Global coal burning reaches all time high in 2022

unkel

Can't believe I'm reading this. Have we all lost our minds?

https://www.iea.org/news/the-world-s-coal-consumption-is-set-to-reach-a-new-high-in-2022-as-the-energy-crisis-shakes-markets

ELM327

Countries seem to be moving to coal and away from Russian gas, especially in Europe. UK just approved the biggest coal power plant there in years.

Coal from your own region is better than gas from Russia IMO. Not great, but better.

DC999

Yeah, really scary. And UK are opening a mine for first time in 30 years “steel smelting”. But only 1 (of the 3 or 4) steel plants in the UK say they can use it due to high sulphur content afaik. Means it’s unsuitable for that usage.

Tbh, I think they are doing it to get under the radar to ‘save our steel jobs’ but fully plan to sell overseas. There won’t be a steel market to use it basically. Selling overseas means their grid remains clean but push the problem elsewhere. And they plan to turn it off in 2049 before they hit their paper targets for 2050. Do they really think people believe they will only run it for maybe 15years (from when it's ready) and then decide to close it?

If 1st world nations are being so hypocritical and blind, how in gods name can developing countries aspire to having clean fuel (and that’s where the huge population of people are). 

bladespin

Don't understand the surprise, it definitely looks like the lore reliable fuel at the moment given the crazy fluctuations in other sources.

DC999

We’re gonna need sooooo much power as we electrify a much as we can. And challenge is how can every grid in every country do that.

On a micro scale, would be amazing to see a real push to mount solar on every (feasible) State owned roof / school. Subside the crap out of it, even scouts dens / community halls with large roofs all feeding into the grid. Ok, output is muck at certain times of the year. But at least the dirtier plants only need to come online for winter. Plus scramble for other renewables too. 

KildareP

Unfortunate, but not surprising.

And as things stands it will only get worse as we push to electrify heating and transport but without the means to generate that additional power consistently from non-carbon emitting means.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058276001/global-coal-burning-reaches-all-time-high-in-2022

Fan f**king tastic 😫

I'm not at all surprised, coal has been under pressure from cheap gas for years

Expensive gas + a sudden need to get away from one of the biggest suppliers + the total inability of any government or corporate entity to think more than 5 mins ahead means we're suddenly back on coal

bladespin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120002806#Comment_120002806

Excellent comment, tbh the government need to stop pushing the issues onto the general public and start with the state itself, lead by example. Granting everything that's shiny and new only drives prices up and puts the average person off.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058276001/global-coal-burning-reaches-all-time-high-in-2022

With gas prices high coal is the alternative power generator when the wind isn’t blowing- which happens quite often unfortunately.

slave1

Easy short term solution

SuperBowserWorld

People are going to have to consume a lot less to get off coal etc and unto renewables.

The first world is addicted to consumption and is selling the same dream to the rest of the world.

Also, a lot of the popular religions have a meaty end of days chapter in their books. And their followers are getting impatient.

So, it's a win win.

#omg

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120002976#Comment_120002976

Easy Sh!tty short term solution

Fixed that for you 😉

I get what you mean though, gas isn't as cheap or available as before and there's a bunch of coal power plants and mines that can just be switched on to cope with the shortfall

It's still pretty unbelievable that we're in this position. Too many years of politicians and energy companies getting drunk off cheap gas from Russia

I was watching an interview with Ian Hislop recently and he nailed it perfectly when he described the collective delusion regarding the response to the Russian government's various aggressions over the years. After Crimea, it's hard to believe that European governments weren't saying to themselves "these lads aren't exactly being friendly and we're dependant on them for energy, maybe we should build up some domestic production"

Over the past 8 years we should have been installing as many wind and solar farms as possible, interconnecting grids and expanding pumped hydro and battery storage and looking at biogas, biomass and hydrogen production

But no, we've had the standard do nothing response from governments, leave to the market which has now decided coal is great and we all get to suffer the consequences

slave1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003082#Comment_120003082

Agreed, but Nuclear is the answer, sure renewables but from a scaling perspective we gotta nuke things up

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003082#Comment_120003082

Sure weren't we busy with Covid and Brexit and pumping up house prices.

tom1ie

What’s the alternative to fossil fuels when the wind doesn’t blow for a couple of weeks in the depths of winter?

There isn’t one unless you go nuclear fission which comes with its own baggage.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003247#Comment_120003247

There's renewable biomass, biogas or green hydrogen, or nuclear

They all come with their own baggage I'll agree, but I'd say they're a lot better than just digging up coal or other fossil fuels

The thing with biomass and biogas in particular to Ireland is that we've a lot of potential for producing fuel domestically, they're pretty easy to scale up (biogas digesters are literally just a tank of water and plant/animal waste) and can be stored

So we can build up a fuel supply over the summer months when there's plenty of solar and wind to meet demand and use the stored fuel in winter

In my view nuclear is a waste of money for new plants. They can be reasonably cheap when built to a certain scale, but they don't work for Ireland.

I've no issues with current nuclear plants staying in use if the alternative if coal or gas, but the economics of new plants seems pretty dubious

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003161#Comment_120003161

110%, but our stupid bumpkins will never allow it. We should be leading the world in self sufficient energy. We have sufficient solar energy potential with excellent wind and wave energy options, and the potential for nuclear too. We could literally power everything on the island ourselves with zero imported fuel.

josip

Latest stats from the IEA for Q1-Q3 2022. Coal is down 3% in the OECD.

Over the first three quarters of 2022, total electricity production increased by 1.8% or 146.5 TWh compared to the first three quarters of 2021.

Electricity production from renewables was responsible for most of the growth in electricity generation in September 2022 (+6.5% or 165.7 TWh y-t-d), driven by strong wind and solar output, respectively up by 16.1% and 21.1% on a year-to-date basis. This growth compensated the negative trend witnessed by hydro, amounting to a loss of 31.4 TWh (-2.7% y-t-d) compared to the same period of 2021.

Nuclear electricity production in the OECD decreased by 5.6% or 75.7 TWh y-t-d in September 2022, essentially because of reduced nuclear output in the OECD Europe region. In particular, France and Germany’s nuclear power output respectively decreased by 22.0% y-t-d and 49.8% y-t-d.

Electricity production from fossil fuels was fairly stable at 492.6 TWh in September 2022, slightly up by 0.9% compared to the same month last year. In the first three quarters of 2022, production from coal decreased by 3.0% or 48.8 TWh y-t-d, mainly driven by a lower output in the OECD Americas (-9.0% y-t-d), and only partly compensated by a higher output in OECD Europe (+ 7.0% y-t-d). Electricity production from natural gas went up by 4.7% or 109.7 TWh y-t-d, with a positive trend being registered in all OECD regions.

ELM327

That will change though going forward as theres likely to be a sharp drop in imports of gas and oil from Russia early next year.

If I were in charge of this I'd do the same, coal now, but speed up planning for nuclear, wind, wave and solar powerplants.

DC999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003247#Comment_120003247

Fair comment!! Was watching some stuff on that recently. Some in the industry think that’s many, many decades away. They said it’s nonsense talk we’ll see it working commercially in 10 years some predict. At mo the test ones use more energy than they create (so we’d lose energy to use them). And walls of the reactor needs to get partially replaced every few months. So no one knows how that would happen I expect on a commercial scale. Plus needs downtime. Seems the radiation only lasts decades, which is amazing compared to existing nuclear plants. And can’t produce a radiation explosion & from that a huge leak like existing ones – don’t ask me how.

But it’s not ‘knocking at the door’ in terms of being available soon it seems.

Sadly the world will need more nuclear to increase output and remove the coal and other dirty plants. It's very predictable, though not inexpensive or without risk.

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003161#Comment_120003161

I'd also get in behind the nuclear thing. 25 years ago I was pretty anti-nuke, but when you look at the science and actual data regarding safety and waste management, it really has been tarnished badly by 3 mile island, Chernobyl, etc. Sure running on renewables with storage is the ideal scenario, but nuclear can take that 30% base load that never goes away very admirably. People need to "get over themselves" and look at the science.

I would however disagree that governments have been slow over the last decade in getting off Russian gas. Sure, looking back in retrospect it's easy to say "we should have done this, or that", but the reality is that these large scale infrastructure changes require significant investment in countries (limited) resources. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge believer in investing (borrowing if needed) for large scale infra, but it's a very hard "sell" to the populous of a country that

"we can't build a new childrens' hospital cause we're putting in a 400Kva line to the north, etc"

It just doesn't win votes. Sad reality.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058276001/global-coal-burning-reaches-all-time-high-in-2022

nope, we just decided to largely ignore warnings for decades, so here we are, in deep sh1t!

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003302#Comment_120003302

Green hydrogen does not exist as grid storage anywhere in the world so is not an option at the moment.

How much renewable biomass can be grown without taking away from existing agriculture practices? How much would we need as an alternative to fossil fuels?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003014#Comment_120003014

No, I think you'll find that we are more addicted to keeping warm and having a reliable electricity supply than anything else.

DC999

Renewable wise, there is tidal which is very predictable – twice a day every 6 hours. But nothing at scale that I've seen from reading around. Seems a lot of protype stuff from small companies at mo. I read that tidal only gets something like 1euro investment for every 20 on solar / wind / other renewables. Basically it’s no funding so no companies are doing R&D bar small operators. Industry are calling on govs to start investing so companies can start to build the equipment and refine it.

Different types of tidal need certain conditions. Some need large bays like Cork harbour where a very large volume of water goes in and out. And tide height matters too (differs by area). So it’s hard to find those locations - like finding a suitable site for hydro (in the mountains, with a water source, close to a population center)

Others can plonk anywhere and change direction when tide changes. Can add heaps of them it seems.  

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003373#Comment_120003373

True. And food and water and sex.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003423#Comment_120003423

sex is apparently on the decline, apparently....

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003438#Comment_120003438

Too cold for sex. Also everyone is online. 🤣

Hibernation will become popular during the cold months

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003454#Comment_120003454

....im sure theres some interesting studies out there on why, must look into it, for science of course....

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003472#Comment_120003472

Plenty of stuff online. Very little of it based on science. 🤣

BorneTobyWilde

Sweden burn garbage, instead of coal, where they can. Ireland is starting to do more and more of this, SRF Waste,

monseiur

China burns more coal every year that the rest of the world combined. This year China is burning 12.8 million tons of the stuff every day, that's a half a million tons every hour of every day. Last year the daily use was 10.80 million tons. Four new coal burning power stations are under construction and six more in the pipeline between now and 2030. India are building or are planning to build eight new coal power stations, same applies to Indonesia, Bangladesh etc. After the disaster at Fukushima nuclear power station ten years ago, Japan are moving away from nuclear and are now back building coal power stations, importing their coal from Australia & Indonesia etc.....meanwhile the green tail of a government in tiny rocky outcrop island in the north Atlantic is demanding that farmers reduce the number of animals grazing their fields and from next month will fine these same farmers if they burn a pile of twigs, branches or briers all in the pretense of protecting the environment. Yes, the number of cattle will be reduced but the demand for agriculture / dairy products will not reduce, indeed it's on the increase - that gap in the market will be filled by South American farmers especially Brazil who are increasing their cattle herd by 24 million. These extra cattle have to be fed so the constant burning of the Amazon rain forest continues unabated.....and our so called scientists tell us the Amazon rain forest acts as the lungs of our planet The mind boggles

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003692#Comment_120003692

Dublin Waste-to-Energy Facility - Wikipedia

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003955#Comment_120003955

whos the laggard, in regards the change over!

ELM327

There is no changeover in China.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004088#Comment_120004088

of course not, all the data and evidence showing so is completely false!

Addmagnet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003247#Comment_120003247

Geothermal.

District heating schemes, single consumer/commercial heat pumps, even geothermal electricity generation power stations are possible.

All renewable, very low carbon, very environmentally friendly, not subject to the vagaries of sun or wind, and the tech. is widely available now and being refined all the time.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004093#Comment_120004093

I mean, China would never fake anything, right?! lol.

The graph above and the expansion of coal in less developed countries like china, india, and outright 3rd world countries like bangladesh etc is more than offsetting any green nonsense that is peddled this side of the world. Particularly in Europe/EU27.

I'm interested in self sustainability not necessarily renewables, but in any case, we should not be clamping down on coal/oil/gas in the west when the east are burning more and more to make up for what we arent. It's pointless.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004117#Comment_120004117

...so the sources named, must be lying so.... baring in mind, i obtained that graph from adam toozes work!

kabakuyu

We will have to live with some fossil/nuclear fuel for decades to come, no way around it,100% renewables is not going to happen soon.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004362#Comment_120004362

100% renewables may not in fact be possible, some believe this is the case, as we may not have the resources on the planet to do so, so alternatives are probably also needed

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004374#Comment_120004374

I'll believe that when it's tested. PLenty of land in African deserts, australian outbacks and low density population areas in the americas , as well as spain and italy etc. If we put down solar farms in those areas it should be easily possible to cover all our demand and then some.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004419#Comment_120004419

the debate isnt about available land, but actual mineral resources required to build

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004101#Comment_120004101

Will geothermal work in Ireland?

It works in Iceland as they are on a fault line but how would that work here?

Drill massive depth boring holes to access the heat?

Is this commercially viable? If so why haven’t we heard much about- moreover why isn’t there any energy company coming in to exploit this gap?

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004117#Comment_120004117

Couldn’t agree more.

We need gas for when the wind isn’t blowing yet we can only provide 30% domestically and we import 70%.

All the while the environment minister has refused to proactively develop the barryroe site or further develop corrib.

cute geoge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003376#Comment_120003376

I just be following what the green turks be spouting over on 'Green polocies are destroying this country' not one of them have suggested tidal energy and they only stick wind turbines down your troat and the other side as obessive about nuclear energy.Tidal energy seems an ideal fit for this country with surely thousands of inlets,harbours,rivers and tributaries to harness

garo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120002764#Comment_120002764

That's an insane argument. Coal will destroy the entire planet. This is cutting off your head to spite your nose. Coal is absolutely NOT better than Russian gas for global warming or pollution or cancer.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004419#Comment_120004419

The Australian outback is not a bare sand covered wasteland like parts of the Sahara. There are in fact ecosystems. Shading many squre km of such ecosystems with solar panels, or clearing them of existing vegetation, would cause significant harm to the environment.

Asian Renewable Energy Hub plan for WA rejected by federal government on environmental grounds

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-21/government-rejects-plans-for-massive-renewable-energy-hub/100228008

And it's not just a matter of putting up vast areas of solar panels and that's it; That incredibly fine, red bulldust you can see in the link pic coats absolutely everything, with a bit of wind, so solar panels need to be cleaned, regularly.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004505#Comment_120004505

Tidal energy is useless, it's expensive, incredibly intermittent and the number of places where it's remotely viable are minute in number. It's incredibly niche, expensive and likely environmentally destructive.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120003350#Comment_120003350

it only takes one Chernobyl to tarnish things though, that is point people seem to miss

then there is the cost of Nuclear

a subsidized money pit

its also a terrible partner for wind and solar

imagine a mica nuclear plant and you basically sum Ireland up

cute geoge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120004554#Comment_120004554

You have not given one example to back your argument ,years ago small streams were harnessed to power watermills with zero technology yet you just right tidal energy off