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Looking at that map, I wonder if there's any correlation between operating coal plants and economic growth in developing nations.

China competes on manufacturing, and production of energy intensive materials like Steel. Maybe it's just not economically feasible to have a developed society without cheap, throttle-able energy inputs like coal. Energy is basically the fundamental input of almost everything that has economic value, so I wouldn't be surprised that above a certain price point, developing your country becomes extremely difficult.

Based off the map, this would be very bad news for Africa, and very good news for India.

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Oct 11·edited Oct 11Author

Yes, I largely agree with you. Widespread usage of fossil fuels is one of what I call the Five Keys to Progress.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-five-keys-to-progress

Asian nations chose coal for very good reasons, and my guess is that they will continue to do going forward unless wealthier nations innovate superior energy solutions.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-asian-nations-choose-coal

If I were living in a developing nation, I would tell Greens in the wealthy West to F__ off. Economic development and lowering poverty is far more important than climate change.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-developing-nations-need-to-use

Rather than focus on lowering carbon emissions in the West, I believe that the focus in the West should be to help developing nations use alternatives to coal, solar and wind. I go into more detail here:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/lets-leverage-american-lng-exports

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Oct 11Liked by Michael Magoon

Cool, thanks for the detailed comment. I’ll read all of these on my flight this evening. 😃

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Oct 9·edited Oct 9

What a crock.

Britain has closed all its coal plants and gas +nuclear generation has fallen from 190 TWh in 2016 to 120 TWh this year.

France has closed 5.7 GW of coal since 2015 and reduced nuclear and gas output

Australia has closed 30% of its coal plants and gas usage for power generation is 45% less than it was in 2008 despite 15% population growth

Spain, Texas etc etc etc

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Oct 9·edited Oct 11Author

You did not actually read the article before commenting, did you? You might at least mention the four examples from the article before you change the subject.

All of the examples that you gave, except Texas, have had significantly declining electricity usage, largely due to very expensive electricity prices. And Texas is significantly increasing natural gas.

That is the real Green Energy transition: expensive energy.

That is not electricity substitution. It is electricity AUSTERITY. That is completely different.

You do not seem to be able to understand the difference.

And the vast majority of coal plant closures occurred in Western Europe long before any Green energy policies were implemented due to increased use of natural gas, nuclear, and hydro. Just look at USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.

UK coal consumption peaked in 1956.

French and Belgium coal consumption peaked in 1957.

German coal consumption peaked in 1958

Where were all the solar panels and wind turbines from 1956-2000? Hint: they did not exist!

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/we-need-to-complete-the-third-energy

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Energy is becoming expensive because we are gradually exhausting cheap fossil fuel sources and we have finally had to replace much of the energy infrastructure that was overbuilt in the 70's and 80's.

e.g. NSW coal plants were privatised with guaranteed coal prices of A$27/tonne. Now that these contracts have expired the market price is A$160/tonne. NSW has not built a coal plant since the early eighties, because their existing plants were only running at 60-65% load and no-one could make the financial case for new capacity stick. Now all those plants are wearing out and with the current cost of capital and the need to develop a new mine to supply any new coal plant and develop a site that had sufficient access to water, coal and transmission, the combined cost would be between A$150-180/MWh. When customers can buy firmed wind and solar for $90/MWh who is going to provide a thirty year take-off agreement for coal at $150-$180/MWh.

In Queensland at the start of their coal seam gas boom they built gas plants which now run at very low load because in 2014 they were buying gas for 60c/GJ and the long term forecast was $2-4/GJ now it is $10-18/GJ. Consequently Queensland gas power generation has fallen from 13 TWh/y to 4 TWh. Coal has risen 2 TWh while demand has risen by 10 TWh, but it has been more than met by an increase of 15.5 TWh in wind and solar.

Similar stories about exhaustion of cheap coal and gas can be told in the UK, Germany etc. The fracking revolution in the US has actually sped up coal's demise more than renewables but in the rest of the world gas share is also now declining

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Oct 11·edited Oct 13Author

There is no evidence that we are exhausting cheap fossil fuel sources. Fracking in the United States is causing prices to drop and the levels of production are higher than ever.

Shale fields are more widespread than conventional gas fields. Government just choose not to allow drilling.

UK, Australia, and Germany also have shale gas reserves. The government will not allow it to be explored and drilled.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-greens-should-love-fracking

There is no evidence that UK, Australia, and Germany are running out of coal.

I do not know much about the specifics of the examples you mentioned, but it s clearly not because Australia is running out of coal. And according to the data that I can find, Australia has only decommissioned 1 coal power plant in the last 10 years: Liddell Power Station in Sydney.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stations_in_Australia

All retirements before that date were clearly not due to solar and wind. Perhaps Liddell is an example, but my guess is that gas and hydro played an important role in giving Sydney electricity 24/7/365 during nights with no wind. Can you prove that the combined solar and wind generation within the same grid was equal to or greater than the capacity of Liddell Power Station (2051 MW) 24/7/365?

Australia has massive coal reserves. It is public policy in the form of taxes, subsidies, and mandates that is deliberately making coal expensive. Governments basically force capacity down to forward the Green energy policies.

That is a public policy choice, not mother nature.

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Oct 9·edited Oct 13Author

I never said that coal plants could not be decommissioned. I said that there is no evidence of a combination of wind and solar generating enough electricity 24/7/365 within the same grid to replace all the electricity that had been generated by a recently decommissioned coal plant 24/7/365. It requires assistance from some blend of natural gas, nuclear or hydro, all of which are opposed by Greens.

If you think it is “a crock,” then give me one example. For the past few days you have repeatedly make snarky comments about my main points (and also on other columns), but you have refused to answer my challenge to provide one example on my Challenge page:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/prove-that-solarwind-replaces-fossil

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I apologise for being snarkey but you are publishing long posts implying that you have some expertise in the matter and proof that solar and wind don't work and yet you are clearly and obviously wrong. If you don't want criticism don't publish clearly wrong claims.

Your challenge is like saying show me a train line that has been completely replaced by road transport, or why are there still sailing ships and horses, see diesel ships and automobile don't work.

I am not talking about 1957. In 2012 Britain generated 89% of its electricity from coal, gas and nuclear. This year it is 44% where did the rest come from

French nuclear output peaked in 2005 and has been on a long slow decline, yet coal output has declined more than 90% since then.

Australia's total demand on the East coast Grid has risen from 208 TWh in 2008 to 212 TWh/y now, yet gas output is down by 6 TWh and coal generation has fallen by 55 TWh so where did the extra energy come from?

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Oct 11·edited Oct 13Author

Thank you for the apology.

I don’t mind criticism at all.

I never said “solar and wind don’t work.” I never said that a nation could not increase electricity production via wind and solar. The issue is decommissioning coal plants at scale.

You claim that I am “clearly and obviously wrong”, but you have not presented any evidence that shows that I am incorrect about any of the four projects in this article. And every one of them get widespread praise in the media for being example of solar/wind/batteries replacing a coal plant.

Your analogy for trains and sailing ships is not applicable. Trains and ships do not have to load-balance to the second as an electrical grid does. Sailing ships and horses are not common commercial transportation in nations, whereas coal power plants are, particularly in Asia. So, yes, those technologies have been substituted.

The challenge I issued gets to the heart of the difficulty of replacing coal with wind + solar. That is exactly why you can come up with a winning answer. I never said that it is impossible to win. I just have not found a case.

UK largely decommissioned coal plants by very expensive electricity driving down demand. That is a strategy for decommissioning coal, but it is not the same as replacing its electricity with solar and wind. There might be some substitution, but I need to see evidence of it. Wind is so variable that it is really unclear how it can replace a large coal plant without some kind of storage. As far as I know, UK does not have big enough storage to do that.

France’s electrical grid is dominated by nuclear. And French nuclear reactors can modulate. Plus they are planning on building many new nuclear plants. It is possible there is some substitution going on, but the nuclear is so huge, I don’t think it is really an example that other nations to follow.

As for Australia, I never said that solar and wind could not lower coal capacity. The problem is that the coal plants take about 24 hours to power up and down. During that time, they are burning coal and emitting more carbon because their turbine are not warmed up. So lowering capacity does relatively little to lower carbon emissions. You have to take the coal plant completely offline.

And according to the data that I can find, Australia has only decommissioned 1 coal power plant in the last 10 years: Liddell Power Station in Sydney. I have no doubt that wind and solar played a role in substitution, but so did natural gas and hydro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stations_in_Australia

And you said yourself that hydro is load-balancing, which would work well with solar. But this only proves that another energy source other than wind/solar is necessary to decommission coal plants.

Again, in all those cases, I am not saying that I know that there is no substitution. I have just not seen anyone showing the evidence in the data 24/7/365 like Chris Bond is doing.

In summary, until there is a massive increase in utility-scale batteries, you need some blend of natural gas, nuclear, and hydro to decommission coal plants. And utility-scale batteries are very expensive.

For example, the largest largest utility-scale battery is Moss Landing in California. Its total capacity is 750 MW/3,000 MWh.

If we assume that we want to replace just one 1000 MW coal power plant with 12 hours of battery storage (enough for a solar plant to produce enough electricity to get through the night) then that would require 12,000 MWh of utility-scale batteries. Using Tesla’s advertised prices for Megapack, which cost $5,055,940 for a mere 19.3 MWh, then that would cost a whopping $3.1 billion.

And that is just for the batteries. You still have to pay for the solar and wind farms to produce the electricity in the first place. And most likely, you will still need some blend of coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydro to replenish the batteries at night or cloudy days.

Meanwhile, the construction costs for an extremely-energy efficient Combined Cycle Gas Turbine would cost roughly $722 million. This is about half the cost of the construction cost of solar ($1.588 billion) or wind (1.451 billion) without the batteries.

That, by the way, is exactly why I know that true coal-to-renewable substitution is rare. If the largest battery site in the world cannot even replace one coal plant, then there cannot be many examples. Perhaps a few small coal plants.?

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