Does Bloomberg also have a plan to replace them with something else that will serve as reliable base load? Otherwise this is just a plan to turn the US into South Africa with perpetual brown outs.
There's a maintenance cost, of course, but as far as carbon goals it's very doable.
Maintenance can be spread over the entire year, and you can use designs that don't need a big workforce just to run.
Peaker plants already exist, this isn't a crazy new realm in the operational sense.
And this doesn't really require a tax. We could imagine an electrical company pricing out their aversion to carbon in cents per kWh out of their own volition or because of customer demand.
Natural gas does this fine. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
> "The financing is intended to support research, including studies and analysis to deliver accurate data to partnering organizations and officials for better decision-making. It will also fund local policy and advocacy, along with litigation brought against power companies."
The $500M is NOT an investment, it is a media campaign.
You could drop US emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn't stop it. China's extreme emissions growth is guaranteeing this only ends one way.
And that's just one entity.
Next is India. And then after that is Africa. Those two will add 1.5 billion people (another China) over the next 50 years and they will want to emit and consume like everybody else. India will end up with emissions growth that looks a lot like China, with hundreds of millions more people than what China has today.
If you believe in the existing projections on global climate change and what it will do, the end is already settled.
The US reducing its emissions by eg 1/4 or 1/3 is entirely meaningless against the increases elsewhere. It's not like we could just go hyper green and be spared, it doesn't work that way. It's global climate change.
A bit ridiculous to claim that global warming is caused by the dirt poor and the not yet born 'wanting to consume like Americans' when it's obvious that at least half of Americans are determined to continue consuming like Americans whatever the cost.
Your argument basically seems to boil down to "the most polluting country can't reduce use of its most polluting energy source because other countries exist and emit anything at all".
It's more like your argument forgot to account for fossil fuel demand elasticity and the reason why the developing world emits less CO2 per capita. It's not because they are enlightened minimalists who care more. It's because they are being outbid by the developed world.
For every amount the developed world cuts fossil fuel usage, it makes it cheaper for everyone else to buy. Price goes down, demand goes up. Usage doesn't go down, it shifts. This is a self defeating strategy. Your theory of global emissions reduction only works if no one changes their behavior in response to supply/demand changes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you know more than someone else, that's great, but in that case please share some of what you know—without putdowns or snark—so the rest of us can learn:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[1] https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/coa...
Please show me the total emissions of US coal, stacked up against global emissions, and then China's emissions and their emissions growth (ideally with a break-out on their coal emissions expansion, which is ongoing).
China added a hundred new coal plants in 2022 alone. That's half as many coal plants in the US, added in just a single year. And they're still going. Those are new plants, they no doubt plan to operate them for decades.
What do you think about China adding 500 new coal plants over the next ten years?
US coal is not going to make a difference whether it continues or not.
You're absolutely right that it's a super big and super hard problem. But we can't just throw our hands up. Even if you're not on board with helping, I beg you to please not stand in the way (or vote for those who stand in the way) of those of us who care about fixing this problem.
Edit: Oh, failed to address this:
> US coal is not going to make a difference whether it continues or not.
It absolutely will! The US is responsible for about 15% of worldwide carbon emissions[1]. Of that, about 25%[2] is from electricity generation. Of that, about 80% comes from coal and natural gas. 15 * .25 * .80 = about 1.8% of global emissions comes from US coal & natural gas power plants alone. Two percent of global emissions is quite a huge amount! It'd be one nice, big step forward on the long, long (long) road to fixing this problem. You gotta do something, or else you're doing nothing, and coal plants are a great target to aim at.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
1: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
sure, here you are: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#co2-emissions-by-re....
Turns out China emits around half the CO2 per capita that the US does, and the total hasn't grown in the last decade.
The total amount of power generated from coal in China also hasn't grown in more than 10 years. And the coal they do have has become cleaner, so the carbon emissions just due to that have gone down slightly.
'But China's growth is cancelling out all our potential cuts' was a technically true, but still venal and dangerously misguided excuse 15 years (and 0.25C) ago when it was first invented. Now it isn't even technically true.
He doesn't need one. He's a retired billionaire, whose retirement hobby is social engineering. Brown outs aren't his concern, as I'm sure his home will have adequate back-up power.