The World Has a Serious Coal Problem

Comments

• palitu@aussie.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  This article ignores a lot of reality when it comes to firming renewables, and my paranoia was triggered when they wrote mainstream media.

  Shilling out for the fossil fuel lobby.

  Sure, it is not going to be easy, or quick (enough), but cost is going to drive out the more expensive forms of generation, which will be coal and gas.

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  • Coolbeanschilly@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    What I find particularly suspicious about the article is that there’s no mention about battery technology. We have batteries that can store energy for four to eight hours efficiently right now.

    I believe that there was some interesting points made, but ultimately, it is a narrow and disingenuous take on things.

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  • wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Do you know of a way to efficiently produce the infrastructure needed for solar, wind, etc using energy from solar, wind, etc such that the energy return on energy (ERoE) is high enough? That seemed like the crux of the argument made in the article, and I’d be interested to read a rebuttal.

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    • palitu@aussie.zone ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I think that is a bit of a mis-direct. We don’t need that now, but we do need to develop it. There are plenty of electricity sources that provide enough for industry (plenty of hydro as a simple example).

      The chemical processes require research and subsequent change, but removing thermal coal and just using coking coal is a massive reduction in coal usage. Maybe that is ok to get us over the hump. There is a lot of research into direct reduced iron, which is an example of removing coal from that particular process. It is not impossible, but currently maybe not too easy.

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    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Image

      Thats from 2010 btw. Oil got even worse with fracking and solar and wind way better. Wikipedia has a bunch of examples.

      en.m.wikipedia.org/…/Energy_return_on_investment

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    • Coolbeanschilly@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      futurism.com/electricity-generated-solar-power

      Here’s an article that addresses some of the concerns that were raised by the author of your article, at least in terms of the materials usage. I’ve not found anything about the thermal requirements for some manufacturing processes, but couldn’t we use CSP or green hydrogen for the necessary processes?

      Our biggest problem in my opinion, is efficiency and hitting our growth ceiling. But we don’t have to have a bleak future as outlined by the author of your article.

      The Honest Sorcerer blog writes in the style of doom porn, and gives off the same kind of writing energy as Ayn Rand, in terms of absolutism.

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• poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  There is nothing inherently preventing these things to be done with electricity from renewable sources (and the carbon for the chemical processes only acts as a cheap oxygen acceptor). It is just that burning coal is still cheaper and has existing infrastructure.

  There are many economic areas where replacing fossile fuels is indeed very difficult, and only mining somewhat falls into those. The material processing necessary for solar panel production would be actually more simple and energy efficient with electricity. For example a lot of aluminium ore is already processed with electricity produced from geothermal sources in Europe.

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• count_dongulus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I feel like an ethics-optional group that wants to really end the use of coal could run a campaign of breaking into or drilling down to the most profitable commercial coal seams and lighting them on fire. More Centralia, Pennsylvanias, especially in populated areas, would probably permanently dampen the domestic industry and drive prices far upwards leading to the faster growth of alternatives. The obvious tradeoff is, those seams your group lit are going to burn for a very very long time, so you’re causing some emissions in exchange for a global reduction.

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• wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It would seem that scaling back the use of many modern technologies is both necessary and inevitable. When hydrocarbon-based energy sources run out, it’s back to old-fashioned carbohydrates…

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  • Part4@infosec.pub ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Earth system scientists put the kind of society complex enough for hospitals and higher education require an energy returned on energy invested in the teens. ‘Renewables’ (let’s call them low carbon, there isn’t anything very renewable about the blade of a wind turbine) barely touch that and often don’t get near.

    • The picture is so varied that one can find statistics to counter this ‘barely touches the teens’ claim. Look at the totality of the picture and draw your own conclusions. I am just presenting some reasoning to justify a claim that we are heading towards a much lower energy future, maybe next century or something (which doesn’t have to be bad, provided everybody isn’t slaving for a class of energy-obese billionaires protected by a fascist police state).

    • I looked into this a lot about 15 years ago, when it seemed that we were still in the last chance saloon on avoiding catastrophic climate change. The science might have moved on. I don’t have current sources anybody interested in the concept of eroei and the complexity it creates will have to look themselves.

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