I thought California closed all their Natural Gas electrical generating plants?
The biggest issue with this article is the term “new study”. Nothing new about it. In fact the electric companies have been building small gas plants all over the country for the past 15 years. They are decommissioning coal and nuclear plants everywhere.
But solar and wind are not the largest pollution savers. Natural gas by itself is a huge pollution saver. Natural gas is cleaner than coal. And obviously not as clean as nuclear fuel. But its far less costly than nuclear fuel. However, the real savings comes from the fact that gas can be turned up and down like your stove top. Both coal and nuclear must keep running all year, only coming off line for maintenance. So most of the country provides the amount of electricity needed on the worst hour of the worst day, a July heat wave in the late afternoon.
But now that gas plants are being built all over, the amount of coal and nuclear can go down to about half. That is enough electricity for the normal winter day. Then gas is turned on to handle the spikes. Just this change in strategy makes a massive difference in the amount of pollution made by our utilities. And it shows, our CO2 emissions for the country is now about equal to the late 1970’s Even though we have over a million more people and more than triple the productivity. And thats with very little solar or wind. Solar and wind are just not that helpful. But gas is.
Here’s the biggest advantage of natural gas: very little pollution from oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, particulates and heavy metals. That’s why both China and India want to dramatically increase its use in power generation, so they can shut down all those high-polluting coal-fired power plants.
Actually solar cells and wind has a great friend in coal, oil, atom etc.
Solar cells are made of coal used to reduce Sio2 to Si. Overall, the solar cells and wind has very small or even negative net energy production. It take a lot of energy to make ship and install solar cells. So much that it barely returns that energy by using them.
See this German study.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379
That’s why most of them are made in China, where they are now building tons of coal power plants. Basically, when using solar cell, you are using coal, burned in China! CO2 will came here anyway.
Exactly. The heavier you lean toward intermittent sources, the more you need natural gas. NG plants can start and restart quickly as required.
Wind and solar without natgas would be impossible to manage and balance.
Solar has value, it generates the most during the day when demand is high, it shaves the top off the demand curve. But it is not reliable. Wind is even less reliable or predictable. You will always need a reliable source to back them up.
So expect your overall generating costs to be higher.
The Green Nazis do not consider clean natural gas to be clean. It produces plant food, and plant food is a toxic pollutant to the Green Nazis. C02 is a dangerous pollutant to the Green Nazis. Can’t have that. Can’t have that clean burning natural gas producing that nasty plant food!
Economically and environmentally speaking, solar and wind power is a fools errand in the North East and Middle Atlantic states. These damn leftist need to follow the science. They are a bunch of deniers. They deny science. The deny capitalism. They deny energy independence. They deny American greatness.
Note: below the Marcellus Shale layer there is Utica Shale and there exists trillions of cubic feet of additional natural gas.
SAFE, Nuclear Power is the answer. Why are people so afraid to embrace the best renewable power source?
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From the article:
Verdolini emphasized this merely describes the past — not necessarily the future. That’s a critical distinction, because the study also notes that if we reach a time when fast-responding energy storage is prevalent — when, say, large-scale grid batteries store solar or wind-generated energy and can discharge it instantaneously when there’s a need — then the reliance on gas may no longer be so prevalent.