It might not be a good metric, but it's still overly generous to coal, because we're already rushing headlong towards huge areas of coastline being uninhabitable because they'll be underwater.
Coal is cheap, available when needed, requires minimal capital (a mud or brick stove), and is used not just for thermal power generation but industrial use (steel production) and direct thermal heat. In areas with minimal infrastructure, all these are compelling advantages.
There's that long-term downside of destroying the planet. If your planning horizon is next year, or next month, or next week, that might not be a major consideration.
Those who do have a long-term planning horizon must take into consideration those who do not.
Coal was only made once because the earth basically ran out of carbon to turn into coal. There’s 1,100,000 million tons of economically viable coal and we’re running into environmental issues by burning ~1/1,000th of it.
Most projections suggest coal use is going to plummet over the next 50 years, both because we have better options and because we have little choice.
There’s enough coal in the ground to make earths atmosphere actively lethal to humanity. At ~70,000 ppm people are rendered unconscious in minutes and there’s enough coal go well over 100,000 ppm. There’s no way for humanity to use up the worlds coal as fuel, perhaps we could ship it into space as carbon source but that seems unlikely.
> There's a reason why coal is hauled to power station, instead of being burned near mines.
Not really.
Power stations need a ready and ample supply of water for power generation and cooling. This is why they can often be a long way from mines and oil/gas fields.
I’m confused about what your point is. Coal powerplants aren’t immune from natural disasters and is quite literally putting all your eggs in a very small basket. Distributed systems such as wind/solar distribute the risk across a larger area which seems to be the exact thing you’re in favour of.
So are you going to ignore the maximum risk of other major industrial plants, or do you demand all of those be shut down too?
Please understand that coal has irradiated tons of land too, and in a way we can't even evacuate from. The maximum damage from coal is enormous even ignoring CO2.
By the time we've burned all coal, global warming will be way out of control unless CCS systems are ubiquitous. All studies I've seen point to coal reserves being far, far larger than the atmosphere can handle.
True. On the down side, it’s hard to see a failure mode for a coal plant that leave such a massive area devastated for so long, or one that’s so costly to manage.
Actually this summer my country had to temporarily switch off around 3GW of coal power due to the heatwaves, so no - coal is not as reliable as it's presented by some.
I was honestly surprised that Hawaii even had a coal plant. A 500Mwh plant uses 4,500 tons of coal per day - 45 train cars of coal per day. That all had to be shipped in by boat. But just looking it up, apparently a single "capsize" ship can haul 180,000 tons, so only about a dozen could supply a powerplant for a year.
Every time I think of how much coal is used in generating power, I shudder. Have you ever seen a photo of the coal going into a plant? The train cars stretch for miles. All that carbon just going into the atmosphere. We can't switch to renewables soon enough.
>- You need a large water source for cooling, extracting, processing - Limited Resource
Seas are going nowhere. Most NPPs are at the coast.
reply