the end of coal in the usa, charted:
The fact that US generates so much wind energy is great. But there is nothing to rejoice about the fall of energy generations in general or about how “gdp these days has been decoupled from energy consumption” as many like to say - the later is a sign of the tragedy of deindustrialization and manufacturing ofshoring that has come to bite both Europe and US dearly. Surely, if one closes steel industries, degrades even the most basic and core defense industries, stops building houses ond replaces all of the above in their GDP metrics by finacial instruments, take away coffees and streaming subscriptions and explicitly excludes housing costs from inflation metrics (khe khem to both US and UK), one can indeed have a “great economy” full of angry houseless and indebted people serving their landlords. And then one may spend time wondering how come, its so strange, our “energy efficient” economy is doing better and better each year!
Meanwhile China and India are opening new coal plants weekly, more than offsetting US emission reduction. We pay the price. They get the energy.
To those whinging about the chart being misleading, it’s not. The header says “Wind is generating more electricity in the US than coal”… That is completely accurate. It says nothing about wind being the reason coal-powered energy is dropping.. What I find interesting is the smoothness of the drop (even/especially during the Trump administration when one might assume based on his campaign boasts that everything in the US would be made out of coal by now).
This is a terribly misleading plot. It should include natural gas, because it is needed to make up for the intermittency of wind.
Wow that looks like the standard of living graphs for the US over the same time period . Lower energy production means lowered standards of living . I wonder what energy type replaced coals contributions.
It was mostly killed by cheap frack gas but solar may have finished it off. Even without subsidies it is a bit cheaper to install new solar than keep an old coal plant running, even if the US still has coal reserves.
No wonder my electric bill is going up so much. Demand is increasing and a key supplier is being pushed out of the market and being replaced by a very inconsistent means of power generation. Great recipe to destroy the economy.
Thank God there's a more accurate chart !!! Natural Gas is blowing them all away
Director of Technology and Product Optimization at Cimarron
3wThe drop in coal is a lot more than the rise in wind. The elephant in the room is NG. NG displaced coal. Wind and solar are sidekicks.