With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.
Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?
Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.
Now I’m more depressed than when I posted this
my energy bill right now is like a new solar panel a month. what resources do we not have, and are you familiar with pumped storage? spoilers, we already have renewable stable energy supply
The truth is, we do have enough resources. We just care more about the economy and profit than our future climate (which will also strongly affect the economy, but that’s in the future so…).
If we actually valued the climate as much as we ought to, switching fully to renewables would be a bargain.
Everything has a cost of course, building solar panel requires a significant amount of precious metals, which may or may not be easily accessible or affordable depending on the political climate between countries who mine vs the countries who needs the resources.
And the production of solar panel does create some toxic leftovers which needs to make handled appropriately. Not saying they’re a bad alternative and they’re definitely before than fossil fuel or coal, just needs to consider the cost and the impact of everything.
Storage. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear generate power regardless of weather, day and night.
Solar generates plenty of electricity (with enough panels installed), but it slows down significantly under cloudy skies and stops entirely at night.
Wind generates plenty as well…unless the wind stops blowing.
The grid needs power all the time, not just when it’s sunny and windy. For renewables to actually compete, the excess power they generate during sunny and windy times needs to be stored for use when it’s dark and still.
As much as we applaud lithium batteries, our energy storage technologies are abysmally inefficient. We’re nowhere near being able to store and discharge grid-scale power the way we’d need to for full adoption of renewables. The very best we can do today (and I wish I were kidding) is pump water up a hill, then use hydroelectric generators as it flows back down. Our energy storage tech is literally in the Stone Age.
Don’t underestimate the battery potential of gravity!
According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity#:~:text=The round-trip energy efficiency,sources claiming up to 87%25. The round-trip efficiency of pumped storage is 70-80%, that’s pretty darn good for cheap mass-storage. There’s not much more to gain there.
It works very well, not disputing that.
But, like geothermal power generation (which is also very good), it’s extremely dependent on location. Most populated areas don’t have the altitude differential (steep hills) and/or water supply to implement pumped hydro storage.
Where it can be used, it should be (and largely is - fossil fuel generation does better with some storage as well, since demand is not consistent), but it’s hardly something that can be deployed alongside solar and wind generators everywhere.
Pumped water is about the only practical gravity battery, but it has limitations.
- It can only be built in a few geographical locations.
- This tends to limit it’s overall capacity unless you’re Norway or Switzerland.
- It requires flooding an area to make a storage lake and so has a high environmental impact.
- Building power stations inside mountains is difficult and expensive.
So it’s great stuff, but I don’t think it’s going to be the backbone of any storage solution we have.
Time. People can see past the storage issue when it’s not that big of an issue.
Interconnectors and curtailment at peak output are economically optimal. The renewable transition doesn’t seem to be slowing.
The renewable boom has only been going for about 10 years. Give it another 10-20 and the world will look drastically different in one generation.
