Energy from burning coal and other fossil fuels is one of the worst offenders for the increased global temperature we are currently experiencing, but many countries still get a lot of their energy and electricity from this source. Many people expect this to be happening because coal power has traditionally been very cheap compared to other forms, but a recent report from the company Carbon Tracker has disproved this.
The report was made in order to take a closer look at how the future of the coal plants will be if the EU is aiming for following the Paris agreement, but their findings also concludes with some shocking information about the present. One of the major findings is that a total of 54 % of all the 619 operational coal power plants in Europe operate at a loss! This means that they are reliant upon lobbying in order to make a profit, which the European Commission wants to prohibit by 2025.
A coal power plant in the United States. Image by Rennett Stowe, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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The other 46 % still make a profit as of right now, but the report expect that 97 % of all the coal plants will be operating at a loss in the year 2030 – that is if they are still around at all!
So why do we keep mining and burning coal?
The big question is why we even keep mining for coal in order to burn it for energy now that it is generally not profitable. Not only are the companies not able to make more money than they spend, they are also actively increasing the levels of greenhouse gases and other pollutants in the atmosphere. I just don’t get why we keep doing this.
Is it time to move on towards renewable energy sources?
The same report concludes that onshore wind power should be more profitable than coal already on 2024, while solar PV will overtake coal by 2027. This means that we have a very nice opportunity to invest into these things while we are phasing out the non-renewable energy sources at the same time.
Solar farms are so much better for the environment! Image is Public Domain.
By phasing out all the coal operations in line with the Paris Agreement, the report concludes that the EU could save as much as 22,000,000,000 euros from now until 2030! That’s a huge number, and investing this into solar or wind plants would make the earth a much better place to live in the future.
Sources
The Carbon Tracker report can be downloaded from their website. You do need to create an account to read it, but there’s also some additional information in the abstract which is available at the link.
Thanks for reading!
I'd be interested to know what is the current state of affairs with solar - are they truly carbon neutral and what are the environmental costs of the require materials - I seem to remember that there were soem pretty unsustainable features of their components that made them not all as attractive as people like to think. But I literally haven'[t researched that in years so it may have changed quite a bit - perhaps a topic for another post!?
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No, they are by no means carbon neutral. It takes a lot of energy to produce them, and you also need some metals, including stuff like cadmium which is high toxic and polluting. There are still big obstacles to overcome before solar PV is "perfect". However, it is much better than most other form of energy production both in terms of carbon emission and pollution emissions. The batteries are also extremely unfriendly to the environment, but this area is something that many companies are trying to improve.
Thanks for your comment! I actually attended a seminar about this topic a year ago, so it would be very interesting to take a look at it and make a post about it. However, it all depends if I'm able to find the sources used :P
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Yes that would be interesting!
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Great, then I'll add it to the big list of posts I'm planning on doing! :)
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lol - sorry to add to your work load! :P
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I guess fossil fuel well become more lucrative with all the increased demand from Bitcoin mining.
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Ouch, yeah, it might be now that electricity prices are rising to meet the mining demand.
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This is something I have wondered about!!! I think Iota will be the crypto winner in the long run as it doesn't require millions of computers humming away to keep it going! (as far as I understand!!!)
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I don't really know anything about IOTA, but the same can be said for Steem. We technically only need 31 computers to run the blockchain, but of course a few more are needed in real-life. However, the 100 or so computers that run this blockchain is such a huge difference compared to all those who run Bitcoin or Ethereum.
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Yes, I suppose to be accurate I should have said "all blockchain" cryptos, as they all essentially require a network of computers don't they?
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Most of them. The ones that uses Proof-of-work such as Bitcoin and Ethereum require very many computres to mine in order to keep the network safe. Other blockchains such as Steemit uses 30 witnesses that need to "mine" the blockchain, and this witness-based blockchain uses a lot less electricity compared to the proof-of-work ones.
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Aaaaahhhhhhh. Hmm, that explains for me a bit about the witnesses that I keep hearing about!
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This article is interessant about the issue of Bitcoin and energy, with a new perspective https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/bitcoin-is-greener-than-its-critics-think
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That was a nice read. Thanks for sharing this. I had expected the electricity consumption to be high, so it was good to look at it compared to other things.
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nice report.
As far as I know, one remaining problem with renewable energy is the accumulation.
If it's night and there is no wind, you have to produce energy somehow. And coal/nuclear/gas power plants have the advantage to be able to modulate their energy output as the demand fluctuates.
Tesla is building huge new-generation accus to solve that problem, but they are still somewhat preliminary.
Maybe that's why we are still burning it, even though we know we have to get out of coal asap.
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That is a good point, @sco! The electricity from wind and solar needs to be used pretty rapidly, often leading to surplus at night, and in cases problems during the day when many consumers use it at once. This is absolutely a problem that need to be solved, but according to the report we can expect to see better battery technology in the coming decade, which is one of the reasons why these forms of electricity will eventually become viable and cheaper than unsustainable energy.
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Subsidies to fossil energy is I guess one of the stupidest thing a government can do. It is economicaly, socialy and environementaly completly stupid.
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Yeah, I complete agree with you! I would much rather that the governments spend these subsidies on renewable energy.
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That is one of the main topic from the climat summit in Paris. But without the united states and the countries that are using fossil energy, it is hard to change the things ...
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That's true, but there's still a lot of stuff we can do without the United States. These days both China and India are working really hard on becoming more sustainable, and I guess Europe is doing some work as well. I get that the US is important, but the world is much more than just that one country, which will eventually get a president that is more concerned about the climate.
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Nice post
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Thank you :)
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@originalworks
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The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @valth to be original material and upvoted(1.5%) it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
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