A Bridge to Somewhere?
Greens who care most about global warming are in a tough spot. One of the biggest climate killers is coal, a 19th century fuel that may bake the planet well into the 21st century. As Jeff Goodell notes in Rolling Stone,
We still burn nearly a billion tons of it a year in America, almost all of it to generate electricity.
Even still, Goodell argues that
coal is dying in America, and everyone knows it. In the largest sense, it’s being killed off by technological progress and the rising awareness of the economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy. Even the biggest coal boosters have long admitted that coal is a dying industry ““ the fight has always been over how fast and how hard the industry will fall.
This has to cheer greens, who haven’t had much to cheer about on the climate change front. Then again, maybe not. For as Goodell notes:
The real dagger in coal’s heart is natural gas ““ more accurately, cheap natural gas from “unconventional” sources like shale and other porous rocks. Thanks to new technologies like horizontal drilling and fracking, we are suddenly awash in gas, and prices are lower than they’ve been in decade. Drilling and fracking is its own kind of nightmare, but for better or worse, one incontestable consequence of cheap gas is that it has driven many electricity generators to turn off the coal plants and fire up the natural gas generators instead.
For better or worse is the argument raging these days.
Meanwhile, the natural gas revolution is stunting the growth potential of a climate-friendly source of energy: Nuclear power. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
The U.S. nuclear industry seemed to be staging a comeback several years ago, with 15 power companies proposing as many as 29 new reactors. Today, only two projects are moving off the drawing board.
What killed the revival wasn’t last year’s nuclear accident in Japan, nor was it a soft economy that dented demand for electricity. Rather, a shale-gas boom flooded the U.S. market with cheap natural gas, offering utilities a cheaper, less risky alternative to nuclear technology.
“It’s killed off new coal and now it’s killing off new nuclear,” says David Crane, chief executive of NRG Energy Inc., a power-generation company based in Princeton, NJ. “Gas has come along at just the right time to upset everything.”
Across the country, utilities are turning to natural gas to generate electricity, with 258 plants expected to be built from 2011 through 2015, federal statistics indicate.
It sure seems as if a bridge to somewhere is getting built, despite what some would have us believe (but only after the fossil fuel money spigot dried up).
Anyway, one thing’s for sure: The natural gas revolution has arrived, and it’s upending the energy/climate debate.
Purely hypothetical, but imagine the following: Writers like Chris Nelder and Jeff Goodell (and many others) are right that natural gas is a bubble. In 5-10 years, are we just going to go back to coal? Or would a collapse of the gas supply (unthinkable at this point, I know) put us (finally) on the road to renewables?
As for nuclear, every time I check, it seems more expensive than everything but grid-scale solar under the current technological / regulatory regime.
Anyway, one thing’s for sure: The natural gas revolution has arrived, and it’s upending the energy/climate debate.
Seems like I’ve been tellin’ you that for some time. Good to see you catching up
would a collapse of the gas supply (unthinkable at this point, I know) put us (finally) on the road to renewables?
No.!
Chris, do you think 258 new plants (as reported in today’s WSJ) would be in the works if there was a good chance of a bubble in the next 5-10 yrs?
If I was a top bod in the FF industry, I would have to admit that there’s no better way of killing the nuclear competition than overhyping shale gas.
What killed the revival wasn’t last year’s nuclear accident in Japan, nor was it a soft economy that dented demand for electricity.
I don’t think the ‘revival’ is by any means dead.
What shale gas did is give utilities an opportunity to play ‘wait and see’.
I’ll quote the 2010 Northwest Regional Power Plan as and anecdotal representativeion
http://www.nwcouncil.org/energy/powerplan/6/final/SixthPowerPlan_Appendix_I.pdf
As a practical matter, committed construction of a Northwest unit is unlikely in advance of successful completion and operation of
at least one of the proposed new units elsewhere in the United States, an established federal policy regarding spent fuel and aggressive development of equally cost-effective conservation and renewable resources.
With natural gas cheap and electricity demand down due to the recession utilities can afford to ‘wait and see’ what happens on the Vogtle and VC Summer projects.
At the current natural gas build rate natural gas nameplate capacity will soon be more then 50% of total capacity. That creates a potential large ‘price risk’. With the actual construction costs of nuclear plants currently ‘unknown’ that creates a price risk as well.
I’m pro-nuclear. In the current market without an urgent demand for a lot of new capacity I would ‘wait and see’. By 2016 we will have a good feel for what ‘actual’ construction costs of new nuclear are rather then estimated costs(been burnt on that before) and whether or not the current low price of natural gas is temporary or a long term trend.
IMHO No decision is the currently prudent decision.
As far as a ‘bridge to somewhere’ Obama will probably make his 17% reduction target without further legislation just from fuel switching and better automobile fuel economy.
In the developing world coal is favored.
From an MIT report:
“China is currently constructing the equivalent of two, 500
megawatt, coal-fired power plants per week and a capacity
comparable to the entire UK power grid each year.”
Meanwhile, in the West, as the CO2-“global warming” theory continues to unravel coal will make a comeback if the truly polluting aspects of burning coal (i.e. soot, mercury, etc) can be reduced.
If you are going to use gas, you have to have direct access to it to make it cheap. If you don’t, you can buy it, but the price is much higher due to the costs of transporting it.
Burning gas also creates CO2, just not as much. It is still a carbon based energy source. We will still be burning a lot of it.
http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp
BTW, the whole topic is quite spiteful in the way you present it. As an “independent” observer, you aren’t quite cutting it.
China is currently constructing the equivalent of two, 500
megawatt, coal-fired power plants per week
Oh no. Say it isn’t so. The good communists are not committed to GHG recutions, to decarbonization, to saving the planet…
My god. Whose left?
KK,
Love the blog but I do have a problem with Goodell being treated like an evenhanded journalist. He’s a braying hack for the breezy sunshine boys….easy example from his “stick a fork in coal” article:
“……….slamming Republicans for “talking down new sources of energy” and aptly comparing fossil fuel-loving Solyndra-bashers to “founding members of the Flat Earth Society.”
Aptly? So if you bash the travesty that is Solyndra then you’re a flat-earther? Goodell is no journalist, he’s a hack.
well as it happens, after 10 hours on the road, the eagle has landed in the heart of coal country in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The wife was a little fuddleduddled when she saw a billboard on the I-79 saying ‘Coal. proud of the job we do’. but then i reminded her that we were in Amurikuh now and the normal rules of Kanukistan no longer apply.
While Harry-coal-bot is clearly inept and/or wilfully misinformed on the state of climate science and its practical implications, he’s nevertheless bang on in his prognosis of the market sentiment from a power provider’s POV. One wonders if he’s working for someone nearby :).
One of the issues that doesn’t get enough attention IMO is the trade-offs between the speed with which various energy options can be deployed and the risks that come with pooling huge sums of capital to create large economies of scale. It seems to me that conventional large scale nuclear suffers in the current environment precisely because it takes very large sums of money from investors that are naturally very risk averse to invest in a project that inevitably involves medium to long-term forecasts of market conditions.
One of the really interesting races on the technology front is going to be between grid scale storage and micro-nuclear. Both have pretty significant transformative potential and are scalable and rapidly deployable in a way that conventional nuclear is not.
why dose it seem that no one has seen the new Energy Outlook from the DOE? They say there is only 1/3 of the energy reserves in the Marcellus shale than previously thought, and say it with a 90% certainty. This certainly isn’t the panacea that its touted as being!:
“The US Department of Energy took a chunk out of the natural gas industry’s high hopes for the future yesterday by slashing the amount of gas estimated to be held in the Marcellus Shale “” a huge swath of shale rock under the east coast of the United States thought by gas mongers to be the holy grail of energy. The Annual Energy Outlook states with a 90% certainty that the amount of gas locked under the east coast is actually 66% less than they previously imagined. They knocked the Marcellus shale estimate from 482 trillion cubic feet in last year’s outlook to 141 trillion cubic feet, and the entire United States reserves didn’t fare much better ““ they were slashed almost in half from 827 trillion cubic feet in last year’s outlook to 482 trillion this year”
Since the deregulation of power plants, it has become “all gas all the time” rather than the previous mix of technologies that was mandated in an attempt to prevent from becoming too reliant on e technology. Before the Marcellus boom, is almost became the nightmare scenario they had predicted when we were two cold weeks away from not having enough gas in the system to keep the gas moving. Luckily, it warmed up just in time.
What will happen when we run out of gas next time?
http://inhabitat.com/us-department-of-energy-decreases-estimate-of-east-coast-natural-gas-reserves-by-66/
Yes it is interesting how the natural-gas option has crept into the limelight while everything else is ignored.
Regarding e.g. China or India, coal causes more short and longterm energy poverty than some commenters think. And as with the with the dangers of recovery of natural gas from shale, local communities (in the developing world but also in North America) do not receive the benefits but have to cope with the negative consequences while the profits go to big corporations that direct industry interests.
Among many other things, the water rights of First Nations in Canada are seriously threatened by some of the shale gas proposals.
On top of all this, Kim Possible is right that the marketable portion is not nearly as large as promoted by industry PR.
#11
why dose it seem that no one has seen the new Energy Outlook from the DOE? They say there is only 1/3 of the energy reserves in the Marcellus shale than previously thought
EIA’s estimates for marcellus shale have been all over the lot. The 2011 estimate appeared to me to be ‘insanely high’. We still have 20 years worth of ‘identified and recoverable’ natural gas which is a historically high number.
#3 Keith Kloor
In the US 40% of our plants produce 70% of our electricity. We have baseload plants , intermediate load plants and peak load plants.
Nuke’s are not economic for intermediate and peak load.
Even in France nukes only account for 50% of generating capacity and it’s questionable that would be economic if they didn’t have neighbors they could export to ‘off peak’.
So even if the gas price is a bubble we will still need those gas plants for intermediate and peak load until someone figures out storage.
@marlowe,
While Harry-coal-bot is clearly inept and/or wilfully misinformed on the state of climate science and its practical implications, he’s nevertheless bang on in his prognosis of the market sentiment from a power provider’s POV
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=5331
Although still the largest single fuel for electricity generation, coal’s share of monthly power generation in the United States dropped below 40% in November and December 2011. The last time coal’s share of total generation was below 40% for a monthly total was March 1978.
There isn’t any point if arguing ‘climate’…peak coal in the developed world has already occurred.
Then we have this news from Platts…the ‘go to’ publication if you want to remain current on energy.
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/8050022
China is expected to consume 270 million mt/year less standard coal equivalent for electricity generation by 2015, compared with 2011 levels, China Electricity Council said in a report Monday.
Just so no one accuses me of ‘misleading’…a substantial portion of Chinese coal consumption goes towards making cement… their ‘building boom’ appears to be flattening rather then accelerating.
What about India?
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-20/coal-to-india-beating-china-on-supply-shortfall-energy-markets.html
India’s likely emergence as the world’s biggest coal buyer underscores a dearth of domestic fuel that has prompted companies from billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power Ltd. to Adani Power Ltd. to mothball plans for expanding electricity capacity.
From our good friends at the IPCC
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/figure-3-1.html
The SRES scenarios project an increase of baseline global GHG emissions by a range of 9.7 to 36.7 GtCO2-eq (25 to 90%) between 2000 and 2030.
How are we going to get anywhere near the ‘high end’ of the emissions scenarios with coal consumption poised to peak at about 8 billion/tonnes per year?
http://www.steelorbis.com/steel-news/latest-news/chinas-coal-consumption-may-reach-43-billion-mt-by-2015-666423.htm
China Electricity Council seems to have two kinds of info on coal
I think that the big question wrt gas and technology now is not how fracking will evolve, though that is important, but whether a genuine global (i.e. transoceanic) market on par with oil will develop.
#15
China Electricity Council seems to have two kinds of info on coal
As I said…I was referring to coal for electricity…China consumes a massive amount of coal making cement and steel.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90778/90860/7459904.html
China’s cement output increased by 19.6 percent year-on-year to 950 million tonnes in the first half of 2011
China’s cement consumption appears to be about 2 Billion tons per year
US Cement consumption in comparison is about 100 Million tons per year.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cement/mcs-2012-cemen.pdf
If we look at European Cement consumption which is probably more appropriate because in the US we have wooden houses
We see the the EU27 consumes about 250 million tons per year
http://www.cembureau.eu/sites/default/files/Production2010.pdf
It takes about 1/4 ton of coal to make 1 ton of cement depending on the efficiency of the process
Wiki has a chart of global steel production. China produces about 1/2 the worlds steel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production
Depending on process it takes about 3/4 ton of coal to make 1 ton of steel.
So a quick ‘back of the envelope’ calculation China is consuming 500 million tons of coal to make cement and 500 million tons of coal to make steel.
So at least 1 billion tons of coal consumption in China is for cement and steel.
That’s a function of a building boom that will end at some point…as we saw in the US recently no public official will ever publicly ‘predict’ an end to a building boom until well after it is over.
2010 Chinese Census-
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-04/28/content_12415449.htm
In 2010, 16.60 percent of the population was 14 or younger, a sharp decline from 22.89 percent in 2000….Citizens aged 60 or more account for 13.26 percent……..
Young people starting families drive building booms. Old people drive services..like healthcare.
No, fracking and drilling is not any kind of nightmare. Unless you swallow the propaganda whole, that is. when I first drove to California, I saw oil wells working in schoolyards for the first time. Try doing the same thing in Massachusetts today, and no doubt someone would call it a nightmare. For Caifornians, it’s business as usual. And by the way – Thomas Edison called alternating current a nightmare, and encouraged the use of the electric chair for executions to prove it. Are you going to have the wiring pulled out of your house tomorrow? I didn’t think so.
Calm down, and take a deep breath. The air you breathe is vastly cleaner than what I grew up with in the 1950s-60s. So is the water in the rivers and ponds. Things are getting better and better – really.
#17
China is moving hundreds of millions of people into cities…. this building boom may last quite a while.
In 2008 China’s urbanization rate was 51 %, half of the people were living outside cities. About 650 million people.
In the US rate was 82%, same as Saudi Arabia. Australia 89%, Canada 90%.
#17
China is moving hundreds of millions of people into cities”¦. this building boom may last quite a while.
Yes
2010 Census
http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevents/t20110428_402722244.htm
665575306 persons were urban residents…
and 674149546 persons were rural residents…Compared with the 2000 population census, the number of urban residents increased by 207,137,093 persons, and the number of rural residents dropped by 133237289 persons. The proportion of urban residents rose by 13.46 percentage points.
Urban population grew by 207 million, an average of 21 million per year.
But then we have this
http://www.china.org.cn/china/2010-04/15/content_19823645.htm
According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Blue Book on Macro Economy released Thursday, China’s urbanization rate will peak around 2013 and begin to slow to 1 percent growth a year by 2030.
Young people going off to ‘make their way’ in the big city is a normal part of life. The population of rural China decreased by 130 million people in 10 years. How many ‘young people’ do they have left?
MarkB @18 –
Indeed. The air over London is cleaner than it’s been for 400 years, and our waterways and lakes are teeming with life.
However, reality is always going to have a hard time up against feverish imagination and the connotations unleashed by the language of ‘toxic chemicals’ and ‘earthquakes’.