Big Coal Plants Begin to Close

From the UK... &quot;A decade ago, coal plants generated almost a third of the UK’s electricity, but in the first half of this year they have provided only 3%.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2019&#x2F;jun&#x2F;21&#x2F;zero-carbon-energy-overtakes-fossil-fuels-as-the-uks-largest-electricity-source" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2019&#x2F;jun&#x2F;21&#x2F;zero-carbon...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electricityproduction.uk&#x2F;from&#x2F;coal&#x2F;?t=8y" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electricityproduction.uk&#x2F;from&#x2F;coal&#x2F;?t=8y</a>

Here in Ontario all coal plants were shut down over a decade ago. The difference in air quality seems to have been forgotten by many people, but it was a drastic and obvious improvement.<p>The power mix here is now 90% nuclear &amp; hydro, so not emitting CO2 (directly), with the remainder being a mix of natural gas, wind, and solar.

Great to see coal phasing out but I feel like the risks of natural gas have not been well publicized, data regarding methane leaks from natural gas is sketchy at best and fracking has almost certainly caused more frequent earthquakes (albeit small on the Richter scale) at sites.<p>Big oil pushes natural gas as a bridge energy, and despite lots of skepticism towards them I think they&#x27;re correct. The window where natural gas is a plurality of global energy consumption has to be as small as possible.

Unfortunately it&#x27;s not as big a win as it sounds like. Per the article much of the economic force can be attributed to natural gas, which is better but not much, and most of the really huge coal plants have just adapted to regulation and don&#x27;t show signs of imminent closure.

In other news, Australia just sank a climate treaty meeting by refusing give up coal mining: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-australia-49365918" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-australia-49365918</a><p>And also on the BBC today, on a lighter note: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-england-oxfordshire-49165336" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-england-oxfordshire-49165336</a>

Much of this is due to the fracking tech revolution of the early 2000s, which dropped the price of energy from natural gas below coal in the US.<p>Shale gas has been replacing coal: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;images.app.goo.gl&#x2F;zb2bBfkBuAvWePVU6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;images.app.goo.gl&#x2F;zb2bBfkBuAvWePVU6</a>

On the topic of coal, as a more worrying counterpoint, the NY Times just published an article about the actions of the Adani Group in Australia under the clickbaity yet accurate title “How One Billionaire Could Keep Three Countries Hooked on Coal for Decades”:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;15&#x2F;climate&#x2F;coal-adani-india-australia.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;08&#x2F;15&#x2F;climate&#x2F;coal-adani-india-...</a>

Keeping the coal plants online is just another way of paying welfare to the workers and the firms that own them. Taking money from everyone else and giving it to the outdated machines and workers with outdated skills.<p>Note that I&#x27;m not saying that there is anything <i>wrong</i> with being on welfare. But as a society I think we should decouple our determination of who deserves to be on welfare from our decision about how rapidly we want to destroy our environment.<p>In other words, let&#x27;s just pay them normal food stamps or welfare checks, not keep the polluting plants open for decades longer than necessary.<p>For some reason many American workers feel totally proud being the indirect recipients of corporate welfare, yet would feel ashamed simply getting food stamps every month. There is zero difference between the two, except that in this case the food stamps are a LOT better for the environment.

I&#x27;ve said it before and I&#x27;ll say it again... market forces are accomplishing what regulation and public awareness never accomplished, in terms of reducing greenhouse emissions.<p>I am <i>so glad</i> the market is on our side for once.

It can be done, Ontario shut down Nanticoke (largest coal genrator in North AMerica) and repalced it with solar.. But something seems off with the capacity??<p>The Nanticoke Generating Station is a 44 MW solar power station which started operation in April 2019.[2] Previously from 1972 to 2013, it was the largest coal-fired power plant in North America. At full capacity, it could provide 3,964 MW of power into the southern Ontario power grid from its base in Nanticoke, Ontario, Canada,[3] and provided as much as 15% of Ontario&#x27;s electricity.

The coal industry is, over the next decade, going to go the way of Venezuela, and the parts of America still dependent on it economically will go with it. We are not ready.

Wouldn&#x27;t it make sense to build a solar farm there instead. I mean the power lines etc are all there already

Just look at the companies who provide maintance...they&#x27;re leaving the business.

Nice to feel a little hope and see this :)

Yeah, not in Australia though.

One of the great ironies of political life in the UK is that we are now celebrating generating electricity for &quot;X days without Coal&quot;.<p>This is of course a positive thing, but it was arrived at by the politically motivated near-total destruction of UK&#x27;s mining industry in the 1980s (the then right wing Tory government wanted to destroy the heartland support of its left wing Labour opponents).<p>What was a socially divisive, bitter class struggle for years and years, that nearly brought down the government, is now a strategic masterstroke of climate change planning.<p>Life is odd.<p>[#] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UK_miners%27_strike_(1984%E2%80%9385)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;UK_miners%27_strike_(1984%E2%8...</a>

this is great news -- proud of USA and Americans! Americans truly teach the World when it comes to technology and advancement.<p>Also, it is great to see more and more usage of coal in products ranging from toothpaste all the way to food products.