this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023

170 points (98.3% liked)

News

22890 readers

4726 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

170

40% of US electricity is now emissions-free (arstechnica.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Good news as natural gas, coal, and solar see the biggest changes.

Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023.

But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production.

top 12 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

wow-- it's that much? that's awesome!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

It is great to see, but it's not a big shift year over year. Hopefully with declining solar costs and advancements in SMRs we see more removal of coal and gas.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Good job nuclear at beating out coal for 2nd place. Hopefully modular reactors increase on popularity to combat coal and other fossil fuels, with help from the other green energy sources.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

"Nuclear itself is largely unchanged, allowing it to pass coal thanks to the latter's decline. Its output has been boosted by a new, 1.1 Gigawatt reactor that come online this year (a second at the same site, Vogtle in Georgia, is set to start commercial production at any moment). But that's likely to be the end of new nuclear capacity for this decade; the challenge will be keeping existing plants open despite their age and high costs."

With its very high cost, still unresolved waste issues and government-required support, it's hard to believe that nuclear has any real future. At the same time the costs for renewables is trending downward.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

very high cost, still unresolved waste issue

The whole point of modular plants is their lower entry cost. And nuclear waste has been being recycled in France for decades.

Nuclear has an important role in a zero emission world along the other green energies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

You are absolutely correct about the eulogy for nuclear but will get many downvotes online from the idealistic yet unrealistic youth.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

From what I understand on nuclear, it’s expensive because few people have experience planning or building them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hydroelectric production has dropped by about six percent since last year, causing it to slip from 6.1 percent to 5.8 percent of the total production. Depending on the next couple of months, that may allow solar to pass hydro on the list of renewables.

That’s a little disappointing. Hydro seems to always be forgotten amongst renewable sources. Granted, it’s the most location specific of the renewables, but still.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hydro is often environmentally destructive in its own way, though. Building dams may be controversial when it upsets river and lake ecosystems, and may even deprive some folks of what could be a primary food source.

An example that came up recently.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

It might also be environmentally precarious but I’m interested in seeing some of the ocean current and heat differential and other non river hydro solutions being proposed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I just saw an interesting video about a turbine-less hydro generator that also doesn't require a lot of head: https://youtu.be/ArQE3SB0kyM?si=9a6DvG5g3D4bJiQl

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

As water sources dry up, I can't imagine production won't drop. And building any more dams would be politically controversial.