Natural Gas a Weak Weapon Against Climate Change, New Study Asserts
Nathan Myhrvold found "some really counterintuitive results" when he and study coauthor Ken Caldeira set out to see what the climate effect would be if the world switched from coal power plants (like the one seen above in West Virginia) to natural gas and other sources.Although natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, a new study argues that replacing all the world's coal power plants with natural gas would do little to slow global warming this century.
"There are lots of reasons to like natural gas, but climate change isn't one of them," said physicist Nathan Myhrvold, lead author of the new study. "It's worthless for [fighting] climate change, as far as we can tell."
The reason for that grim assessment: The carbon dioxide burden already is so large, and its lifetime in the atmosphere is so long, that even a switch to completely carbon-free electricity couldn't stop temperatures from rising over the next 100 years. Switching from coal to natural gas would cut the warming effect in 100 years' time by only about 20 percent, while switching to renewable or nuclear energy would slash the warming effect about two-thirds to three-quarters.
More: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/03/120314-natural-gas-global-warming-study/
Paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/014019/article
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Nuclear power plants are suited for slow rises to steady operating outputs, not rapid cycles up and down.
Now maybe in some areas solar might work okay, because it's pretty predictable and generally in good solar areas more of electricity demand is related to AC, so perhaps you can work in a higher percentage of nuclear with solar. Still, in midline areas like even GA, where much of the heating/cooling is done by heat pump, in the winter season demand ramps up at night.
You have to consider the overall costs of the mix you choose to implement, and that includes everything - required transmission grid changes and costs, the inefficiencies almost all traditional power plants run into when being used to comp highly variable sources such as wind, etc.
If we ever actually do shift to a lot more EV transportation, we are desperately going to need more electricity, highly reliable electricity, and cheap electricity, because unless the electricity is cheap EVs don't work.
Theoretically at least, nuclear power plants can be used to create a highly stable grid with at least controlled electricity costs, but the expected cost per transmitted kwh surely has to go up if they are going to be used in conjunction with a lot wind! They can dump power okay into cooling towers, but the cost factors remain pretty static.
I can't see any way, given a 70% variability in demand curves, plus the 30% output function of wind, that nuclear power plants can be used as too much of the grid inputs.
I really like this site on wind power:
http://www.wind-power-program.com/intermittency.htm
This particular graph is generated from actual UK data using the furthest apart wind farms:
You seem to know a lot about nuclear power. Can you envision a 50% average demand nuclear capacity combined with very much of this?
Bought & paid for by the natural gas industry.
Coal is responsible for a significant, but minority, amount of our carbon emissions. Since, using established measures of emissions natural gas emits about 40% of coal's CO2 emissions, replacing coal with natural gas would have a immediate positive impact, but by itself would do little to change the trajectory we are on.
The primary positive benefit would be the difference in the economic and operational profile of the grid that such a change would bring about. Natural gas plants make it technologically far easier to integrate large amounts of variable energy sources like wind and solar, and, because of their low capital cost and relatively high fuel costs they also are easier to economically displace as more and more renewables come online. Their relatively small capital investment is far easier to work out with a renewable induced decline in market share because there is a related steadily escalating value in the ability to ramp up and down quickly. This will assure increased per MWH revenue even as the number of MWH generated declines.
In other words they phase out without even a whimper, much less the titanic struggle that coal and nuclear wage. For them, the encroachment of renewables is an almost immediate existential crisis because they can only recoup their capital and operating costs by operating almost constantly. If they lose 25% market share it is nearly impossible for them to raise the price of the power they sell into the remaining 75% enough to make up for the revenue lost.
We have more than enough installed natural gas plants to make the transition to renewables if we decide to just build out all of our renewable alternative and I'd prefer that we pursue that path with all haste. However given the real choices on the table, the quickest route is to shift the economics and technological profile of the grid by shutting down as much large scale centralized generation as rapidly we can.
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According to the EIA, the drop in generation from the black rock is the result of warmer weather and increased natural gas use. Total electricity consumption was down 7% in December 2011 compared to December 2010.
Despite this, natural gas saw its consumption rise 12% to 86 terawatts between December 2010 and December 2011 On the other hand, coal's generation dipped 21% to 132 terawatts during the same time frame.
For energy providers, coal is still the number one option, however, low prices and the high efficiency rate of combined cycle power plants is making natural gas more competitive with America's old stalwart energy source.
Coal's competitive advantage in the energy sector looks as though it will continue to decline in near future. New environmental regulations imposed on the industry by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has led to a series of power plant closures, as utilities claim it is too expensive to implement the technology required to meet the new standards.
http://www.energyboom.com/emerging/us-electricity-coals-share-drops-33-year-low-winter-2011
