Comment by AnthonyMouse
11 hours ago
The main issue is that China is really big (emits around three times as much total CO2 as the US), so "38 reactors" sounds like a lot but meanwhile they're operating >1000 coal power plants.
11 hours ago
The main issue is that China is really big (emits around three times as much total CO2 as the US), so "38 reactors" sounds like a lot but meanwhile they're operating >1000 coal power plants.
Also, it is a good idea to see where Chinese leaders are expanding focus to see what their thoughts on viability are.
Nuclear has declined as a share of power being built out in 5 year plans. The projected output of nuclear in 2030 is 100GW vs 2800GW for solar+wind.
They have 64 running. 38 is the number that are being built right now. There are also ~20 that have been approved but construction has not yet started.
Right, that's the problem. They need to eat a big hole in a four digit number of coal power plants, so these two digit numbers are insufficient.
The number of coal plants is not relevant. It is how much coal they use that is relevant. Their massive and continuing renewable expansion along with massive storage expansion is bringing that down.
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China is also a Command Economy. The Party has decided that it will run more coal plants more intermittently, allowing it to decarbonize at low risk.
500GW of power at 40% utilisation gets you the same amount of energy as 250GW of power at 80% utilisation, and [roughly] the same CO2 emissions. But 500GW of Solar PV is shadowed effectively by the former where it would not be possible with the latter (without ludicrous amounts of storage). You couldn't choose that in the US or Europe without some kind of sophisticated compensation scheme because it's not profitable, but China does not need to care whether it is profitable only whether it can be done.
I think for places like the US there will be a lot of stranded energy generation and related assets and Capitalism will struggle to make that work even if somebody competent was in charge which of course today they are not.
> You couldn't choose that in the US or Europe without some kind of sophisticated compensation scheme because it's not profitable
"Not profitable" often has a strong correlation with "not efficient".
To begin with, you don't want to be burning coal even 40% of the time. The US generates ~15% of electricity from coal, China ~50%. Coal is the worst for both CO2 and air pollution, significantly worse than even natural gas. It's also worse than natural gas for non-continuous use because gas turbines at least respond quickly to load changes, whereas coal uses steam turbines that respond slowly the same as nuclear. And if you're going to do that in your "command economy" then why aren't you doing it with nuclear instead of coal?
> I think for places like the US there will be a lot of stranded energy generation and related assets and Capitalism will struggle to make that work even if somebody competent was in charge which of course today they are not.
The things that become stranded assets are the fossil fuel (especially coal) power plants, because they aren't viable to operate at times when the price of electricity is below their fuel cost.
It basically means they can't compete with solar during the day (unless it's cloudy and solar isn't available), whereas nuclear can because the negligible fuel cost means it can take any current price as long as it hits a given average price, and it can bring the average up at night. Which means that coal isn't even competitive with nuclear, since nuclear is getting something during the day whereas coal gets nothing, requiring coal to receive an even higher price than nuclear when renewable output is low and then gets out-competed by nuclear.
But the obvious solution to this is to stop burning coal whatsoever. Use nuclear for baseload, solar and wind for cheap variable generation with storage to smooth it out over the course of a day, and hydro or natural gas peaker plants combined with demand pricing to handle extended periods of low renewable output.
In capitalism, coal dies, so why is the "command economy" keeping it alive?
If no one else wants to burn coal, coal will be cheap. It's not that expensive to dig it out of the ground and transport, and most of China's coal is mined in China.
Any solution that doesn't involve everyone agreeing to care about the externalities of coal (air pollution and greenhouse gases) will result in someone continuing to burn a lot of coal.
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They are using coal for the things they cannot yet replace with renewables for the same reason the US is using natural gas: it is the most abundant, secure, and economical non-renewable source they have.
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