Tag Archives: carbon burning

Electricity.

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Electricity went from being a cute pet trick in the 18th Century to being the vital energy of the later 19th and 20th Centuries.  Electricity could power factory machinery in a far more flexible and efficient fashion than could steam-engines.  Electricity came to play a direct part in the transformation process itself (steel, aluminum).  Electricity could light cities and homes, and made possible telegraphs and telephones.  Demand soared as more and more applications were created.  Think about air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, televisions.  The 1950s and 1960s coincided with the growth of electricity consumption.  Moreover, electricity became a politically-contested industry.  It ended up being highly regulated.[1] 

Then, about 2000, electricity generation plateaued.  Electricity-consuming goods became more efficient; population growth slowed, and no new major consumers of electricity were created.  Electricity consumption slowed to a crawl, rising only about 1 percent per year. 

One effect of the plateauing is that electrical generators and transmitters cut back on physical plant and human capital, while shifting their energies into new ventures. 

The electricity itself came from one of two sources.  Some of it came from hydropower (damming rivers).  First and foremost, it came from generators that burned carbon (wood, coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas).  So electricity was “clean” at its end-point, but very “dirty” at its point of origin.  So what?  So environmental concerns grew increasingly powerful.  No one quarreled much with the end-stage electricity.  The creation-phase (generation) electricity caused great concern.  Burning lots of carbon released greenhouse gases and promoted global warming. 

The pursuit of efficiency has slowed, even stalled, the growth of carbon burning in many areas.  The consumption of gasoline, jet fuel, and heating oil have all stopped rising since about 2000.  No, it hasn’t made it go away. It’s just that the damage inflicted has been limited.   

Now we seem on the cusp of a new expansion of electricity consumption.  Things like data centers, new factories, and the response to global warming itself (electric cars, heat pumps) promise to push up the demand for electricity.  The environmental concerns are increasingly pressing as a long-term concern. 

What are the requirements of and constraints on non-carbon electricity generation?  Non-carbon electricity generation means solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power.  Generation, transmission, distribution, and storage all cost a lot of money and pose technical problems. 

The shift of the industry toward stability twenty years ago now impedes rapid expansion.  Even building capacity.  Things might go a different way.  Then, the extensive regulations and shortage of workers also limits rapid expansion.  A utility that has bet big on renewable energy faces a fight year wait before it can connect to the electrical power grid.  A company can go bankrupt during the wait. 

It seems unreasonable to suppose that outmoded political and social beliefs can hold back science and technology for very long.  It also seems unreasonable to believe that lots of regulation can go hand in hand with lots of innovation. 

[1] Greg Ip, “Electricity, Not Oil, Is Growth’s Engine,” WSJ, 28 March 2025. 

Climate of Fear XVI.

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Coal is an important source of fuel: 38.7 percent of America’s electricity comes from 600 coal-fired generators.[1]

The trouble is that coal is bad for you and other living things. Coal burning for power generation in the United States gives off about 1.575 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That feeds the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Burning coal is worse than burning other fossil fuels. All the gasoline-powered vehicles in the United States give off about a billion tons. Burning natural gas gives off about half the carbon-dioxide as does burning coal.

No one is talking about having passed “peak coal”: there is a lot of coal still in the ground. People concerned about global warming want it to stay there. As the former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu memorably phrased it “there’s enough carbon in the ground to really cook us.”

However, the coal industry looked to be in decline for the same reason that gasoline prices have fallen recently. Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has succeeded. Natural gas prices have fallen by 74 percent over the last ten years. Natural gas, emitting half the carbon dioxide as coal, is now price competitive with coal. Thus, a shift from coal to natural gas would achieve a substantial reduction in emissions without harming anyone—except the coal producers of course. The economics certainly tilt in that direction: 150 of the less efficient coal-fired generation plants have shut down already.

For these reasons, it may have looked like an opportune time to push for a reduction in coal-burning. The Obama Administration is pushing hard to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent from the 2005 level by 2030. In June 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a Clean Power Plan to limit coal burning in the United States. Each state would be required to reduce its carbon emissions. The logical thing to do would be to switch to other forms of energy generation ranging from nuclear to natural gas to “renewables” (solar, wind).

The EPA plan has elicited hard push-back from coal-mining states. The efficiency of coal-mining techniques has increased with the introduction of “open cast” mining (knock off the top of a mountain and excavate the coal with machinery). Coal miners will be thrown out of work[2] and coal mine owners will see their investments destroyed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has denounced the president’s “War on Coal.”[3] A dozen states have sued the EPA, claiming that it has exceeded its authority.

One way to smooth the path from coal would be to invest more in research into “clean coal” technology. So far, research has shown the process to be expensive and difficult. An experimental “clean coal” plant in Kemper, Mississippi, cost five billion dollars. However, it could both pacify the coal interest and find an international market.

The industrialization of countries like India and China are powered by coal. An estimated 82 percent of global coal reserves are still in the ground. China, which recently promised to reach peak carbon-burning by 2029, plans to build 363 new coal-fired plants before then. India is planning to build more than 450 coal-fired generating plants in years to come. The carbon dioxide emissions from these plants will overwhelm any reductions in the United States. Finding a way to “clean coal” might be one way to avert disaster.

[1] “The end of coal?” The Week, 27 March 2015, p. 11.

[2] Although employment in coal mining in Kentucky has fallen from 38,000 in 1983 to 17,000 in 2012.

[3] Bearing mind the importance of both tobacco and coal for the state’s economy, maybe they could find a new slogan for Kentucky license plates: “Kentucky is for Respirators.”