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U.S. greenhouse emissions fell in 2017 as coal plants shut
Greenhouse gases emissions from the largest U.S. industrial plants fell 2.7 percent in 2017, the Trump administration said, as coal plants shut and as that industry competes with cheap natural gas and solar and wind power that emit less pollution.
The drop was steeper than in 2016 when emissions fell 2 percent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said.
EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said the data proves that federal regulations are not necessary to drive carbon dioxide reductions.
[...] While Wheeler gave the administration credit for the reductions, which mainly came from the power sector, the numbers also underscore that the administration has not been able to stop the rapid pace of coal plant shutdowns.
[...] Natural gas releases far less carbon dioxide when burned than coal and a domestic abundance of gas has driven a wave of closures of coal plants. In 2017 utilities shut or converted from coal-to-gas nearly 9,000 megawatts (MW) of coal plants.
[...] The trend of U.S. coal plant shutdowns is expected to pick up this year, with power companies expecting to shut 14,000 MW of coal plants in calendar year 2018.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:32PM (9 children)
In order to store energy, whether in a battery or as a hydrocarbon fuel or as hydrogen or as ammonia or in the future as unobtainium, you must use energy to convert something that is not very useful as energy storage to something that is.
Calculations of (whatever) vs. petroleum usually compare cost of pumping/mining oil/coal + refining/trumpcleaning it + transporting it to destination = LOWER COST! than producing the new WhatEver(tm) fuel! It takes MUCH MORE ENERGY to make the WhatEver(tm) fuel materialize.
And, as far as that goes, it's exactly right. What this omits, however, is the energy expended in turning the peat or dead dinosaurs or whatever into oil or coal. You might, judging from your posts, be very surprised to learn than when this is figured in, the Hydrogen doesn't look so bad after all in terms of ineffeciency. This is because, as I mention above, that ineffeciency is the cost of storing energy in a convenient form.
For a limited period of time, maybe 10 years, maybe 100 years, even if 1000 years, we will be able to just pick up/mine/drill+pump convenient hydrocarbon pre-made fuels out of the ground. But they run out at some point because we are burning them faster than natural processes are making them, and any conversation about a "hydrogen economy" is about what comes after ready-made free fuels are a thing.
In that context--the one we're heading to more and more as hydrocarbon fuels get harder and more expensive to find and retrieve--hydrogen makes as much sense as anything, and more than many things. For example, it can make more sense than manually cooking dead animals and plants into coal and oil type hydrocarbons.
Biodiesel, BioCharCoal, and BioBurningGas would have the advantage of being able to be plugged into the existing clunky but widespread hydrocarbon infrastructure, but that's their advantage, not some imaginary "efficiency."
(Score: 5, Informative) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:18PM (8 children)
But do we need "fuel"? Or perhaps better stated, how much "fuel" do we need?
Wind turbines and solar panels generate electricity that can be used for almost all purposes that fuel is used for. Heating, transportation and of course traditional uses of electricity, etc.. We can largely bypass the need for an intermediate fuel step in almost all processes. Energy can be stored in batteries, or in pumped hydro, or even just lifting weights.
Hydrogen isn't actually a good store of energy. Its energy density is poor in comparison to many other fuels and it has that pesky storage and leakage problem. Given sufficient energy input, methane can be produced using atmospheric CO2.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:38PM (6 children)
Well, no, fuel has energy value not because it's efficient (we covered that, above) but because it's portable.
You can't run vehicles nor a transportation infrastructure unless you have portable energy.
Wind isn't portable. Freight train engines tacking into the wind isn't practical because it requires many more rails, and the solar panels needed to move a long-haul train cover more area than the train; even if you put a solar farm near tracks and let them carry the electricity, that only works for short distances (there's too much line loss for long distance trains). Wind won't power transportation. Wind can charge electric car batteries, which are a tiny part of transportation, but that doesn't move goods around.
Cars and trucks and even ships at sea need to be able to move independently of whether there is wind.
Solar is portable, but only during the day, and only if you can operate on its tiny output per surface area and only while it's sunny.
Fuel is portable all the time and has almost the same energy per mass independently of whether it's windy or sunny.
It beats wind or solar hands down for portable energy storage, because it can store energy and they can't.
Nothing is a good, portable store of chemical, electrical, or mechanical energy; not oil, not gas, not coal. (Okay, maybe Uranium or Thorium are good stores of energy, but not chemical, electrical, nor mechanical energy.) All have drawbacks that are compensated for by the fact that they are *portable*. Hydrogen being included in this is what makes it viable, not something that excludes it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:28PM (1 child)
Some values of transportation will beg to differ - e.g. anything on rails, cables, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:33PM
Sure, and your electric cars will work fine. But cable cars, light rail, and passenger cars make up only a small percentage of the vehicles in our transportation infrastructure, the rest of which is dependent on fuel for its portability and predictability.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @11:34PM (3 children)
Looks out of window. Sees electric car. Sees train powered by electricity.
You failed to address my comment that methane is potentially a better store of energy than hydrogen. You keep ignoring the inefficiencies in producing and storing hydrogen. Hydrogen may be an energy store, but it's not a good one. Note that the Toyota Mirai has a significantly lower MPGe figure than typical battery electric vehicles and that ignores the inefficiency inherent in producing and compressing the hydrogen. And the Mirai still needs a battery, so that it can do regenerative braking.
There is only one reason that there is discussion of a mythical "hydrogen economy": because today, the cheapest way to produce it requires fossil fuels. It's being promoted by the fossil fuel industry.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 19 2018, @12:04AM (2 children)
Sure, your electric cars will work fine. But cable cars, light rail, and passenger cars make up only a small percentage of the vehicles in our transportation infrastructure, the rest of which is dependent on fuel for its portability and predictability. You know this; why pretend not to?
Maybe methane has better numbers; that doesn't make the idea of using hydrogen a petroleum-company shill topic.
Frankly, that's step one in deciding to use any fuel that you intend to produce yourself.
There is no "good" fuel in terms of energy efficiency; hydrogen being a "not good one" doesn't make the idea of using hydrogen a petroleum-company shill topic.
Noted. Toyota isn't a petroleum-industry shill. If the next dominant fuel turns out to be unicorn fairy dust, Toyota will bolt on a rainbow-colored carburetor and carry on as usual. They don't care about oil per se.
People make decisions for all kinds of reasons, few of them logical or rational. Someone making an irrational suggestion doesn't make them an evil oil baron.
It's not overwhelmingly likely that hydrogen will be the fuel of the future, but it's possible at this stage for lack of a more viable competitor. And the winning fuel will have the best sales pitch, and not the best numbers, I guarantee it.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday October 19 2018, @12:17AM
Light rail? You know that just about, if not all, high speed passenger trains are electric and they are not "light rail", right?
You know that we have these things called "wires" and they are quite efficient for "transporting" electricity, right?
You know that there are working examples of electric 18-wheeler trucks operating now, right?
You are misrepresenting why I call "the hydrogen economy" a con by fossil fuel industry. It's because, today, hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels.
Remember that you wrote this:
Now, remember that hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, so how can hydrogen be more efficient than "turning the peat or dead dinosaurs or whatever into oil or coal.", when fossil fuels are the input for hydrogen production?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:25AM
A side note to consider, hydrogen can squeeze through other molecular structures and also won't always be 100% combusted. This means some hydrogen molecules will escape and I see no reason why they would guaranteed combine with something in the atmosphere. Long story short, we may end up with a slow loss of hydrogen on the planet. Pretty minor I imagine, but then again maybe not if it becomes a massive aspect of our infrastructure for hundreds of years.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday October 19 2018, @02:30AM
According to the Wiki, world energy usage [wikipedia.org] was around 9*10^9 tons of oil, or 109,000TWh - that's TERA-Watt-hours - in 2015. Divide that by number of hours in a year, and that's 12-13 terawatts of power demand on average.
In comparison, only ~12,000TWh of renewable energy was used in 2015. We need to step up our renewable generation by a factor of 10 before it can replace our fossil fuel usage.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin