Previously we saw Michael LePage reporting that any success with coal reduction would result in a reduction in the price of coal, thus encouraging new coal-fired power plants and thus a curtailment of success at removing coal as a viable power source. Sami Grover @ TreeHugger.com now reports on more agitation in the coal sector:
When I wrote about New Zealand shutting down its last remaining coal mines and aiming for 90% renewables within the decade, some commenters asked an important question:
Will the country continue to mine coal?
The answer, it seems, is maybe not. Or, more accurately, not as much as it once did. As reported over at The Guardian, the government-owned coal miner Solid Energy has announced it is entering managed bankruptcy, amid a crash in coal prices and increasing signs that the world may finally be getting serious about cutting coal use.
Earlier this month, he noted another country in that part of the world was seeing changes in coal mining:
I was already pretty astounded when Australia’s biggest utility carbon polluter turned its back on coal. Still, when the Australian Labor Party’s plans for 50% renewable electricity by 2030 were announced last month, I was by no means prepared for who was going to be backing it—namely, the country’s largest coal mining and energy union.
As reported over at ABC, the CFMEU appears to know which way the energy sector is headed. And the miners’ union representatives are showing their support for clean energy, in exchange for a promise of significant support for adapting to the clean energy economy.
Perhaps coal is really on a downward plunge. The scientists in NewScientist may have assumed that producers would simply lower prices as demand fell, thus luring new buyers, but if the producers go bankrupt, then supplies shrink, which may end up reducing the carrot for coal.
A key step, as I noted earlier, is extending a helping hand to those dependent on fossil fuels for their living, for it’s important to remember that amidst all the demonization of the fossil fuels industry, their goal was never to destroy the world, but to provide energy. Their methods may have been sloppy, foolish, and evidence of greed – but they are humans and now they’ll be needing help in some form. Sami points at the LA Times article for information on Hillary’s plan:
It’s important that we help them transition to a new economy,” she said. “I want to do more to help people in coal country and other parts of our nation that are not enjoying the kind of growth and development and prosperity we’re seeing in a place like Story County,” where the rally was taking place.
Some environmentalists are uneasy with Clinton’s approach so far to climate change. They would like to have seen her work as secretary of State to scuttle the Keystone project. Her relationships with donors and advisors connected to large fossil fuel companies make them anxious. And her support during her 2008 presidential run for “clean coal” as a viable, green alternative has not been forgotten.
Just a slick politician leaping on the express?
While the focus appears to be on solar, fusion research continues apace. Christine Lepisto @ TreeHugger.com reports that a new design may bring fusion power to us in five years. From an MIT report:
Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor — and it’s one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say. The era of practical fusion power, which could offer a nearly inexhaustible energy resource, may be coming near.
Using these new commercially available superconductors, rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting tapes, to produce high-magnetic field coils “just ripples through the whole design,” says Dennis Whyte, a professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. “It changes the whole thing.”
The stronger magnetic field makes it possible to produce the required magnetic confinement of the superhot plasma — that is, the working material of a fusion reaction — but in a much smaller device than those previously envisioned. The reduction in size, in turn, makes the whole system less expensive and faster to build, and also allows for some ingenious new features in the power plant design. The proposed reactor, using a tokamak (donut-shaped) geometry that is widely studied, is described in a paper in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design, co-authored by Whyte, PhD candidate Brandon Sorbom, and 11 others at MIT. The paper started as a design class taught by Whyte and became a student-led project after the class ended.
Fusion is touted as the energy system that keeps on giving. While such a power source would certainly be comforting in that we would retain the central power system to which we’re accustomed, I have to wonder about the inevitable problems of decommissioning the installation, given the problems we’ve seen with systems just now going out of service, as the UK’s The Guardian reports:
The public body charged with overseeing the dismantling of Britain’s network of atomic power and research stations will reveal on Monday that its estimates for the lifetime cost of the programme has risen by billions of pounds.
Despite this, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will say in its annual report that it is getting to grips with the clean-up problem because the rate of cost growth is slowing year-on-year.
Yet the soaring costs will alarm industry critics at a time when the government is trying to encourage construction of a new generation of atomic power plants while plans to construct a permanent home for high-level radioactive waste are stalled.
In the NDA’s 2011 annual report the provisional cost of dealing with the UK’s nuclear legacy was put at £53bn, compared with a 2010 figure of £49bn. The new number in the 2012 set of accounts is expected to be around £55bn. But under previous accounting methods, the figure historically used has risen to well over £80bn with some predicting the final bill could exceed £100bn.
Cost may, I think, be taken as a proxy for difficulty.
