Replacing coal power plants across the United States with renewable energy projects would reduce carbon emissions and require less water.

Add to the list: It would also save money.

Nearly all existing U.S. coal plants require more cash to operate than the cost of replacing them with new wind or solar projects, according to a report published Monday by San Francisco-based climate think tank Energy Innovation.

The finding is in line with past research by BloombergNEF that determined building new solar and wind farms is cheaper than operating existing coal or gas power plants in much of the world.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/r ... ning-them/

The oil, gas and coal would see their profits drop a great amount. In the short term, coal would take the biggest hit since it isn't used like oil and gas for transportation and other uses like home heating and cooking.

Can we listen to the screams of oil, gas and coal over this report. I would love to hear what Sen. Manchin has to say about this.

We need to shift to renewables like solar and wind. Once the renewable are built except for maintenance there is almost zero cost because wind and solar are free, unlike oil, gas and coal.

Joe makes a good whipping boy.

https://usea.org/sites/default/files/05 ... ccc236.pdf

Sunshine and wind may come at no charge, but getting them to charge your Tesla has a price.

Coal, gas, oil were the the first non-human/critter exploitable power source available to us mere mortals that could work on demand. They transformed our economy and way of life from walking behind a draft animal stepping in it's shit, to that nice cozy, heated/cooled, plumbed, waste magically removed, pantry well stocked, secure world we enjoy and travel about at will in with greater mobility than a Roman Emperor, today.

Fusion is pie in the sky. Did you know that the output energy from the Sun is roughly the same as from a compost pile, per cubic meter/yard etc. It's just one hell of a lot bigger pile. Don't crush the little guys. Split the big atoms, I say.

I know what Sen. Joe would say about that.

https://wvpublic.org/joe-manchin-bill-g ... o-nuclear/

You'd think that the electric companies would LOVE buying solar electric from homeowners at a giant discount that they resell at a huge profit, to what they have to pay when they need to buy from outside, or what it costs to produce, but NO!!!! THEIR business models are all about expanding their markets and building new diesel-fired power plants. That's why the FLORIDA power company bitterly resisted solar panels on residents, wanting the state to make it MORE costly to have solar panels than not--in THE SUNSHINE STATE!

It's that Fuck You! What's better won't make me as much money so I'm gonna kill it!

I've always been for renewable power and remain so. The windmills on the hills of Southern California, the solar power plant as you go by Barstow, all that stuff, I remember all that. Those were Carter-era projects and, I believe, necessary future-looking projects.

Therefore, it might surprise you all that, actually, more coal-fired power plants would actually be a good thing for this planet over at least the next 50 or more years! Yeah, I know, sounds crazy, don't it?! :-)

Here's why.

Electric vehicles are here now, and they're pretty darn popular. Teslas, Rivians, and others from other car companies--especially Teslas, since they've been around the longest--are all over the place in not just California, but Virginia as well. California government officials are already on record as admitting that the state's electrical grid cannot handle all the electric cars. There' just ain't enough juice, unfortunately. I'd imagine the same is true in other heavily-populated areas.

One of my research projects for my Chemistry major was acid rain and air pollution. It was an expansion on something I'd started in high school. Internal combustion engines have gotten more efficient over the years, no question. They also pale in comparison to large-scale power generation done by, say, the huge gas turbines found in power plants. There's just no comparison. Modern power-plant gas turbines actually approach the ideal Carnot cycle. That's really good, folks.

Another thing I learned about is the Fischer-Tropes process for coal gasification. This process naturally eliminates a lot of the pollutants in coal, especially sulfur, while turning it into essentially 100% sulfur-free Diesel fuel. Bye-bye, sulfuric acid rain. Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) advoated for this during his governorship, and it turns out he's right. I would expect that of someone with his level of science education. This is the basis for "clean coal" power production. There's a bit more to it than just the Fischer-Tropes process, of course--F-T is just one part, though a major one--and the clean coal procedures would generate lots and lots of power, with minimal emissions. Yes, it does work.

Now, remember that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. By setting up several of these clean-coal power plants, we could power yet more electric vehicles to replace the gasoline cars on the road today. Due to the huge gains in power generation efficiency, and reduced emissions, of the power plants over car engines, we'd have an enormous reduction in emissions, far lower usage of fossil fuels, and most importantly, the actual ability to power all these electric vehicles that we want to see on the roads. It's a net win all around.

"Oh, but there'll still be greenhouse gases!" Yeah, there will be. Remember about what California officials admitted about "green" power not being able to power the grid? Remember that? There's the problem. We've got to overcome that problem. People still need to get to work and back and do other things that we do in life. That means cars, folks. People are not going to give up their gasoline cars unless they can actually power these new electrics.

And then there are the Diesel semi-tractor-trailers. Yep, the Big Rigs. Virtually all of them are Diesel powered. Those truckers aren't swapping out their Diesels for electrics if they cannot quickly charge their trucks. You won't have food in your grocery store. You won't have clothes at Jacques Pennyey or Tar-Zhey or Wally World or wherever else you shop.

That's why we need clean coal power plants at this point. California wants their Teslas? They gotta have power. Ain't gonna happen with solar, wind, etc. Not with today's technology, and I don't realistically see power generation of that type being able to put out that much more power than it already does, certainly not by 2035 (California's new "no more petro-powered vehicles sold in our state" law). It just ain't gonna happen.

Therefore, clean coal will bridge that gap while we're continuing to do work on how to generate that power in a yet-greener fashion. And we do need to do that research. We also need to keep things running until then.

Or do you really want more nuclear fission power plants? 'Cause that's the alternative. Personally, I'd rather have a little extra CO(2), which plants (including algae) can eat, than Strontium-90.

I think we should buy those other power plants, redo them for renewables, and not use coal any more. There is no clean coal, and we should not invest one more cent in making new coal plants. The US is gearing up to make chips, the ones that will control the new renewable plants, and that's they way we should go. Unless we're going to farm algae on a yuuuuge scale then bury it, we can't offset the carbon from coal with algae. We do, however, need to reforest kelp beds, sea grasses, and mangrove estuaries as ways to offset the existing CO2 we already have. We should not make more CO2.

CDFingers

Of course there's clean coal. The science is there and has been for decades.

Burning coal may be a bit cleaner, but mining it is not any cleaner and still polluting. One of the worse is the company run by Sen. Manchin family.

CowboyT wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:58 pm Of course there's clean coal. The science is there and has been for decades.

Here is the latest news, and not one, single article from the government says that clean coal exists. Fact is, burning coal gives off CO2.

https://www.energy.gov/fecm/listings/clean-coal-news

Energy companies can continue to make money if they keep saying the term "clean coal." Fact is, it does not exist. The closest they have come is Carbon Capture and Storage. Here is from a few months ago:

CCS could offer a viable alternative to modern coal plants because even as global fossil fuel demands drop steadily every day, there’s still a lot of work to do. The IEA “has found that the world needs to capture and store almost 5,600 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of CO2 in 2050 to meet a scenario where the Earth’s temperature rises only 2 degrees Celsius, according to a 2022 Global Status of CCS report. “Current carbon capture capacity for projects in operation or under construction sits at approximately 40 MTPA,” a paltry figure in comparison.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” the report says. “It means that there is a lot of ground to make up.”

https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... coal-work/

A "paltry figure." Don't buy the hype. Do research, and you'll discover the truth, that we should make things from carbon, but we should not burn it.

CDFingers

Clean Coal was long ago proven to be FAKE!

Wind and sunshine are byproducts of fusion. So is coal, oil, methane, us. We already consume too much land area. How much more will we take for all these solar farms? Sorry forest, you're just not “green” enough. Wheat... take a back seat.

You just can't get around the fact that when sun don't shine (50% of the time!) and the wind ain't whistling, you got nothing. We have no good battery. The money should be to put SMR's in all the right places. When solar and battery tech are good enough, we won't need wires hooking homes to 'the grid'. Think of it, no NEV! Cows will love that.


Strontium-90 has it's uses.

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emer ... ontium.htm

It's really best to have multiple sources and multiple options and to be decentralized yet hooked to a grid. Pricey, but the best way. I want my grandson to have air conditioning when ever he needs it, which will be ten months of the year all day and night. More's the pity, but that's his future. He's ten months old.

CDFingers

The sun's always shining somewhere, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the tides are always going in or coming out.
But there is a GREAT reserve we CAN build if we just use the excess electricity that would wasted be from these to crack water in H2 and 02 and that H2 can power fuel cells at anytime....with ZERO pollution. This solution has been staring us in the face for 40 or 50 years but the fossil fuel companies, the power companies, Republicans, and, now, Elon Musk, all, ALL oppose it and have kept it from happening. It has always been the solution.

Yes: hydrogen should be part of the overall solution. Finding "excess" electricity is a tough one, but it's possible. The better move would be to use solar cells down south to crack apart water, then use that H2 where it's most useful. Part of the "Compleat Energy Breakfast."

CDFingers

Limited resources. Materials, brainpower, time, will. Not everyone will be on the same page, perhaps not even the same book. Since all hands are on deck, there must be agreement as to where to steer the ship. We don't live on that ship. A significant portion of those hands believe a usurper sits upon the throne and won't take orders from a false king.

It may not matter much which so called clean/renewable/green/is-it-do-able? path is taken as long as one IS taken. I suspect we will.

No free lunch. Hydrogen is no bargain. It seems not to have collected itself into nice neat concentrated areas like coal, oil, gas. When a combine-harvester like contraption is perfected for the gas and a global package/transport/distribution system is in place, and then convert IC engines to run on it, then maybe.

Electric beats the hell out of IC when it come to motors. Hydrogen can't get enough zoom packed into a combustion chamber to come near oil, so either bigger motor or less zoom. IC makes no power unless spinning, and there is a sweet spot that needs to be maintained by selectable gear transmissions and those at present are geared wrong for H. Electric motors can make 100% of their rated torque from zero to top rpm. One moving part, no exhaust/noise, no antifreeze, hoses, belts, spark plugs. Recharges the battery when you slow down/go down hill...

Solar, wind... good but not great. They may be present at all times somewhere. I don't know enough about other places around the globe, but around here, it gets dark at night and kite flying isn't a 24/7 event. And it gets cold here on windless nights as well. There is also the little matter of voltage drop. It's why transmission lines operate in the 100's of KV's range.

Maybe there's a spaceship behind the Green Comet and we'll all be rescued. Better go out and stock up on Kool-Aid.

All Hail Bopp!

Many groups promote one answer, solar, wind, wave...we still have a storage problem. The sun sets, winds don't always blow where solar farms are located and there are still technical issues with wave energy. Anti-nuclear activists pushed to close down reactors decades ago without viable alternatives. All of our technological toys require electricity, electricity usage isn't going down it's increasing. Activists are now focused on cutting off natural gas usage, like the idiots who stopped nuclear power. EVs are terrific but again they require oil, coal or natural gas to produce electricity. Hydroelectric energy doesn't provide most of our electricity, it's natural gas, nuclear and coal that does.

papajim2jordan wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:40 am Limited resources. Materials, brainpower, time, will. Not everyone will be on the same page, perhaps not even the same book. Since all hands are on deck, there must be agreement as to where to steer the ship. We don't live on that ship. A significant portion of those hands believe a usurper sits upon the throne and won't take orders from a false king.

It may not matter much which so called clean/renewable/green/is-it-do-able? path is taken as long as one IS taken. I suspect we will.

No free lunch. Hydrogen is no bargain. It seems not to have collected itself into nice neat concentrated areas like coal, oil, gas. When a combine-harvester like contraption is perfected for the gas and a global package/transport/distribution system is in place, and then convert IC engines to run on it, then maybe.

Electric beats the hell out of IC when it come to motors. Hydrogen can't get enough zoom packed into a combustion chamber to come near oil, so either bigger motor or less zoom. IC makes no power unless spinning, and there is a sweet spot that needs to be maintained by selectable gear transmissions and those at present are geared wrong for H. Electric motors can make 100% of their rated torque from zero to top rpm. One moving part, no exhaust/noise, no antifreeze, hoses, belts, spark plugs. Recharges the battery when you slow down/go down hill...

Solar, wind... good but not great. They may be present at all times somewhere. I don't know enough about other places around the globe, but around here, it gets dark at night and kite flying isn't a 24/7 event. And it gets cold here on windless nights as well. There is also the little matter of voltage drop. It's why transmission lines operate in the 100's of KV's range.

Maybe there's a spaceship behind the Green Comet and we'll all be rescued. Better go out and stock up on Kool-Aid.

All Hail Bopp!

Hydrogen as a combustible isn't on anyone's radar anymore. It's value is in fuel cells--you get ALL the benefits of EVs, but the fuel cell is basically a self-recharging battery--feed in H2 and O2 an out comes electricity.

You don't want to extract H2 from fossil fuels (self-defeating). But there's lots of excess electric. Texas has giant wind farms running at half-cap, because Texas limited how it could export electricity, not enough infrastructure. That can be used to crack H20.

Seems that some people don't like solar or wind. Think of this if we covered just the WalMart parking lots with elevated solar panels that could power the stores and much of the surrounded area while also providing shade for the shoppers cars. Using storage cell batteries on site they could also provide power for when the sun doesn't shine. Same thing for areas like the Community Colleges, in my area, they have large parking lots being a commuter college. They could generate much of the electrical needs for the campus. Using the parking lots for elevated solar electric farms, they could provide charging stations for the EVs. Brings a new meaning to Shop and Charge.

Other things that could be done. Pass regulations that require the oil companies to stop flaring Methane gas, at the oil well sites and elsewhere. Make them have to capture and pipe out the methane to be used. Also fine them for pipeline leaks of methane. Make to fines cost more than fixing the leak and prohibit passing the fine cost on to the consumer.

Make it cheaper with tax incentives to own and operate an EV or a hybrid that is primarily EV than an ICE vehicle.

YT Texas needs to join the national power grid. But, it won't happen because we have to many idiots running the government that think we're an independent state and can do what we damn well want to do and to hell with everybody else. Prime example Teddy Cruz. He's telling people on Texas "Now you stay warm" when we have 4 inches of ice outside and thousand of people are without power due to various delivery issue. Down power lines due to ice, etc.

TT, I surely know that Texas has been run by idiots since GWB displaced Ann Richards as Governor back in the 90's. Not just idiots, but DESTRUCTIVE idiots, of which Abbott is the leading one. That's why they do super-dumb shit like cut off the wind farms from the national infrastructure.
Only place I've been in Texas is the Houston airport, a couple of times.

YT is correct. We have plenty of excess electricity right now from renewables… we just don’t hear about it because it is bad press. The problem is no longer about production of electricity but the capture of it for use during the supposed “night-time, no wind” scenario. (There is a irrational fear of hunger that is worth mentioning here).
Many large solar arrays built in the Mojave desert is also running at half-capacity (many solar collectors turned to face down) because our electrical grid is incapable of handling the excess power. And we continue to have gas/coal fired generating plants in the loop because once you turn them off they don’t come back online (easily). So the challenge now is not about production so much as it is about storage and delivery. Using the “excess” power to crack Hydrogen is one form of storage. Battery farms are another form of storage. Some have mentioned molten salt as a viable technology as well though the same challenges as thoreum molten salt reactors exist in the transport and storage of the corrosive element within metal pipes.

But all of these technologies are already within human hands. I agree with others that point out the short-sighted powers who benefit from the status quo are the ones that are currently stifling innovations of desruptive technologies to the detriment of future generations and the environment.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 11:16 am

papajim2jordan wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:40 am Limited resources. Materials, brainpower, time, will. Not everyone will be on the same page, perhaps not even the same book. Since all hands are on deck, there must be agreement as to where to steer the ship. We don't live on that ship. A significant portion of those hands believe a usurper sits upon the throne and won't take orders from a false king.

It may not matter much which so called clean/renewable/green/is-it-do-able? path is taken as long as one IS taken. I suspect we will.

No free lunch. Hydrogen is no bargain. It seems not to have collected itself into nice neat concentrated areas like coal, oil, gas. When a combine-harvester like contraption is perfected for the gas and a global package/transport/distribution system is in place, and then convert IC engines to run on it, then maybe.

Electric beats the hell out of IC when it come to motors. Hydrogen can't get enough zoom packed into a combustion chamber to come near oil, so either bigger motor or less zoom. IC makes no power unless spinning, and there is a sweet spot that needs to be maintained by selectable gear transmissions and those at present are geared wrong for H. Electric motors can make 100% of their rated torque from zero to top rpm. One moving part, no exhaust/noise, no antifreeze, hoses, belts, spark plugs. Recharges the battery when you slow down/go down hill...

Solar, wind... good but not great. They may be present at all times somewhere. I don't know enough about other places around the globe, but around here, it gets dark at night and kite flying isn't a 24/7 event. And it gets cold here on windless nights as well. There is also the little matter of voltage drop. It's why transmission lines operate in the 100's of KV's range.

Maybe there's a spaceship behind the Green Comet and we'll all be rescued. Better go out and stock up on Kool-Aid.

All Hail Bopp!

Hydrogen as a combustible isn't on anyone's radar anymore. It's value is in fuel cells--you get ALL the benefits of EVs, but the fuel cell is basically a self-recharging battery--feed in H2 and O2 an out comes electricity.

You don't want to extract H2 from fossil fuels (self-defeating). But there's lots of excess electric. Texas has giant wind farms running at half-cap, because Texas limited how it could export electricity, not enough infrastructure. That can be used to crack H20.

I wasn't aware that combustion had been written off.

https://www.cummins.com/news/2022/01/27 ... fuel-cells

Where we get the stuff stars are made of is important.

https://climable.org/fuel-cells?gclid=C ... X8EALw_wcB

There's a company who is designing a small modular reactor that is intended as a retrofit for a coal fired power plant. The water side of the plant, plumbing, turbines, condensors, and cooling are mostly the same, so this SMR would just replace the coal fired part, and keep the rest of the plant. Slick idea...but it sounds very difficult to me.

Wind turbines are getting quite efficient. If we can get them higher up in the air, they will get even more efficient.

Don't get me wrong, I likes me some hydrogen. Using the law firm of Electron & Electron to handle the divorce of Hydrogen from it's abusive spouse Oxygen is a good choice. It's just that wind and solar's pockets aren't deep enough to pay the legal fees. Those bills are easily handled by the fat cats, Uranium and Thorium. Atoms so rich they almost burst at the seams.

Windmills are butt ugly and noisy. Whose gonna clean the dust and birdshit off all those solar panels?

Tax the rich!

German fuel cell auto manufacturer, Hindenwagon, goes bankrupt in marketing disaster.

We can do hard things.

Apropos of this discussion about hydrogen, we find this today:

“We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 per cent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyser,” said Professor Qiao.

A typical non-precious catalyst is cobalt oxide with chromium oxide on its surface.

“We used seawater as a feedstock without the need for any pre-treatment processes like reverse osmosis desolation, purification, or alkalisation,” said Associate Professor Zheng.

“The performance of a commercial electrolyser with our catalysts running in seawater is close to the performance of platinum/iridium catalysts running in a feedstock of highly purified deionised water.

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/ne ... n-hydrogen

Well, scaled up commercial application is "just around the corner" it appears.

CDFingers

Stopped by Ma's today. She still uses the solar clothes dryer Dad bought her 50 years ago.
Thats whats left of her lawn that she used to mow twice a week. Sigh

<snipped for brevity>

CDFingers wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 6:18 pm A "paltry figure." Don't buy the hype. Do research, and you'll discover the truth, that we should make things from carbon, but we should not burn it.

CDFingers

I did. That's what I mentioned above. It was a while ago, and I of course don't have the paper anymore, but I did discover the truth about it.

As for the lack of posts on that energy.gov site, given the current Administration, that doesn't surprise me a bit. That's as much of a religion to the Democrats as their anti-2A advocacy, so I must take that site at this time with about a pound of salt.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 6:57 pm Clean Coal was long ago proven to be FAKE!

Perhaps by political activists, but to my knowledge, not by any scientists/engineeers who are actually behaving ethically. Looking it up and reading the processes, you find out that it is a thing and does exist. Brian Schweitzer was right.

Again, while we're working on the research for greener energy in quantity, which will take a while, it'll be a net gain in cleaner emissions. That's what we want, isn't it?