe is very close to banning ICE cars from 2035 - 2040. And part of the people pushing for this ban are... European automobile manufacturers, especially VW. Funny, right?
Volkswagen has invested tens of billions of euros into EVs and will invest about 80 billion more until 2030 and I think they expect their entire lineup to be EV-only by 2030 or so, so if they manage to ban ICEs by 2035, they'd basically be banning some of their slower moving competitors :-))
Steel plants are a perfect setting to capture the CO2 which the furnaces emit: it's highly concentrated and is emitted from compact, well-controlled areas (blast furnaces, and even converter furnaces).
The CO2 thus collected can be meaningfully reprocessed into hydrocarbon fuels, for instance. There are even solar-powered methods [1] which can run when the sunlight is available. since the CO2 can stay safely captured in a typical industrial gas storage facility.
That's not really much of a problem. How much steel is going to be used for energy generation compared to the steel that's used by basically everything else, including construction? That's not a consumable (barring any hardware losses) and emissions will be offset across the lifetime of the generator.
"Between now and February 2026, FERC anticipates 17,690 megawatts (MW) of “high probability” net capacity additions by wind and 77,791 MW of “high probability” solar. FERC also reports that there may actually be as much as 66,322 MW of wind and 213,969 MW of solar in the three-year pipeline.
In contrast, it anticipates no new coal capacity additions, and total installed coal capacity may actually shrink by 28,507 MW. The net “high probability” capacities of both oil and natural gas are also seen as declining – by 1,572 MW and 574 MW, respectively – while that of nuclear power may fall by 123 MW."
Renewables: 24.1%
Coal: 16%
Nuclear: 19%
Other non-renewables: 41%
The thing is, wind/solar costs have been decreasing and also have a predictable ongoing cost. Fossil fuel prices are volatile.
The natural gas power plants don't need to be built, because that is the marginal electricity provider that exists already and is being replaced by renewables.
Meanwhile, grid-scale batteries are the fastest growing electricity provider on the grid because it turns out that they are cheaper to run than natural gas peakers.
Only for the very short term firming today, i.e. for frequency regulation. For days-weeks storage you need much lower cost/kWh of storage. There are contender technologies but nothing at scale deployed as far as I know (other than pumped hydro, which is geographically limited).
For days/weeks storage -- it's not a problem yet. We already have plenty of natural gas plants in the US. I'm perfectly happy, environmentally, if we have to run natural gas plants two weeks a year but it means that we get to 80 or 90% clean energy a decade or two faster than Plan B.
Natural gas isn't the only way to avoid plan B (assuming that refers to giving up on controlling global heating).
In CA, natural gas peakers emit 60M metric tons of CO2 per year (out of a statewide 420M metric tons), so a significant portion. Much of the non-peaker C02 is also natural gas based.
In addition, as more natural gas in baseload gets supplanted by renewable and storage and maybe small modular nuclear, the utilization of natural gas will drop, resulting in that generation becoming stranded assets (similar to what is happening to coal now).
This is also before accounting for all the other ways power could be stored batteries, demand shaping and storing syngas.
But what percentage are close enough to existing transmission? Perhaps some, but I suspect many suitable locations will be remote enough that new transmission needs to be built. It might make economic sense to do so in some circumstances, but not in others.
In contrast, grid scale chemical storage (flow batteries, metal-air, etc) could be easily placed at existing fossil fuel plants and use the existing grid interconnects.
2. What will happen to people and places who were economically dependent on coal mining? Something tells me the factories for solar panels and wind turbines aren't being built in West Virginia -- or perhaps not in the US at all. And I'm sure they require a completely different skill set.
2. We build a robust safety net with worker retraining and…haha, I can’t even finish that sentence. It’s the same thing that tends to happen to the working class: nothing good.
2) while this is an issue coal has been declining for some time. There are health issues with coal and the jobs have been shrinking and half of coal jobs have been lost since 2012. This is with coal usage higher today. The jobs will continue to be reduced regardless. Part of the 2 trillion dollar infrastructure plan includes training and assistance for jobs like coal miner lost. That is the best solution possible for jobs that will not exist in 100 years unless there is suddenly a new purpose for coal.
Nacco industries for example is expecting the closing of one mine and plant this year in Texas. It is attempting to diversify into lithium and other minerals. There is a small fight from at least one state senator that may keep it another year but over all it’s not economically viable to keep it with other alternatives.
* There's a large pipeline of battery storage projects (https://www.energy-storage.news/800mwh-of-utility-scale-ener...)
* 6 new Interconnectors will be built in the next 3 years with a capacity of 7.5 GW - https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy...
* In the last 12 months (https://www.mygridgb.co.uk/last-12-months/):
* battery storage supplied 0.7% of demand
* Interconnectors supplied 6.4% of demand in the last 12 months
Windy, probably, mostly. Sunny, not really; the Pacific ocean is big and there's a big gap in time before solar drops in California and it comes up in Asia. Not to mention that electricity transmission across the oceans is basically infeasible.
A more interconnected grid helps, and storage helps, but you also have to acknowledge that highly available electricity tends to cost more than opportunistic sources, especially as solar and wind costs have gone down. And if you want electricity to be dependable, someone has to pay the higher cost for the desired availability.
What nobody really wants to tell you, the same thing happens that happened to people in deindustrializing area. As a group, they get stuck in poverty.
The problem is... we can't really do much about it. Progress needs to happen, especially in this case.
Everybody keeps yapping about it but in practice only the longshoremen, through their very powerful unions, managed to have a decent transition when their jobs died out. Everybody says "we should so something" but nobody's willing to sacrifice their money to actually do anything.
Like the employee who gets all the easy shifts and never works weekends.
Like the controversy when traffic light bulbs were replaced and incandescent were phased away in favor of LEDs. In some places where it gets very cold they got obstructed by ice. Because incandescent bulbs were so inefficient and generated so much heat, they didn't have the same "problem". So, because they could not handle the few days where this was a problem (just because it's cold, doesn't mean ice will form there), people were arguing that they were a bad idea.
It didn't matter that for 300+ days they would save a lot of energy. It didn't matter that they were better (and in most locations this would never even be a problem in the first place). It mattered that they were different and had different issues that needed to be solved. In those places, having a different design (or adding a heating element, only active when temps were low) would solve the remaining problem.
I've seen this sort of thinking in corporate settings too. A vastly inferior solution stays in place because a new solution doesn't solve all problems people can possibly think of - even when the existing solution doesn't solve them either!
It boggles the mind.
What's worse is that he points out you could have a lighting system with integrated defroster that only gets turned on when it's super cold, and you're STILL using less energy overall.
The basic problem is that in order to provide reliable energy 365 days a year you need to account for the daily and \ seasonal variability of solar and wind. You have two options:
* maintain a duplicate fossil fuel backup system (fully maintained, staffed, and fueled) for those cold windless nights (so no longer cheaper)
* deploy a storage system that can effectively time shift energy created by solar and wind across entire seasons (also not cheaper nor demonstrated with current battery technology)
* suck it up when there is no sun or wind availableMy power utility in the Bay Area powers residential customers 100% on renewable energy. Commercial and industrial do have fossil fuels still.
> maintain a duplicate fossil fuel backup system (fully maintained, staffed, and fueled) for those cold windless nights (so no longer cheaper)
Guess what, this is needed even in a world that only fossil fuels are used. Energy demand is variable and we need peaker plants on standby.
> deploy a storage system that can effectively time shift energy created by solar and wind across entire seasons (also not cheaper nor demonstrated with current battery technology)
We already need some storage in the current grid until said peaker plants come online. Maybe it's not 'cheaper' but it's been demonstrated. California alone has 2239MW of stored power at the moment I'm writing this (check the California ISO).
I'm not entirely sure you are familiar with how power grids work.
2. The Sun always shines somewhere, the wind always blows somewhere. It's not just about your personal backyard, ironically named "learn_more".
3. We have the thing called The Grid™, and electricity transportation at far distances is very efficient. Building these long distance connections is cheaper than you'd expect.
Production from wind and solar is random and doesn't work without corresponding guaranteed (controllable) capacity, unless you are willing to accept so-called brown-outs and black-outs.
(Increasing installed capacity of these random generators is not a solution since it leads to situations where the production exceeds demand ... which puts very different demands on the infrastructure.)
Nobody. Wind turbines blades can be locked to prevent damage in very high winds [1]. Many offshore turbines are already designed to withstand very high winds (like in the North Sea) and still operate.
Practically speaking a few solar panels might be damaged in a hurricane but not likely the entire array. The damaged panels can be easily replaced.
1. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/wind-turbines-extreme-w...
You might want to check on data before making smug and condescending false assertions.
I'm for solar and wind but fossil fuels are still needed as a backup plan (another basket of eggs). Gotta have it. I survived the hard freeze in Houston with no electrical power with stored gasoline and a couple of generators for 5 days no problem. I just fueled up the other day. With additives the fuels last several years. Good to go for a freeze or a major storm for a couple weeks.
It is more accurate to say that the real problem was the failure of ERCOT & etc to winterize any part of the grid, which led to failures of transmission and/or generation across the board, for every source type.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/15/texas-power-grid-win...
Gas is the biggest source of power in Texas. While all power sources were poorly winterized, the failure to prepare the fossil fuel infrastructure hurt the most because gas provides more power than wind or solar in the Texas grid.
And, of course, almost NOTHING has been done about this failure despite how close the state came to a weeks-long power grid failure, and virtual no one has been held responsible.
In parts of the country where we plan for cold weather, our natural gas flows and our wind turbines spin in the winter.
McMurdo station in freakin Antarctica uses wind turbines. They run just fine in the cold. Texas utilities just didn't want to pay for proper weather proofing.
Backups are backups. They can be fossil fuel based, it's fine and I don't know who is arguing that it's not ok.
We can't optimize for natural disasters at the expense of all the other times there isn't a natural disaster.
And for people or small communities with battery storage on their solar, they are back online before everyone else. Solar panels also work absolutely great in freezes, without requiring due supply.
And since a grid built on renewables has far more battery storage on it, and is used to shifting power sources frequently due to the intermittency of renewables, a renewable grid will have fewer single points of failure and be more resilient when there are large weather events that take out large generators.
are there storms that cover the entire US at the same time?
or are there no interconnecting power cables between wind/ solar farms from different states? (ie other states farms still continue to function whilst one area is not)
Of course, that means when there is a natural disaster in Texas (with the existing, largely-fossil-fuel-powered grid!), they...can't really get help from anyone else. (My hazy understanding is that there are a few limited-duty linkages that can be activated, or something, but it's woefully inadequate to serve the whole state.)
IIRC, the last time this happened, the only parts of Texas that were still getting power were a few that had wind & solar plants going. Because those were still operating just fine.
Power lines are more likely to be a single point of failure, but that's the same for all power distribution.
The question of "what fuel do I want for power tools after a natural disaster" is entirely distinct from "what mix of sources should we use to power the grid?" Babelthuap is deliberately muddying the water here.
And, yeah, Babel, I live in Houston, and except for college have spent all of my 53 years within an hour or so drive of the gulf coast. I know about hurricanes, even big ones. That's a dumb objection to including renewable energy in a grid plan.
Of course it will.
So many low intelligence likely astroturfing comments in this thread.
Thing is, you know wind solar is winning the war because irrational AstroTurfing is all that can be parroted in response.
About 1/3 of the electricity consumed in the state as I write this is being generated by renewables. That's with mild temperatures and lower than average wind generation. On a day like today with more typical winds it would probably be about half from renewables.
http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_condi...
are you trying to do some sort of propaganda thing implying green energy is fragile?
fwiw - they're not, they're designed to a seriously stronge even in hurrican weather, but never let your personal opinions get in the way of your misinformation or story
[1] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/typ...
Just one more thing for ERCOT to add to their todo list after they shut down the gas power plants.
But on a serious note, this is the most diverse the grid has ever been.
Wind farms are designed to survive hurricanes anyway. See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/harvey-pu...
There's some evidence that large off-shore wind farms reduce the severity of hurricanes too:
> A large array of offshore wind farms can have significant impacts on precipitation during a hurricane. This claim is proven through a series of simulation cases, with different layout configurations, inter-turbine spacings, and wind farm parameterizations. Precipitation is found to be reduced inland and increased offshore in all the wind farm simulations. However, the amount of precipitation reduction varies in the different cases. The location of the wind farm also matters.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad245#...
This is completely untrue. Even outside the exclusion areas there are signs of the damage the disaster has caused.
The Japanese government has raised the acceptable radiation limit for people living in the area from 1 to 20 milliSieverts per year. No-where else is this amount considered acceptable.
Even with this increase it's still dramatically below the measured amounts, which is up to 0.04 microSieverts per hour.
> doctors have left the area because the government refuses to reimburse them when they list radiation sickness as the cause for nose bleeds, spontaneous abortions, and other ailments resulting from ionizing radiation. (The only acceptable diagnoses are so-called “radiophobia,” nervousness, and stress.) The spike in thyroid cancer among children in Fukushima is dismissed as a survey error, produced by examining too many children.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/03/fukushima-today-im-glad-that...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/us/solar-babcock-ranch-florid...