More Coal Plants Running Unprofitably Every Day
From the American Energy Society:The state of the global coal sector, by the numbers:
• Two-fifths (or 40%) of the world’s coal power stations are operating at a loss.
• The operating cost of 35% of all coal plants in the world are higher than current operating costs for either natural gas or renewable energy plants.
From Carbon Tracker: Death spiral goes global – 42% of global operating fleet unprofitable in 2018 and 72% by 2040 independent of additional climate or air pollution policy.
Watch how that “death spiral” tightens in once our civilization dares to put a price on carbon (and/or the other toxic effluents from coal plants).
Here’s a concept: let’s get a head of the curve and do what’s right for humankind and its descendants, and establish policies that accelerate the move to clean energy. Is that too much to ask?
Craig,
Why do you continue to preach simplistic, distorted and impractical ideology passed off as an plausible alternative solutions, while never daring to debate facts or acknowledge your errors ?
It’s true, most the world’s coal fleet is aging, outdated and inefficient. This is not due to a lack of new or advanced technology, but a combination of factors, not the least of which is political ideology.
Your gloating at the fierce competition from new, High Tech natural gas plants powered by newly discovered natural gas resources being sold at historically low prices, will be short-lived. The price of NG is by no means guaranteed to remain at historically low prices. In fact, the price is already rising as the demand for LPG increases rapidly.
(Incidentally, whatever happened to your fierce opposition to the imminent destruction of the planet caused by ‘fracking’ ? Has all that alarm been forgotten in just a couple of years ? What ever happened to all those “Gasland” stories?).
Coal is remains more than 40% of the world electricity generation. Why do you never talk about new High Tech coal fired power stations capable of producing better environmental results than solar or wind i8nstallations?
Why have you beoome so tunnel visioned, that you refuse to acknowledge any Clean Technology developments that don’t concur with your narrow agenda ?
I find this puzzling in a person and advocate who claims to live his life by scientific and rational principles.
The Carbon Tracker article, is a great example of distorted reasoning pretending to be expert analysis.
By making a series of assumptions, adding speculation as “fact” and then constructing a formulae using only selective “facts”, then including borrowed,(but impressive looking)out of date and out of contest diagrams and charts from other publications, help to make the Carbon tracker article look impressive at first glance.
Impressive until subjected to rational analysis. When subjected to any rational scrutiny, it becomes apparent the article is merely confused propaganda and of no value.
Hi Craig,
I have been remiss in not congratulating you on resisting posting your usually outraged rant against the President for over a week. Can is be your obsessions is weakening, or is it becoming obvious, even to die hard “Never Trumpers” there’s no chance of the President being removed from office, but every chance of being returned in 2020.
I read with great amusement the removal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey of details about her “Green New Deal” plan.
The plan, endorsed enthusiastically by Democratic Party presidential hopefuls such Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julián Castro, and Beto O’Rourke, now seems to have disappeared as the sensible politicians comprehend the madness of the “plan”.
As moderate democrats like Stacy Abrams attempt to counter the President’s surprisingly effective State of union speech, it doesn’t help to have the more rabid providing fuel for ol’ Bernie reminding everyone why the democrats shouldn’t allowed to drive, let alone pass legislation!
The “Green New Deal” we are assured by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey will be a “massive transformation of our society,with clear goals and a realistic timeline.”
The timeline is just ten years !
The material may have been taken down from democrat websites, but David Harsanyl’s excellent review is still available, as follows:
1) Ban affordable energy. GND calls for the elimination of all fossil fuel energy production, the lifeblood of American industry and life, which includes not only all oil but also natural gas, one of the cheapest sources of American energy, and one of the reasons the United States has been able to lead the world in carbon-emissions reduction.
2)Eliminate nuclear energy. The GND also calls for eliminating all nuclear power, one of the only productive and somewhat affordable “clean” energy sources available to us, in 11 years. This move would purge around 20 percent of American energy generation so you can rely on intermittent wind for your energy needs.
3) Eliminate 99 percent of cars. To be fair, under the GND, everyone will need to retrofit their cars with Flintstones-style foot holes or pedals for cycling. The authors state that the GND would like to replace every “combustion-engine vehicle” — trucks, airplanes, boats, and 99 percent of cars — within ten years. Charging stations for electric vehicles will be built “everywhere,” though how power plants will provide the energy needed to charge them is a mystery.
4) Gut and rebuild every building in America. Markey and Cortez want to “retrofit every building in America” with “state of the art energy efficiency.” I repeat, “every building in America.” That includes every home, factory, and apartment building, which will all need, for starters, to have their entire working heating and cooling systems ripped out and replaced with…well, with whatever technology Democrats are going invent in their committee hearings, I guess.
5) Eliminate air travel. GND calls for building out “highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.” Good luck Hawaii! California’s high-speed boondoggle is already in $100 billion dollars of debt, and looks to be one of the state’s biggest fiscal disasters ever. Amtrak runs billions of dollars in the red (though, as we’ll see, trains that run on fossil fuels will also be phased out). Imagine growing that business model out to every state in America?
5) A government-guaranteed job. The bill promises the United States government will provide every single American with a job that includes a “family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and a pension.” You can imagine that those left in the private sector would be funding these through some unspecified “massive” taxation. On the bright side, when you’re foraging for food, your savings will be worthless.
6)Free education for life. GND promises free college or trade schools for every American.
7) A salubrious diet. The GND promises the government will provide “healthy food” to every American (because there are no beans or lettuce in your local supermarket, I guess).
8)A house. The GND promises that the government will provide, “safe, affordable, adequate housing” for every American citizen. I call dibs on an affordable Adams Morgan townhouse. Thank you, Ocasio-Cortez.
8) Free money. The GND aims to provide, and I am not making this up, “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work. Just to reiterate: if you’re unwilling to work, the rest of us will have your back.
9) Bonus insanity: Ban meat. Ocasio-Cortez admits that we can’t get zero emissions in 10 years “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” The only way to get rid of farting cows is to get rid of beef.
10) The GND uses the word “massive” to explain the size “investments” (formerly known as “taxes”) 13 times. How will we pay for this plan? “The same way we did the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailouts and extend quantitative easing,” say Markey and Cortez, who earned her degree in economics at an institution of higher learning that should be immediately decertified. The plan itself seems to insinuate that billionaires can pay for the whole thing. Of course, best case scenario, it is estimated that instituting a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent would raise a little more than $700 billion over that decade. She does not explain how we’re going to raise the other 20 bazillion dollars it will cost to tear down modernity.
Cortez and Markey claim that 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans support the Green New Deal. I’m not sure where that number is derived. But ask them again when government agents come to take out their water heater.
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Oh my! It brought tears of nostalgia to my eyes to realize the crazy old socialist-left had not completely died, and has now resurfaced among the young in the New World.
Now, I understand your rectitude , with friends like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Edward J. Markey and ol’Bernie, who needs enemies?