Energy Matters

  How Cool Is Coal? (Originally published 6/16/22) It’s interesting to try and imagine how our children will explain to their grandchildren what it was about burning coal that inspired such fierce allegiance even after we already had less expensive alternatives. Sure, it fueled the industrial revolution–we’ll give it that glory–but what, besides nostalgia for those coal-fired locomotive trains maybe, could it be?? Spoiler alert: you won’t find out the answer here, because we really don’t know. Coal’s un-glorious features are manifold and varied: environmental destruction from mining, mine-workers’ lung diseases, greenhouse gas emissions from mines, greenhouse gas emissions from coal burning, public health impacts of coal burning, health and environmental impacts of coal industry waste, to name the obvious ones.  Let’s start with the mines. Underground mines were responsible for 8% of U.S. methane emissions in 2019 (U.S. Energy Information Administration). Surface mines strip t...

  You Just Might Find - You Get What You Need! (Originally published 6/2/22) By far the most popular “Yes, but…” about wind and solar electricity is, “Yes, but what do you do when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine? We need power when we need it, and we need it, well, all the time.” This used to end the discussion.  But not any more.  Advances in technology, including electricity storage and “demand response” technology, are on target to realistically address the intermittency issue at scale. In the storage arena, battery arrays, hydroelectric plants and pumped hydro will provide part of the answer, storing energy when more is being produced and putting it back onto the grid as needed. But another approach is demand response . Simply put, demand response is a way of controlling demand to respond to supply.   Electricity needs to be used or somehow stored at the instant it is generated.  Conversely, when electricity is called for, it needs to be sup...