Re:U.S. has entered unprecedented climate territory
by bryanlarsen on Thursday May 13, 2021 @11:30AM
(#27143245)
You make a really good point. There's a very clear link between electrification and well-being.
1) Coal pollution kills 10,000 people a year, most of them poor because no rich person would live close to a coal plant. So that's a massive cost weighing heavily on the benefits of coal electrification.
2) Wind & Solar power are cheaper than coal, and not just by a little bit. So much so that in some places the capital and operating costs of wind and solar are cheaper than just the operating costs of coal. In those places abandoning the coal capital is still a win.
3) Much of the capital costs of a coal plant are in it's steam plant and in its grid interconnects. That makes them superb places to turn other heat sources into electricity and great places to inject non-heat sourced green electricity into the grid. So we don't lose all the capital investment into our coal plants.
4) mitigation costs of a tonne of CO2 at $50-$300/tonne make it a no brainer. adaptation costs for climate change would be even higher.
Bill Gates argues your point very strongly in his book. Before he was a climate change activist he was an activist for the health and welfare of the global poor. He understands the importance of electricity to the global poor and firmly rejects any solution that stops the progress of getting it to them.
1) Coal pollution kills 10,000 people a year, most of them poor because no rich person would live close to a coal plant. So that's a massive cost weighing heavily on the benefits of coal electrification.
2) Wind & Solar power are cheaper than coal, and not just by a little bit. So much so that in some places the capital and operating costs of wind and solar are cheaper than just the operating costs of coal. In those places abandoning the coal capital is still a win.
3) Much of the capital costs of a coal plant are in it's steam plant and in its grid interconnects. That makes them superb places to turn other heat sources into electricity and great places to inject non-heat sourced green electricity into the grid. So we don't lose all the capital investment into our coal plants.
4) mitigation costs of a tonne of CO2 at $50-$300/tonne make it a no brainer. adaptation costs for climate change would be even higher.
Bill Gates argues your point very strongly in his book. Before he was a climate change activist he was an activist for the health and welfare of the global poor. He understands the importance of electricity to the global poor and firmly rejects any solution that stops the progress of getting it to them.