SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the my-solar-panels-are-covered-in-soot dept.
Ken_g6 writes:
Wired today reports on continued coal use around the world and efforts to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Today coal produces more than 40 percent of the world's electricity, a foundation of modern life. And that percentage is going up: In the past decade, coal added more to the global energy supply than any other source. Nowhere is the pre-eminence of coal more apparent than in the planet's fastest-growing, most populous region: Asia, especially China.
Many energy and climate researchers believe that CCS is vital to avoiding a climate catastrophe. Because it could allow the globe to keep burning its most abundant fuel source while drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot, it may be more important - though much less publicized - than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come. No less than Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist who was US secretary of energy until last year, has declared CCS essential. "I don't see how we go forward without it," he says.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects that solar power will be cost-competitive with other electricity sources in the US by 2033. So will we build more coal plants or tear them down?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by joekiser on Thursday March 27 2014, @02:06AM
Where's the nuclear option?
Debt is the currency of slaves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Hartree on Thursday March 27 2014, @02:38AM
Oh, they reserve that for climate skeptics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 27 2014, @07:12AM
I guess the real nuclear option here would be to conserve energy as there is no good way to produce it.
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Thursday March 27 2014, @05:13PM
Fearmongers like Greenpeace killed it in the public opinion
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 27 2014, @07:49PM
The nuclear option is dead to some, until we run out of coal. So only a few years. China will be out of coal in about 25-30 years.
Remember in early 2000s when President Clinton proclaimed that nuclear is dead because we are entering a world of abundant and very inexpensive oil? Oil was at $25/bbl. Now, we are in a world of "free gas". Since that will run its course soon enough, we'll be back to the only thing remaining. Nuclear power.
Even Saudi Arabia wants nuclear power. There is very little space that has more sun. But Saudis have learned that solar is not 'free'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy_in_Sau di_Arabia [wikipedia.org]
So, Nuclear Option is not dead except in the heads of people that do not know any better.