Japan is building new plants. You'll see that news a bunch. What you do not see is the why.
Japan has companies which are building new coal plants in order to replace existing plants. Old coal plants have lower efficiency. Old coal plants produce more pollution.
A none trivial reason why so many old coal plants are unprofitable is because other newer fossil fuel plants can out compete them.
Sure renewables play a part, but the single biggest reason those old plants cannot make money at current energy prices is simple competition. New plants are buying the same coal but getting more electricity per ton while using larger and more automated plants. Meaning more revenue per ton with lower overhead.
Coal as a whole will decrease, but along the way new plants need to be built. Yet the media treats all coal plants as a single monolith. "How could a country be building new plants when existing old plants are unprofitable". The media would do well to educate and inform instead.
Old coal plants will presumably be able to operate on the marginal cost of the coal plus maintenance, where as new plants have a big initial capital spending they need to fund.
Now, it is clear that some plants are so old that they're going beyond their planned lifetime and need investments. But that does not seem to be what you are hinting at?
I'm not sure if this completely answers your question, but the Illinois EnergyProf channel on YouTube and some interesting content on modern coal power generation:
The other "why", is that Japan decommissioned a huge percentage of their nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster.
Renewable (or at least less dirty) solutions would have filled that gap and prevented the need for even replacement coal plants, if that baseline capacity continued to exist, or grown.
A lot of coal plants in developed countries are closing. The least efficient ones are most likely to close. That should tend to make the % unprofitable fall, but it's rising instead.
I met someone some years back who's job was to keep a coal power plant operational. The boiler was from the 1880s, and the generator installed in the 1920s. They don't use the generator as regular mains power costs 5 times less due to the efficiency of modern technology. However the utility gives them a large enough discount on power to keep it running that he had a job and can repair it as needed. Once every 5 years or so the utility calls him to turn it on and 12 hours later it is providing power to half the town.
I believe anicdotes like that are somewhat common as the utilities want to be sure there is always power when someone wants it.
Most peaker plants are natural gas these days. Coal plants tend to take a lot longer to start. Regardless of that, from a climate change point of view, a plant that runs for a small amount of time once per 5 years is not that significant.
In Memphis, TN, the Tennessee Valley Authority (the power producer for the region) has built several advanced combined cycle natural gas plants, these are not peakers, to replace a very large coal plant.
Electricity production (in the building power plants sense) isn't very elastic. Profitability wouldn't be the only, or likely the primary consideration for what to close and when.
The market for electricity isn't very "efficient" in that way, a utility or market doesn't buy and sell from an individual power plant so the price/profitability of a single plant doesn't reflect the supply/demand from that plant.
Yeah, you’d think if 41% were unprofitable this year then next year there’d only be 4000 odd coal-fired plants, and so on and so forth.
So obviously profitability isn’t the only thing keeping these plants open or not.
Additionally:
but this risks locking in high-cost coal power
Coal is only high-cost when compared against certain metrics that favour non-coal electricity sources.
On the whole electricity is extremely cheap, even from fossil sources, and where the end user may pay enough to care about total usage, the major components of the retail price are not source related, but rather delivery / tax / administrative / bureaucratic.
However, why would I do that when everyone else isn’t.
And how would I do that when there’s no economic framework for me, as an individual retail customer, to do so?
Sure, I can buy 100% renewables, but here in Australia the retailers want to charge me more for that choice. Here in Tasmania the local retailer, Aurora Energy, wants an additional 6.023 cents / kWh for 100% renewable, that’s that’s on top of their peak rate of 32.587 cents / kWh. An additional 18.5%!
Why would I do that if I’m already living near my economic ability?
Edit to add:
And, even if I did choose to pay that premium, it’ll have approximately no effect whatsoever on global climate outcomes. Me paying an additional 18.5% on my bill to feel good won’t suck the carbon out of the air!
This is why we neee regulation in this scenario more than we need individual choice.
I was asking about the underlying assumptions, not the retail market. Those are two different things. You appear to be only referring only to the latter. Surely we should be able to talk about the first before considering the second?
If this comes true which is a BIG if since the calculations include "carbon pricing and pollution policies" which are not happening anytime soon in China.
It will be almost completely due to the cheap price of natural gas not renewables as the article implies.
Solar's gone down in price 80% in a decade, and is still continuing that downward trend.
Wind, both on and offshore, is also getting cheaper.
By 2030, new solar will certainly be cheaper in China than it is to operate existing coal plants.
I'm a lot more comfortable betting that mass-manufactured things get cheaper, than I am on the price of natural gas a few years or a decade out. With solar and wind going down another 50% and battery prices under $100/kWh, the economics are pretty powerful.
The politics are just as powerful; China has massive internal pressure to clean up the air (and people have been reminded of how clean it could be), and a chance at replacing the US for world leadership if it can show the way forward on climate.
Unlike the USA, China does not have huge resources of natural gas. For the most part, natural gas will not replace coal in China.
China does have a lot of renewables[1] - enormous solar and wind farms in the interior and west, and the potential for far more. These can produce energy much cheaper than coal plants can. But the challenge is getting that energy to the more populous provinces in the south and east where it’s needed. Transmission infrastructure is expensive, even in China.
[1] Renewables supplied 27% of China’s electricity in 2017, compared to only 4% for natural gas.
> Unlike the USA, China does not have a lot of natural gas.
China doesn't need a lot of natural gas within its borders. It's neighbors with Russia, which can supply via pipeline all the natural gas that China can take. The issue is it remains cheaper to do coal domestically in China than to buy natural gas from Russia, so they overwhelmingly prefer to do that still. It's also of course expedient for China to use coal, whereas pipelines and energy deals can take a decade.
Their 2014 deal was a $400 billion arrangement involving an 8,000 km pipeline. China has greater access to natural gas thanks to bordering Russia, than nearly all of the world's largest natural gas producers have access to natural gas in their own backyards.
Perhaps, but it’s hard to see China ever wanting to become too dependent on imported natural gas. They like coal not only because it’s cheap (which, increasingly, it isn’t), but because it’s domestic.
Russia has shown to be willing to use natural gas as a geopolitical weapon. There is no chance China will become dependant on natural gas from outside their border.
I'm thinking that China could flip the script by getting Russia to become dependent on Chinese money buying their gas. Use just enough of it to establish the relationship, but not so much that a pipeline shutdown will overly harm the Chinese economy.
The population ratio (~10:1) and GDP ratio (~4:1) makes it possible to create this scenario.
Not only that, but Russia-Chinese relations have not always been smooth. They have had dustups over one of the longest land borders in the world before.
With this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Sino-Soviet_Border_Agreem...
I think border disagreement already solved. Besides, I believe they realize the contention between them only strengthens NATO over them.
I think the possible conflict nowadays is influence over central Asia. However, they might share the influence with China got the economic influence and Russia got political influence.
It is interesting to predict this balance post-Putin though.
From what I understand there is an ongoing battle in the Chinese government between those who understand the country desperately needs to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible, and those who want to stay on coal forever. So at the same time that China has been building an enormous number of coal plants, it is also building renewable power plants and pushing hard on ev's.
>there is an ongoing battle ... between those who understand the country desperately needs to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible, and those who want to stay on coal forever.
I don't think I've seen one where China has ever reduced a target related to economic expansion. I'm kind of surprised they even need that much more power at this point, since the country is fairly developed, where growth tapers off and energy efficiency starts rising.
While the developed part of China is gigantic, my understanding is that half the country still lives in the countryside and is relatively underdeveloped, and the government is working to rapidly move them to cities.
Where I live in the US, pretty much none of the oil companies are fracking to get gas, they are fracking to get oil. The gas is effectively a waste product - and honestly if we don't burn it for heat, they will flare it - so at least by using it in our homes and power plants it has some value and also replaces coal.
And fracking lives solely on government subsidies and will receive even more subsidies after this crisis. Without subsidies, fracking's gone and coal's back up. I fail to see how your comment responds to OP's suggestion of divesting subsidies to support renewables instead.
0/10 "green energy" shill. Fracking gave us dirt cheap natgas, which is damn cleaner than coal AND why your electricity prices havent gone up in the last decade. Educate yourself.
> Fracking-related earthquakes are either minimal or bebeficial
That's the most insane claim I've read on the Internet this week. You should be ashamed for saying that.
Beneficial earthquakes. Now I think I've heard everything.
I know it's against Hacker News rules to assume bad intent in posts, but I cannot believe that you're saying these things in good faith. It's just not possible.
It's possible. I have no clue if fracking does so, and the link doesn't support this, but hear me out:
If you can choose between, say, five Richter 3 earthquakes, or one Richter 7, you definitely want the five small ones.
IF fracking induced small earthquakes and IF those small earthquakes relieved pressure such that a big one didn't happen, then those small earthquakes would be beneficial.
This is comparable to deliberately lighting small brushfires to use up fuel and prevent destructive wildfires.
It would be a remarkable coincidence if fracking only caused such beneficent and salubrious earthquakes, and never triggered worse ones. But were it so, it would be good.
The Richter scale is log(10), so a 7 quake is 10,000 times stronger than a 3. A lot of Bay Area residents had thought the same you mentioned over the years (it's not a crazy idea! I mean, it seems at least plausible on paper!) but that's generally accepted as untrue now; see https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-p... for example.
I hear these “Beneficial Earthquakes” are all the rage in the wellness community. Could be better than Probiotic Plutonium, Fun Flooding, and maybe even Happy Cardiac Arrest
CRED (Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development)
Our Membership
Our members are leaders in the Colorado oil and natural gas community: Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Noble Energy, Bayswater Exploration and Production, DCP Midstream, Liberty Oilfield Services, PDC Energy
Not exactly a trustworthy source you've got there.
Burning coal is generally known for being really bad for air quality. The ash is somewhat radioactive, and if there's any sulphur in the coal it'll cause acid rain. The exhaust from burning the coal nowadays ends up going through treatment to clean it up (remove sulphur and particulates), which is an added expense. In comparison, natural gas tends to be rather pure, so when burned it produces just carbon dioxide and water.
Yes, greenhouse gasses and lung effects aside, the sulphur mixes with carbon dioxide and other airborne oxides to becomes sulpher dioxide. This makes rain water acidic and causes the erosion on the Statue of Liberty.
Coal is probably the worst possible way to generate power at scale. People complain about nuclear power being dangerous but the air pollution from a coal power station kills people every single day.
Energy markets are highly subsidized, in China too.
To have this discussion, one needs to include information about the entire energy market. If you heavily subsidize low-no carbon footprint sources, you devalue the others.
Additionally you need to separate base load sources from load following sources. Load following coal plants might be more prevalent by number (ie 95%) and in direct competition with natural gas. The smaller the total energy output the more competition you have from solar and wind, which are highly subsidized and reduce margins.
Reuter’s would do better to give this proper context.
Can anyone comment on the state of grid scale battery storage? Surely it's the holy grail to eliminate coal. As we approach 100usd per kWh it must be becoming a viable alternative.
But at such low prices unfortunately OIL and natural gas will be burning even more in Chinese factories and other uncaring nations who place profits over health everyday.
Coal is one of the cheapest energy sources we have (before taking climate damage into account). Is the energy sector in general not very profitable lately?
Why should energy costs fall below their current levels? There are billions of people who only consume a fraction of the energy that citizens of industrialized countries consume. If anything, energy prices will rise and coal will remain profitable. Energy will be needed to build all those roads and cars. And then there is the scarcity of sand. How can sand for concrete be artificially created but with more energy?
You might as well ask why should computer prices fall. Energy costs fall because of advances in technology. Wind and PV have now brought the very rapid cost reductions of the tech sector to the energy sector. PV costs fell by nearly an order of magnitude in the last decade.
Computer prices are only falling when you compare processors with the same speed and monitors with the same resolution. Overall, prices might as well increase if you look at the prices of the last flagship phones or at least remain stable if you look at main memory.
It comes down to the [1] Jevons paradox.
>In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal-use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological progress could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.
PV and Wind fell because they were above the market costs of energy. Once they are below, they will stop falling further. Prices will only go further down if energy supply outpaces demand. Why should that ever happen? Have you seen people stop buying SUVs? Once energy gets cheaper, SUVs will become even bigger.
Being well-off essentially means being able to waste energy. To signal status, people will burn all available non-essential energy, however much there is to burn.
> PV and Wind fell because they were above the market costs of energy. Once they are below, they will stop falling further
As PV and wind fall in cost, they will end up dictating the market price. So, you are technically correct, but otherwise wrong: the current market price is no floor for the cost of PV and wind, any more than (at any point) the cost per unit of computation or storage was the floor on the cost of computers.
I expect PV to drive the levelized cost of power below $0.01/kWh, possibly much below (recent utility scale bids in some places have the power not far above this, and extrapolating the experience curve for PV has costs falling another factor of 4 or so by the time PV becomes a globally dominant energy source.) At these costs, resistive heat from PV is cheaper than any fossil fuel heat source, per unit of thermal energy. And thermal energy is very cheap to store, compared to batteries.
>the cost per unit of computation or storage was the floor on the cost of computers.
What do you mean? That the energy bill for computers is bigger than the material bill?
What else but the price of the hardware has determined the price of computers?
>I expect PV to drive the levelized cost of power below $0.01/kWh
For some time, this is possible. But if there is a sea of energy, people will find a way to use it. Then, demand rises and prices will rise again.
Sooner or later, material science, genetics and everything else will simulate everything. Progress will depend on the amount of energy that is spent on those calculations. The cloud will take any energy that it can get. Bitcoin was just the start.
Humans take roughly 2kWh worth of food per day. We are willing to pay about $20 for it. It might as well be that energy prices rise to $10/kWh. Not because PV itself is expensive, but because somebody owns the land where the PV modules are standing.
That's still so much better than tech companies, even tech companies 6 months ago /s
Never forget how absolutely huge coal is. Those Joules are not going to be replaced with renewables any time soon. It's literally impossible because renewables need Joules themselves to be built, not just money. Money does not synthesize power generating objects; materials and energy and machinery and the approval to do so (capital) all together do:
When did you last look at the current state of renewables? Even two years ago, the picture was completely different, but renewables are absolutely catching up. The change is fast and accelerating.
17% of energy production in the US is now renewables.
26% in China.
46% in Germany.
The economic case for deploying renewables continues to improve, and will soon hit a tipping point where operation of legacy generation systems will be more expensive than deploying and operating newer ones. Even in the US, who will want to be in the coal business then? The companies all know this, and are all pivoting from being coal|gas|x-companies to being energy-companies.
Renewable GW capacity in the US has grown at a 7.8% per year compound annual growth rate. [0]
That is more than a linear increase in renewable capacity, indicating that renewable capacity will be increasing faster and faster in absolute GW terms.
If this does happen it would represent a win for everyone, but a substantial intellectual victory for the people who delayed action against climate change in the '00s and '10s. If we're all going to switch to renewables in the '20s for economic reasons then it would have been madness to force their adoption 10 years earlier to deal with a threat that materialises in 2050+.
The switch can't just happen in an eye blink. The push through the 00's and 10's for renewables are the precise reason we have enough renewable infrastructure that the balance can begin tipping. Saying the actions weren't justified is basically saying "See? We got the effect! We didn't need the cause at all!"
It's also possible that an even bigger push to get to this tipping point earlier would have saved even more money that will be spent mitigating the extra years of ecological harm, but counterfactuals like that are admittedly hard to prove and we're not at a point in history where that judgment could be assessed.
You have this completely and utterly backwards. Please understand these issues better before spreading this kind of misinformation. Delaying carbon mitigation has only meant that necessary measures are much more severe than they would have been. Not only that, but we are way past the point of being able to prevent many horrible effects of climate change. Fast action now will only stave of even worse things.
If you haven't noticed, climate change is already here, and it hurts.
a) The economic snowball we're finally starting to see for renewables is largely driven by governments finally being forced by the undeniable reality to take real regulation steps.
b) The economic cost of waiting 10 years to address an exponential process is going to far outweigh the cost there would've been to give an extra "oomph" to action, I'm sure.
Well you very quickly run out of mass, space, hosts etc so on a long enough timescale...
Like an exponential process that starts at 1 atom with a 1 year doubling time would affect all the matter in the universe in less than a century (lets pretend it happens spookily at whatever distance).
On a long enough timescale they may burn themselves out, but on a long enough time scale everything comes to an end. Things happen, and then they stop happening. Exponential growth occurs, and then it stops occurring. Its eventual end does not disprove its prior existence.
Sure, we can agree it's exponential until it's not.
And then we can start to think about whether it's going to be a logistic curve or oscillate and what factors might amplify or damp and our model is much more interesting.
Like, the original statement is about systems that people study and model, and how the exponential condition can really only exist for brief periods relative to the lifetime of almost all systems of interest.
> largely driven by governments ... tak[ing] real regulation steps
Which ones? I'm only aware of serious efforts in Germany and they basically torpedoed their own electricity use (their per-capita trends aren't good). There aren't that many governments who could stomach doing that to their people.
I think a lot of it has been driven indirectly by vehicle regulation. The past few years have seen several major countries establish end-dates for gasoline powered vehicles. This has spurred development of battery technology - very important for wind and solar - and also sent a market signal about the future role that fossil fuels play in global society. Even if a country hasn't explicitly banned fossil fuels yet for electricity generation, the writing is on the wall and it's only a matter of time. Investors and corporations are seeing that renewables are an inevitable future, and adjusting their strategies accordingly.
Governmental regulations are not merely proscriptive, i.e., "You shall not pollute above these levels or we will fine you/shut you down". They are also prescriptive: "If you build renewable infrastructure we shall provide direct subsidies/indirect tax breaks to support it."
What the heck are you talking about? We see the issues globally for last 20 years at least. Droughts, heatwaves in Europe killing tens of thousands, Islands in pacific being flooded due to sea rising and so on and on.
The models did not predict those things, and sea level has only risen 3.3mm since 1995 according to NOAA data. While the examples listed are certainly tragedies, we must be careful about attributing them post-hoc, as it weakens credibility for longer-term political optics.
I think you misread the data. NOAA says sea level is rising 3.3mm each year. 3.3mm is almost exactly an eighth of an inch. [1]
“In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inches above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch per year.”
> then it would have been madness to force their adoption 10 years earlier to deal with a threat that materialises in 2050+.
Unless the economic cost of switching in the 2000s would have been substantially lower than the extra damage of 20 years of pollution will inflict in the 2050s.
In the past 20 years, we've added 50 PPM of CO2 to the atmosphere. That's one third of all CO2 emissions that humanity has produced in its history.
Japan has companies which are building new coal plants in order to replace existing plants. Old coal plants have lower efficiency. Old coal plants produce more pollution.
A none trivial reason why so many old coal plants are unprofitable is because other newer fossil fuel plants can out compete them.
Sure renewables play a part, but the single biggest reason those old plants cannot make money at current energy prices is simple competition. New plants are buying the same coal but getting more electricity per ton while using larger and more automated plants. Meaning more revenue per ton with lower overhead.
Coal as a whole will decrease, but along the way new plants need to be built. Yet the media treats all coal plants as a single monolith. "How could a country be building new plants when existing old plants are unprofitable". The media would do well to educate and inform instead.