74% of US coal plants threatened by renewables, but emissions continue to rise

[SBUS-CXK]

In the US, coal is challenged by newer technology, but it's not happening fast enough.

MEGAN GEUSS - 3/27/2019, 5:00 AM

Enlarge / Wind turbines spin as steam rises from the cooling towers of the Jäenschwalde coal-fired power plant.
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report on Monday saying that in 2018, "global energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7 percent to 33 Gigatonnes." That's the most growth in emissions that the world has seen since 2013.

Coal use contributed to a third of the total increase, mostly from new coal-fired power plants in China and India. This is worrisome because new coal plants have a lifespan of roughly 50 years. But the consequences of climate change are already upon us, and coal's hefty emissions profile compared to other energy sources means that, globally, carbon mitigation is going to be a lot more difficult to tackle than it may look from here in the US.

Even in the US, carbon emissions grew by 3.1 percent in 2018, according to the IEA. (This closely tracks estimates by the Rhodium Group, which released a preliminary report in January saying that US carbon emissions increased by 3.4 percent in 2018.)

"By country, China, the United States, and India together accounted for nearly 70 percent of the rise in energy demand," Reuters wrote.

74 percent of coal-fired power uneconomic in the US?
The numbers remind us that economics alone is likely not enough to rein in carbon emissions in the United States. Last week, the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that barring some significant and unforeseeable changes, carbon emissions from the US are likely to stay about the same through 2050.

This estimate takes into account big carbon-cutting measures that were already on the books in many states at the end of 2018, including California's pledge to meet 100 percent of its energy needs with carbon-free electricity. (It doesn't, however, take very recent policy decisions into account, like New Mexico's similar pledge that was signed in March.)

Energy Information Administration
The projections from the EIA assume that coal will be phased out aggressively, but despite that phaseout, the EIA expects 17 percent of the nation's energy mix to come from coal-fired power in 2050.

There is some hope that the EIA's projections are overly conservative. Analyst firm Vibrant Clean Energy (VCE) and nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation released a report (PDF) on Monday saying that 74 percent of coal-fired capacity in the US is uneconomic compared to new, local renewables. That is, the report compared the Marginal Cost of Energy (MCOE) of continuing to operate coal-fired power plants with the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of replacing that capacity with new wind or solar.

The result was that, megawatt-hour for megawatt-hour, brand-new renewable energy was cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants 74 percent of the time. By 2025, the researchers found that 85 percent of the US coal fleet was uneconomic compared to brand new renewable energy.

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  VCE / Energy Innovation
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  VCE / Energy Innovation

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So why aren't coal-fired power plants facing more retirements if they're such a bad deal to keep running compared to newer, cleaner energy? Ultimately, the cost of running a coal-fired power plant is different from the price that the owner of that power plant gets paid, and in many markets, old power plants can keep making a profit on the rates that they collect. Utility Dive notes specifically that many coal plants in the Northeast benefit from selling power on the regional grid operator's capacity market, which is a market for energy companies to sell their electricity years ahead of time.

VCE and Energy Innovation admit that simply comparing MCOE of coal and LCOE of renewable energy is not enough to determine whether a coal plant will shut down. But the firms' report says that any coal plant failing that comparison should trigger "a wake-up call for policymakers and local stakeholders that an opportunity for productive change exists in the immediate vicinity of that plant."

Could batteries pick up the slack?
On Tuesday, Bloomberg New Energy Finance released a report saying that the LCOE of lithium-ion grid-scale batteries (that is, the cost of the batteries and installation divided by the amount of useable energy they'll provide over their lifetimes) has fallen 35 percent since the first half of 2018 to $187 per megawatt-hour.


Enlarge
For comparison, the VCE and Energy Innovation report that came out on Monday noted that most existing coal plants have an MCOE of $33 to $111 per megawatt-hour. If the price of batteries continues to fall as much as it did in 2018, banks of lithium-ion batteries could soon be competitive with a number of expensive but still-operational coal plants in the US. And unlike wind and solar, large banks of batteries offer dispatchable energy, which can be used regardless of whether the wind is blowing and the Sun is shining.

Still, waiting for economics to run its course and kill coal doesn't solve the problem of natural gas, which is extremely cheap and booming in the United States. Natural gas was partially responsible for the run-up in carbon emissions last year. To tackle that problem, it currently seems that policy or technology will have to intervene.

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...by-renewables-but-emissions-continue-to-rise/

@Get Ya Wig Split Your low IQ makes you happy

 

[Get Ya Wig Split]

China Is Burning Away Its Ecological Future
Chinese cities have a garbage problem — but incineration is no solution.

China’s industrialization has put heavy pressure on the environment. For decades, China was the fastest-growing country in the world, powered by heavy industry that transformed it into the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The ecological degradation at home caused public outcry, but the desire to catch up with the West overrode that concern. The damage was so bad that over 1.6 million people in China are estimated to have died in 2013 from air pollution alone. According to a Greenpeace report, water pollution has also reached an alarming level, with more than half the water in major rivers in eight Chinese provinces deemed “unsuitable for human contact” as of 2015.

Today, China is attempting to reposition itself as a green power. After much criticism, the government publicly declared war against pollution, announcing its intention to create an “ecological civilization.” Traditionally, China’s pollution problem was caused by heavy industry. Now that China is ready to rebalance its economy toward a consumption-led model, it hopes to reduce the environmental burden. However, with cities as large as midsize European countries and a population eager to consume, China faces a new environmental dilemma: what to do with the municipal waste generated by consumerism.

As recently as the 2000s, the majority of Chinese still lived in the countryside; in 1990, just 26 percent of them officially lived in the cities. But decades of remarkable urbanization have, according to the China statistical yearbook of 2016, left 56.1 percent of Chinese living in cities. But with cities comes trash—as of 2004, China was already the world’s largest municipal solid waste generator, according to the World Bank.

In China, garbage is commonly handled via landfills (60.16 percent) or incineration (29.84 percent), and sometimes untreated discharge (8.21 percent), with the proportion of each shifting every year. Because landfills can no longer keep up with the demands of growing cities, incineration is on the rise. Some argue that incineration is more economically efficient, as it reduces the volume of waste after burning by up to 90 percent, while reducing the weight by 70 percent, thus saving a lot of land resources. Coupled with energy recovered through incineration, waste-to-energy power plants have spread throughout China’s new cities. Although the Chinese government has tried to promote such facilities as a clean way to get rid of waste, civil society has often opposed the construction of new incinerators, for fear that they will lead to even more pollution. Protests have broken out across China, in Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Hainan and elsewhere, against plans to build new incinerators.

According to the “13th Five-Year Plan on the Construction of Urban Domestic Waste Harmless Treatment Facilities,” China has promised to reduce the proportion of landfill disposal to 43 percent and increase the proportion of waste incineration to 54 percent, with 60 percent of the increase in trash incineration taking place in China’s densely populated east. The goal is to increase the incineration capacity to 442,200 tons per day by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan. Some analysts estimate that the incinerated solid waste may even reach 591,400 tons per day in 2020, as opposed to 235,200 tons per day as it was in 2015.

On July 18, 2018, the Wuhu Ecology Center released its fourth observation report on the “Information Disclosure and Pollutant Discharge of 359 Domestic Waste Incineration Plants.” According to the report, China is currently host to 359 waste incinerators, distributed across 29 provinces, direct-administered municipalities, and autonomous regions. In private, experts say that by 2020, China will have about 500 incinerators, although this information has not been made public by any government official. On the other hand, the number of landfills is expected to peak at around 2,400, and then slightly decrease to about 2,000, as some of them will soon reach saturation point.

This is a potential environmental disaster. Waste-to-energy is erroneously promoted as a circular economy solution. The argument used is that the process of burning trash allows cities to recover some energy, while getting rid of the waste. But the real picture is more complex.

Incineration does not eliminate the waste, it only reduces its volume, creating about 0.3 tons of bottom ash for every ton of burned waste. Whereas 90 percent of the ash is nontoxic (bottom ash, collected under the furnace), the other 10 percent is considered hazardous waste (fly ash). The pollutant discharge includes leachate, boiler and economizer ash, grate siftings, air pollution control residues, and fly ash, and is created at various stages in the incineration process.

Waste-to-energy technology is not environmentally friendly, as it requires very high temperatures that in turn maximize the production of the pollutant dioxin, making energy recovery technologically incompatible with reducing dioxin emissions. Dioxin is a persistent organic pollutant that can easily get into the food chain and is highly toxic. Although sophisticated filters are used to prevent its release in the air, no available technology can stop dioxin formation, which is a natural result of combustion. Dioxin can be found in the fly ash, alongside other hazardous substances such as furans, heavy metals, and nanoparticles. The treatment of fly ash is thus extremely important. Even in the most technologically advanced countries, fly ash is mainly dumped in impermeable bags in special landfills, such as salt mines in Germany. Other countries try to stabilize the ash by mixing it with other substances, such as cement, creating solid blocks that can be used for paving sidewalks, in construction, and so on.

In China, the pollutant discharge is mainly treated by landfilling. According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, if a province does not have enough land for new landfills, the incineration residue will be stored in neighboring provinces, which will be “encouraged” to “build incineration residues and fly ash centralized treatment and disposal facilities through regional joint construction and sharing.” As the Wuhu Ecology Center report shows, this is a worrying situation. There are some regulations to control fly ash, but the implementation is, unfortunately, very poor. In many cases, the toxic ash is dumped alongside normal waste in landfills without any supervision or appropriate signaling. The report further says that China’s environmental law mandates that waste incineration facilities should be included among key pollutant discharge units and should actively disclose their environmental information. In practice, such information is not made available to the public and has to be actively sought.

Although tempting at a first glance, the energy recovery myth is dangerous for China.Although tempting at a first glance, the energy recovery myth is dangerous for China. The current governmental approach gives a green light to an entire industry worth $16.3 billion that will need at least 15 years to recover their investment.

Incineration is a short-term solution, capable of inflicting much more damage on the environment. Incineration does not eliminate the use of landfills. What it does, instead, is fill them with residue 10 times more harmful than regular waste that can lead to a much worse environmental crisis over time. Nonetheless, waste-to-energy investment sabotages cleaner industries based on “zero waste” principles and on the concept of circular economy.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/26/china-is-burning-away-its-ecological-future/

No blue skies in Beijing as Chinese capital chokes on smog during key political meeting

(CNN)Beijing residents who are putting up with extra security checks and traffic restrictions this week for the annual meeting of the country's lawmakers are doing so without the usual compensation of glorious blue skies.
The Chinese capital was choking on smog Tuesday morning, even as the [URL='http://www.bjepb.gov.cn/bjhrb/xxgk/jgzn/jgsz/jjgjgszjzz/xcjyc/xwfb/846427/index.html']city's environment bureau said an orange air pollution warning issued over the weekend was due to be lifted as the situation improved.

An orange alert, the second-highest on the city's four-tier system, advises elderly people and children to remain indoors. During an orange alert, outdoor construction work is halted, and limited traffic restrictions are introduced in order to cut down on the amount of pollutants being added to the poisonous air.

Beijing is currently hosting the annual meeting of lawmakers known as the "Two Sessions." Sunday was the first day of the annual Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a body that nominally advises on laws and policy and whose members include numerous retired officials and celebrities. The National People's Congress, China's rubber stamp parliament, begins its annual session on Tuesday.

While the situation is forecast to improve during the day, as of Tuesday morning, the air quality index was still over 270, according to the World Air Quality Index, an independent body which collates various pollution monitoring data.

That puts it in the US Environmental Protection Agency's "very unhealthy" category. The EPA warns such levels of air pollutions can effect the entire population, and warns people to avoid outdoor exertion.

In the past, major political events in Beijing have been greeted with blue skies, as the Chinese authorities shut down factories in neighboring provinces and limit traffic to ensure clean air.

A study in 2016 said the practice came at a severe cost, however, as production is ramped up to compensate for economic losses incurred during the shut down.

"'Political blue sky' comes with the price of retaliatory pollution after political events," the study's authors said.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1102699060933218304

In 2015, after a major military parade in Beijing enjoyed clear blue skies, it took less than 24 hours for the city to be enveloped once again in a choking gray smog.

This week's pollution will be particularly embarrassing for Beijing's government, as it has actually seen a marked progress in recent years in terms of tackling smog, with numerous measures taken to cut down on pollutants. However, much of the current situation is caused by weather conditions blowing smog from neighboring cities and regions into the capital due to the unique geography of Beijing.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/04/asia/beijing-smog-two-sessions-intl/index.html

Don't let the smog choke you lil busta @Two

[/URL]

 

[SBUS-CXK]

China Is Burning Away Its Ecological Future
Chinese cities have a garbage problem — but incineration is no solution.

China’s industrialization has put heavy pressure on the environment. For decades, China was the fastest-growing country in the world, powered by heavy industry that transformed it into the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The ecological degradation at home caused public outcry, but the desire to catch up with the West overrode that concern. The damage was so bad that over 1.6 million people in China are estimated to have died in 2013 from air pollution alone. According to a Greenpeace report, water pollution has also reached an alarming level, with more than half the water in major rivers in eight Chinese provinces deemed “unsuitable for human contact” as of 2015.

Today, China is attempting to reposition itself as a green power. After much criticism, the government publicly declared war against pollution, announcing its intention to create an “ecological civilization.” Traditionally, China’s pollution problem was caused by heavy industry. Now that China is ready to rebalance its economy toward a consumption-led model, it hopes to reduce the environmental burden. However, with cities as large as midsize European countries and a population eager to consume, China faces a new environmental dilemma: what to do with the municipal waste generated by consumerism.

As recently as the 2000s, the majority of Chinese still lived in the countryside; in 1990, just 26 percent of them officially lived in the cities. But decades of remarkable urbanization have, according to the China statistical yearbook of 2016, left 56.1 percent of Chinese living in cities. But with cities comes trash—as of 2004, China was already the world’s largest municipal solid waste generator, according to the World Bank.

In China, garbage is commonly handled via landfills (60.16 percent) or incineration (29.84 percent), and sometimes untreated discharge (8.21 percent), with the proportion of each shifting every year. Because landfills can no longer keep up with the demands of growing cities, incineration is on the rise. Some argue that incineration is more economically efficient, as it reduces the volume of waste after burning by up to 90 percent, while reducing the weight by 70 percent, thus saving a lot of land resources. Coupled with energy recovered through incineration, waste-to-energy power plants have spread throughout China’s new cities. Although the Chinese government has tried to promote such facilities as a clean way to get rid of waste, civil society has often opposed the construction of new incinerators, for fear that they will lead to even more pollution. Protests have broken out across China, in Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Hainan and elsewhere, against plans to build new incinerators.

According to the “13th Five-Year Plan on the Construction of Urban Domestic Waste Harmless Treatment Facilities,” China has promised to reduce the proportion of landfill disposal to 43 percent and increase the proportion of waste incineration to 54 percent, with 60 percent of the increase in trash incineration taking place in China’s densely populated east. The goal is to increase the incineration capacity to 442,200 tons per day by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan. Some analysts estimate that the incinerated solid waste may even reach 591,400 tons per day in 2020, as opposed to 235,200 tons per day as it was in 2015.

On July 18, 2018, the Wuhu Ecology Center released its fourth observation report on the “Information Disclosure and Pollutant Discharge of 359 Domestic Waste Incineration Plants.” According to the report, China is currently host to 359 waste incinerators, distributed across 29 provinces, direct-administered municipalities, and autonomous regions. In private, experts say that by 2020, China will have about 500 incinerators, although this information has not been made public by any government official. On the other hand, the number of landfills is expected to peak at around 2,400, and then slightly decrease to about 2,000, as some of them will soon reach saturation point.

This is a potential environmental disaster. Waste-to-energy is erroneously promoted as a circular economy solution. The argument used is that the process of burning trash allows cities to recover some energy, while getting rid of the waste. But the real picture is more complex.

Incineration does not eliminate the waste, it only reduces its volume, creating about 0.3 tons of bottom ash for every ton of burned waste. Whereas 90 percent of the ash is nontoxic (bottom ash, collected under the furnace), the other 10 percent is considered hazardous waste (fly ash). The pollutant discharge includes leachate, boiler and economizer ash, grate siftings, air pollution control residues, and fly ash, and is created at various stages in the incineration process.

Waste-to-energy technology is not environmentally friendly, as it requires very high temperatures that in turn maximize the production of the pollutant dioxin, making energy recovery technologically incompatible with reducing dioxin emissions. Dioxin is a persistent organic pollutant that can easily get into the food chain and is highly toxic. Although sophisticated filters are used to prevent its release in the air, no available technology can stop dioxin formation, which is a natural result of combustion. Dioxin can be found in the fly ash, alongside other hazardous substances such as furans, heavy metals, and nanoparticles. The treatment of fly ash is thus extremely important. Even in the most technologically advanced countries, fly ash is mainly dumped in impermeable bags in special landfills, such as salt mines in Germany. Other countries try to stabilize the ash by mixing it with other substances, such as cement, creating solid blocks that can be used for paving sidewalks, in construction, and so on.

In China, the pollutant discharge is mainly treated by landfilling. According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, if a province does not have enough land for new landfills, the incineration residue will be stored in neighboring provinces, which will be “encouraged” to “build incineration residues and fly ash centralized treatment and disposal facilities through regional joint construction and sharing.” As the Wuhu Ecology Center report shows, this is a worrying situation. There are some regulations to control fly ash, but the implementation is, unfortunately, very poor. In many cases, the toxic ash is dumped alongside normal waste in landfills without any supervision or appropriate signaling. The report further says that China’s environmental law mandates that waste incineration facilities should be included among key pollutant discharge units and should actively disclose their environmental information. In practice, such information is not made available to the public and has to be actively sought.

Although tempting at a first glance, the energy recovery myth is dangerous for China.Although tempting at a first glance, the energy recovery myth is dangerous for China. The current governmental approach gives a green light to an entire industry worth $16.3 billion that will need at least 15 years to recover their investment.

Incineration is a short-term solution, capable of inflicting much more damage on the environment. Incineration does not eliminate the use of landfills. What it does, instead, is fill them with residue 10 times more harmful than regular waste that can lead to a much worse environmental crisis over time. Nonetheless, waste-to-energy investment sabotages cleaner industries based on “zero waste” principles and on the concept of circular economy.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/26/china-is-burning-away-its-ecological-future/

LOL. You are low IQ and inferior...

China Is Set To Become The World's Renewable Energy Superpower, According To New Report
https://www.forbes.com/sites/domini...ina-renewable-energy-superpower/#50af4c7a745a

China Proposes 75% Increase To 2030 Renewable Energy Target
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/09/27/china-proposes-75-increase-to-2030-renewable-energy-target/

China leading on world’s clean energy investment, says report
https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-leading-worlds-clean-energy-investment-says-report

China Is the New World Leader in Renewable Energy
https://futurism.com/china-new-world-leader-renewable-energy

@Get Ya Wig Split Lower animal.

 

[oprih]

Disgusting and dirty muricans need to stop polluting the world.