Energy Roundup: Iron batteries vs. fossil fuels, nuclear vs. climate change, drought vs. life
newsdepo.com
Back when I was, unfortunately, working for the world’s largest coal company, employees were regularly made guinea pugs for the various propaganda pitches that the industry concocted to combat clear evidence that fossil fuels were generating enormous harm aEnergy Roundup: Iron batteries vs. fossil fuels, nuclear vs. climate change, drought vs. life
Back when I was, unfortunately, working for the world’s largest coal company, employees were regularly made guinea pugs for the various propaganda pitches that the industry concocted to combat clear evidence that fossil fuels were generating enormous harm at all levels. One of those pitches what that coal-powered electricity was the only way to provide energy to Africa. The core of that pitch was simply this: Coal is cheap. Because it was cheap, it was the best option to get power to people who were currently without power. So, anyone who campaigned against coal was really campaigning to keep millions of people shut out of modern society, subject to living a pre-industrial age life, and consigned to cooking their meals over dung. I particularly remember the part about cooking over dung. One of the presentations had extensive statistics about how many people still used dung as a form of fuel. Of course, it wasn’t as if someone was going to actually supply those people with electricity from coal. Coal plants come in only two sizes—enormous and Brobdingnagian—and actually getting the power where it wasn’t would mean building thousands of miles of transmission towers and switching stations. There was also the little matter of transporting the coal from mines in South Africa, Australia, or North America. No one was stepping up to make those investments. Everyone knew it wasn’t going to happen, but hey, why do you want sad children cooking over stinky dung fires? Africa-hater! was the refrain. That was then. These days, new solar or wind installations cost less than just maintaining an existing coal-fired plant. That’s leaving aside the cost of building the plant. Or paying for the coal itself. Just keeping the plant running cost more than it does to do everything necessary to create renewable energy from scratch. Now you’re getting stories like this one from Renewable Energy World, on the Nigeria Rural Electrification Project, and how real funding is cropping up to connect thousands of people—who have never had electricity before—to renewable energy, distributed using micro-grids. Coal is no longer a cheap solution. Renewables are. But don’t worry. I’m sure the propaganda wing of fossil fuel companies still has plenty of dung. Read more