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G7 countries agree to shut all their coal power plants within the next 10 years
(theprogressplaybook.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Can't wait to see the articles in 10 years about how major countries are phasing out coal in the next 10-20 years.
Again.
The US still has work to do but have you SEEN the decline in coal use here over the past 15 years? Right now I think the US is back to using the same amount of coal that it did in 1965! As a percentage of energy use it's at the level it was in 1949!
Coal use in the United States absolutely fallen off a cliff since 2008.
The optimist in me is pumped about those stats, but the cynical pedantic asshole in me wants to point out >0≠0
Mostly I was just commenting on the fact that I keep seeing articles every few years about how some country or other has gone back on its promises to cut X by Y percent.
Thanks for sharing the facts, though! My cynical side needs to see stuff like that to keep it at bay.
The progress isn't reported on nearly enough and it leaves people feeling cynical and hopeless.
It isn't just burning coal either as US Production of coal is also down nearly 60 percent from its peak.
I'm still not sure we can get them ALL turned off by 2035 but we are on a clear long term trend-line of coal reduction.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. We might get there, and we have to start somewhere.
I hope I'm wrong about reading the articles again.
That’s cool, but the Rio 92 Earth Summit happened 16 years prior to 2008.
The whole two steps forward, one step back just hasn’t cut it.
Between 2012 and 2022 electricity generation from coal has gone down from 2400TWh to 1427TWh for the G7. Most of that comes down to the US, Japan and Germany in that order.The UK and France have basicaly no coal left, besides some rarely running plants and Italy and Canada do exit coal a bit slowler, but do not have too much left anymore.
To look a bit closer. The US has the inflation reduction act and is building out renewables at record pace, while gas is killing coal in most places. The speed in decline is rather rapid. Japan has closed down its nuclear power plants after Fukushima, but is restarting them about now, so a decline in coal consumption is possible. Germany did phase out all its nuclear power plants until last year, but still managed to have a decline in coal electricity generation, due to building out renewables fairly quickly. This means that should go even faster.
So yeah, this might happen. Japan is the one to watch though. It really does not built much clean energy these days.
Yep, but we need to feed the energy needs of the rest of the world (gas and coal is at its highest ever worldwide) or find something to fix that. I mean if we want to save the planet I guess.
Lots of coal in the UK
Over the past year coal has only generated 1.2% of power in the UK
We mine and export as well as a large internal household market. Still lots of coal unfortunately, we may have stopped using it for power generation but it's still being used.
Looks like there's one mine left operating at any real capacity. ~100,000 tonnes a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mines_in_the_United_Kingdom#21st_century
Much of that mine's output is apparently ground down for carbon filters, although it used to be used at a nearby steelworks that I think is now shut.
Domestic use of coal is pretty rare, most people not using gas or electric are using wood burners.
What?
There's Ratcliffe-on-Soar and that doesn't run all the time, and very rarely at anything approaching full power. It's closing for good later this year.
There have actually been a few reversals from major corpos regarding climate change recently. It should be a positive thing, but I just feel like they’re seeing some scary-ass fuckin data. And their revenue predictions are due to take a nosedive when 60% of the population dies from wildfires, flood, famine, and civil strife, and now they’re working to protect their bottom line.
This is actually a new commitment. There have been large-scale cuts to coal uses in several of the countries already, with the UK dropping to near zero.
To add a little colour, the UK has only one left and it's set to close in the next 6 months.