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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, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:34PM (35 children)
Slight mistake:
On the other hand we got centuries of coal out there.
Yeah but its cheaty, natgas being hydrogenated coal, so you get the hydrogen energy for "free" at least WRT carbon emissions. If you built a combined burner that accepted 1 part coal and 4 parts hydrogen (by atom) or 12 parts coal and 4 parts hydrogen by mass, then the ratio wouldn't be so impressive...
Strange thought experiment, the most likely long term large scale future implementation of "the hydrogen economy" is likely to be very large scale plants hydrogenating coal into natgas and then doing traditional natgas things (making ammonia, electricity, plastics, synthetic liq fuels, cement mfgr, generic heating, general Fing around) There really isn't a better tested and implemented infrastructure for large scale hydrogen transport than hydrogenating some coal and doing the natgas thing... Maybe this is more sci fi plot than actually being realistic, but it is technically possible.
In the real world coal to syngas and syngas to gasoline is more "fun". The good guys used that tech in WWII. I suspect we'll burn most of our centuries worth of coal in our cars, not our power plants.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:48PM (8 children)
And here I was thinking the "temporary domestic abundance of gas" to have something to do with the various gasbags running this country!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:56PM (7 children)
The good news about fracking is the production rate increasing slope is higher than anything ever seen before, the bad news about fracking is the decline rate slope is higher than anything ever seen before, so in at most a couple decades when everything that can be fracked has been fracked and extracted, we'll be making methane out of coal...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:02PM (4 children)
And here I was thinking that the bad news about fracking was the earthquakes and water supply contamination.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:16PM (3 children)
And here I was thinking that the bad news about fracking was the earthquakes and water supply contamination.
Earthquakes are caused by wastewater injection, not fracking. Although, they are related because the injection is used to displace and extract extra gas out of the frack site. You could stop that practice without stopping fracking, though, you just get less gas.
Water supply contamination is still largely hypothetical. Most methane infiltration into groundwater is actually natural and largely harmless. People in PA have been dealing with it just fine for decades before fracking was even invented. You do get contamination from spills and whatnot in the area surrounding fracking since it's oil and gas handling but that's not really caused by the fracking, either.
So on the one hand fracking is good because it makes natural gas cheap enough to displace dirtier coal. But on the other, it makes natural gas so cheap we're going to keep burning it when much larger than 20% reductions become necessary.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:35PM (1 child)
Any idea on the numbers for percentage increase for gas output from injecting wastewater?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:30PM
Any idea on the numbers for percentage increase for gas output from injecting wastewater?
They're called enhanced recovery wells and they make up about 80% of the injection wells in the country. (20% of the injection wells in the country are disposal wells that don't recover any additional oil/gas)
Of those 80%, you get 20-40% extra oil out.
There are alternatives to liquid injection for enhanced recovery wells that don't have the associated earthquake risks they're just more expensive. Using C02, for example, doesn't induce earthquakes (*I seem to recall, not going to look it up though).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:48PM
> Earthquakes are caused by wastewater injection, not fracking. Although, they are related because the injection is used to displace
> and extract extra gas out of the frack site. You could stop that practice without stopping fracking, though, you just get less gas.
So, what you mean is that earthquakes are caused by more efficient fracking.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:09PM (1 child)
...so in at most a couple decades when everything that can be fracked has been fracked and extracted, we'll be making methane out of coal...
Nine decades, according to the eia.
How much natural gas does the United States have, and how long will it last? [eia.gov]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @11:28AM
Yeah good luck with that.
A good SN automobile analogy is I could rebuild the engine in my car, but I don't have the experience, tools, or money to do so. But its not been proven that I can't, so ....
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:00PM (11 children)
Calling the Nazis the "good guys"?
Geez. I knew you were a scumbag, VLM but really?
(Score: 2, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:28PM (9 children)
This good guy/bad guy stuff is tricky because the metrics vary widely, and neither side was free of either evil or good.
The side that did not develop and use radiation-spewing highly destructive nukes on civilian populations? That's the Nazis [britannica.com].
The side that developed rocket technology that ensured the triumph of the nominally democratic west over the nominally communist east in the race to the moon? Nazis again [xkcd.com].
Life's funny sometimes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:21PM (7 children)
Yeah, sure. The US and Britain had their own Einsatzgruppen [wikipedia.org]. Not.
Yes, the US had relocation camps for Japanese-Americans [wikipedia.org], but AFAIK, none of them died due to deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or executed as unfit for labor. What's more, none of them were subjected to poison gas unlike the Nazi camps [wikipedia.org], which became sites for medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how downed pilots were affected by exposure, and experimental and lethal medicines
Yup. the Nazis were *definitely* the good guys. (that's sarcasm, for you Poe's Law impaired folks).
You make me sick. Don't try that revisionist history bullshit with me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:51PM (6 children)
That spot rapidly vanishing in the distance ? That was the point you missed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:45PM (5 children)
Nope. I didn't miss any point. Intentions are just as (if not more) important than the actions they engender.
Yes, the US developed nuclear weapons, *before* the Nazis. Had Hitler and his flunkies really understood what a game-changer that was, they might have beaten the US to the punch. But of course, they *never* would have used them. Certainly not against civillian [wikipedia.org] targets. [/sarcasm]
Were the US, Britain or the USSR knights of good? No. However, they were *forced* into war by the Nazis, despite Britain [wikipedia.org] *and* the USSR [wikipedia.org] signing treaties with the Nazis. Who conveniently ignored such agreements when it suited them.
The Nazis had an expansionist, bigoted agenda that caused enormous suffering within their own borders and they then chose to export that suffering to their neighbors. It was their aggressiveness, torture and cruelty that let the Allies to fight against them.
So, no. I don't think the US or any of their WWII allies were completely good and wonderful, and some of the acts (Dresden [wikipedia.org], Hiroshima/Nagasaki [wikipedia.org]) committed by them were reprehensible.
But calling the Nazis "the good guys" is not only ridiculous, it demeans the memory of the millions *murdered* (not killed in battle) by them. Study a little history, you might learn something. I won't hold my breath.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:58PM (4 children)
> Study a little history, you might learn something. I won't hold my breath.
I do. Geography, too. We can compare one day, if you dare, dear AC.
But I have studied humans too. So when someone makes a point via an obvious joke, I don't look like a fool for taking the words literally and out of context.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:01PM (3 children)
You do realize it was VLM who called the Nazis "good guys." Coming from him, I know it's no joke.
You've been around here long enough to know better too. Or haven't you been paying attention?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @09:22PM (2 children)
Even VLM occasionally deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially on a post that reads like a joke.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 19 2018, @12:50AM
That didn't read like a joke and he's said shit like that with the deadly seriousness of a black mamba bite far, far too many times to be given the benefit of the doubt. When someone shows you who he is, believe him the first time.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @03:19AM
Umm, exactly what part of "In the real world coal to syngas and syngas to gasoline is more "fun". The good guys used that tech in WWII. I suspect we'll burn most of our centuries worth of coal in our cars, not our power plants." is a joke? VLM is known for being the alt-right fanboi of Soylentnews, why would we give him the benefit of the doubt when that "joke" wasn't even funny and lines up with his general biases?
Please, explain to me why we should give shitty fucking worldviews the benefit of the doubt? I wouldn't suggest punishing people for "wrong think" but I sure as hell won't cut such assholes any slack or ease them into thinking I even slightly accept such bullshit.
If VLM isn't a racist neo-nazi piece of shit then he should stop trolling everyone with racist neo-nazi "jokes".
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:21PM
Yeah, sure. The US and Britain had their own Einsatzgruppen [wikipedia.org]. Not.
Yes, the US had relocation camps for Japanese-Americans [wikipedia.org], but AFAIK, none of them died due to deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or executed as unfit for labor. What's more, none of them were subjected to poison gas unlike the Nazi camps [wikipedia.org], which became sites for medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how downed pilots were affected by exposure, and experimental and lethal medicines
Yup. the Nazis were *definitely* the good guys. (that's sarcasm, for you Poe's Law impaired folks).
You make me sick. Don't try that revisionist history bullshit with me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:55PM
Scientifically, he's an idiot in the first place, scumbag in the second (maybe as a consequence of the first).
Synthetic fuel comes with a high energy cost, reducing the overall efficiency of directly burning that coal.
On top of that, large coal electrical plants will be able to squeeze more efficiency than an ICE.
Even if you'd use the energy produced by a coal plant to reduce alumina to aluminium and then "burn" that aluminium back to oxide into an aluminium-air battery [wikipedia.org] you'll be better off in energy efficiency and environmental cost than going from coal to synthesis fuel to ICE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:15PM (12 children)
The "hydrogen economy" is a con, perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry for the benefit of the weak minded and uninformed.
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, @05:31PM (11 children)
Hydrogen burns really well due to its simple chemical structure--its single electron, in pairs, is just what Oxygen needs to fill up that outer shell to 8 electrons.
A "hydrogen economy" is an energy economy that exploits this fact to use hydrogen as energy storage and retrieval. It's not ideal, but neither is anything in widespread adoption and use, so that's not really relevant.
Lots of propaganda on all sides, but I think this term is only loaded when paired with loaded accompaniment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NewNic on Thursday October 18 2018, @07:01PM (10 children)
But where does the hydrogen come from?
How is it stored and transported?
Whatever the answer to both of these questions is, it involves a lot of inefficiency. That's why the hydrogen economy is bullshit.
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, @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
(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
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:48PM
So true, they were having big problems with the British -- who have always been very aggressive. And later with the Russians and, unfortunately, America (FDR made a big mistake). But, they had a way to get a lot of their fuel from beautiful clean coal. And some that maybe wasn't so clean. For the cars, the airplanes, the everything. And we can do the same thing. If we have to, we will. We don't pay ransoms -- EVER. That's a promise. And our fabulous economy will NOT be taken hostage by OPEC. By Canada. Or anybody else!!!