this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Call me cynical but I'll be shocked if this isn't either quietly repealed or overturned in the courts before it does any good. The even more cynical side of me says that is the intent and its only purpose is to pacify people by making them think something is being done when they know it won't actually go into effect.
The US has already demolished the bulk of its coal-burning power plants because they've become one of the more expensive ways to generate electricity.
That's not even close to true. Coal is becoming less competitive as time goes on but that is a recent development. There are still coal plants all over the place.
What do you mean by "not even close to true"? Coal is dying, period. Half of US capacity gone by 2026, and already over half of energy production from peak in 2011 as of 2022. Maybe that's not "the bulk" to you, but coal is in a freefall no matter how you slice it.
https://ieefa.org/resources/us-track-close-half-coal-capacity-2026
Half, which you just admitted is a projection of what will happen in the future and not something that's already happened, is not most. Saying most coal plants have already been taken out of service is demonstrably untrue. I'm not sure what is confusing about that statement. If anything, presenting a future projection as if it has already come to pass is the confusing bit in this conversation.
I didn't "admit" anything, I just wanted to provide context that broadly substantiates the fact that coal is in a free fall and already produced less than half of the electric energy it did at its peak in 2011. You can try to be pedantic about the count of plant closures being the one true metric, but what matters is production, which in fact is already more than halved as of over a year ago as we know. Plants make money from capacity markets even if they don't run, which allows them to limp along a bit before actually closing entirely, so that doesn't really tell the story. So yes, the "bulk" of coal production is already gone as of over a year ago. When you use such strong language like "that's not even close to true" that implies the opposite is true, which it obviously isn't. You're welcome to add context and clarify, add sources etc, but your statement struck me as misleading and you didn't back it up at all.
The original statement I responded to was that the bulk of coal plants are already shut down. At face value that should mean that very few coal plants are still in operation. That is far from accurate as we've established multiple times now. Call that correction pedantic if you want to but I don't think the difference between either a dozen or over a hundred coal plants remaining in operation is insignificant. Personally I find the fact that you're still dancing around the definitions of "bulk" and "most" instead of just correcting the description to "some" or even "many" to be the epitome of pedantry but to each his own.
They're a very regional phenomenon at this point, as coal use has sharply declined:
That's great news for the future, and it aligns with what I said about coal being in decline. What is not true is your assertion that the bulk of coal plants in the US have already been decommissioned. Your own chart confirms that a large percentage of coal plants are still in operation.
Most of them are already shut down, and a whole batch more have committments to close within a few years. We're at something like 70% either closed or committed to shutdown at this point.
My biggest issue is that all of these policies have huge timescales for the crisis at hand. 90% reduction of emissions..! ^By ^2036.