🔋The Coald Truth
Coal emissions are perhaps the biggest opportunity for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but how if it's out of our control?
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Climate change, the environment, and energy policy are some of the most important factors for US voters across various polling agencies[1,2,3]. While partisan debate begins to arise around the climate change, it no doubt a topic governments around the world are taking seriously. Regardless of personal feelings towards climate change, how it is perceived, and the actions taken thus far, we are on a path broadly aiming to reduce man-made carbon dioxide emissions and reduce environmental negatives brought with fossil fuels.
I stumbled upon a piece recently with one of those click-baity titles, “This One Thing Can Save The Planet.” While there certainly isn’t just one thing that can save the planet as the title suggests, the theme of the article is that coal is the big bad when it comes to current energy production. While I don’t agree with the whole article, his overarching narrative about coal is true. It is becoming common knowledge that coal, the resource that sparked the industrial revolution, is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. In reality, it is the cheap cost of coal which has allowed coal to remain such a large fraction of global energy production. Ironically, the most important thing to voters is the economy and inflation which of course relates to energy prices. The top 5 coal consuming countries today are China, India, United States, Germany, and Russia which unsurprisingly are some of the top economies in the world.
In terms of overall energy consumption in the US, which includes but is not limited to electricity production, coal use has decreased significantly since 2007. Up to 2007, emissions were stagnant and only changed once the replacement of coal with natural gas during the US shale revolution began in earnest. This trend perfectly correlates and explains the significant reduction in emissions the US has seen over the same time frame. While this is positive, the globalization of the economy and subsequent de-industrialization of the US economy means that we have essentially “outsourced” our emissions to other countries like China in the form of imports. While the US emissions picture looks to be an improving one, its not the whole picture as our goods are often prepared in other countries.
The US’s largest trading partner, China, is known as being the most polluting country. Much nuance is lost when they are blamed for the sheer quantity of emissions. It is US demand for goods that has incentivized the use of cheap coal to produce things. The US may not be responsible for those emissions, but they certainly rely on them. Given the same lack of aversion/regulation on energy/labor in the US, you can bet it would be the US doing the same thing. It is a convenient blind eye that is a luxury to the US, similar in my opinion to the mining of critical resources I have touched on in the past.
It is widely known that China’s energy mix is not the same. They use a lot of coal, but ironically have the most aggressive renewable energy buildout by capacity of any country as well. This fact can be neglected by the percentage chart below, and is due to the sheer amount of energy produced. In 2022, China consumed 70% more total energy than the US who is next on the list.
This is significant because coal has the largest emissions intensity of any other energy source. On top of that, it hosts a variety of other environmental concerns like mining and air quality related issues. Taking a look at charts of the ‘lifecycle carbon dioxide equivalent emissions’ for each energy source in terms of electricity production, we can compare between the sources with reasonable confidence. The often quoted IPCC estimates clearly indicate coal has twice as much carbon dioxide emissions as natural gas, both of which on an order of magnitude greater than solar, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Not pictured is oil which is close to or on par with coal based on other estimates. There are multiple sources of estimates which vary depending on whether coming from a university, government agency, or industry and whether any inherent biases are present. One thing remains consistent is that in all cases nuclear, hydro, and wind seem to be the lowest, with solar and biomass not far behind, and unsurprising fossil fuels by far the highest[5,6,7,8].
While the US has significantly been reducing its emissions domestically since 2007 mostly by substituting coal with natural gas, it has been overshadowed by the increase in coal consumption elsewhere, most notably China. The article I reference gets the coal story right, his conclusion that rapid wind and solar buildout as the solution is incomplete. While wind/solar irrespective of their mining/environmental impacts do have some of the lowest lifecycle emissions and it would be logical to replace coal with these sources to reduce emissions. I have argued nuclear power had it not been demonized after infamous accidents, could’ve drastically reduced the global emissions contributed to date. In addition, the shutdown of nuclear in conjunction with the rapid renewables strategy has in fact increased coal usage in certain countries. Hydro and geothermal are geographically dependent, but easily slot in as answers given their emissions estimates.
Finally, staunch environmentalists against all forms of fossil fuels miss out on the opportunity for the US and others to continue contributing to the global natural gas market and thereby allowing more coal to be replaced by the cleaner burning natural gas. Unfortunatly, geopolitical tensions have contributed to the volatility of the liquefied natural gas market even pushing lower income countries out of the market in some instances. With a proven track record in the US, lower lifecycle emissions, and a cleaner burning profile, natural gas still should be part of the solution in my opinion.
Since the US doesn’t control China, the best way to combat the emissions of China would be to take a strategy out of their playbook. Emphasizing and producing cheap forms of energy therefore undercutting energy prices would limit the economic benefit to using coal. Serious energy policy of producing more natural gas to lower prices, reducing drags on nuclear power, and a buildout of wind/solar/hydro/geothermal where most sensible would not only reduce the economic demand for coal but likely bring back manufacturing industry to the cheapest energy areas. This adds further benefits if technology and energy can be exported, bringing in economic value from elsewhere and boosting tax revenues. This is similar to the Russia sanction story, as the most important way to truly limit Russia would be to produce more oil, undercutting the price, and hurting profits of their most important industry funding the governments war efforts.
There is much nuance to the energy and climate change topic often missed in journalists and policies these days. While agriculture and transportation sectors have been ignored in this piece, it is clear that coal is the biggest opportunity for carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. This “one solution” has a variety of solutions in my opinion, often overlooked by those most concerned. Until next week,
-Grayson
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