[HN Gopher] Coal mines emit more methane than oil-and-gas sector...
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Coal mines emit more methane than oil-and-gas sector, study finds
Author : doener
Score : 147 points
Date : 2020-03-28 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.carbonbrief.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.carbonbrief.org)
| defterGoose wrote:
| Is this based on reported emissions from oil/gas sites or actual
| emissions? Because there was a big report recently that showed
| that many gas and oil processing operations are routinely
| emitting far more methane than they claim, due to leaks and other
| faulty equipment.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes, the numbers for methane pollution in both coal and oil
| extraction are entirely untrustworthy, and a headline comparing
| them is just clickbait.
|
| That said, methane emission associated with coal extraction is
| very large, and is another good reason (piled on the rest) to
| put an earlier stop to it.
| makomk wrote:
| The whole idea that switching from coal to gas is bad for the
| environment because of methane emissions always smelt a bit
| dubious for exactly this reason: coal mining emits lots of
| methane.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Probably a thought exercise from the same people that came up
| with the term 'clean coal'.
| hannob wrote:
| This certainly gives a new twist to the story, but it doesn't
| change the fact that natural gas is no real solution and that
| the greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas have been
| underestimated in the past.
|
| It's not that switching from coal to gas is bad for the
| environment. It's simply that both are bad and we need
| something else.
| api wrote:
| The climate problem isn't entirely a coal problem, but coal is by
| far the single largest contributor. It's also quite replaceable.
| Phasing out coal remains the simplest, most straightforward
| mitigation. Once we do that we can tackle the other stuff.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Once we do that we can tackle the other stuff.
|
| We kind of have to do it all at the same time. It's pretty easy
| at this point to stop generating power from coal, but that
| doesn't do anything about ICE vehicles, or oil and gas used for
| heating.
|
| And a lot of this stuff has long lead-times. If you manufacture
| an ICE car instead of an electric car, it's on the road for
| another 20 years. If you install a new oil furnace in a
| building, it too has a lifetime measured in decades.
|
| Getting people to crush a three year old ICE car is not
| realistically going to happen, but why are we still making new
| ones?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >We kind of have to do it all at the same time.
|
| I totally disagree. The all or nothing concept means nothing
| will be done. There will always be a single reason someone
| can come up with to not do something. Why let that one thing
| stop other advances?
|
| I much prefer the accomplish a goal, move to the next goal
| concept. In the 70s, it would literally rain acid. Luckily,
| we realized that making a few small changes would have a
| drastic affect. The ozone layer was getting destroyed, and
| again we make a few small changes with great affect. The
| proof is there that incremental changes are worthwhile.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| It is also well-known coal power plants emit way more radiation
| than nuclear ones. And air pollution caused by coal burning (e.g.
| in Ulan Bator) is beyond any reason. The very fact people still
| burn coal in cities in the 21st century is mind-boggling.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The very fact people still burn coal in cities in the 21st
| century is mind-boggling.
|
| There are a lot of interesting things you could say about this.
|
| A coal plant needs workers and it also needs good
| transportation links. (To bring the coal in.) It needs to
| support the workers. It needs to be hooked up to an electrical
| grid. So it's sort of a natural nexus for the development of a
| city. People who can live in some other city might prefer that,
| but there will be plenty of people for whom the Coal City is a
| natural choice. If cities naturally grow around coal plants,
| then it doesn't make sense to be surprised that there are
| cities with coal plants in them.
|
| Taking the original comment in a totally different direction,
| this is an angle I don't think is discussed enough in relation
| to electric cars. We may not need to burn coal inside cities,
| but we burn oil all the time, so we can move around. This
| produces the same undesirable smog that coal does. There's a
| big fight over whether electric cars release more or less smog
| well-to-wheels than gasoline cars do. But I almost never see
| anyone asking whether, even if electric cars release _more_
| smog, it might not be better to have the smog all produced
| centrally at a power plant somewhere than widely distributed in
| the middle of concentrated residential areas.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They are talking about home heating with coal.
|
| You can site a power plant regionally, it doesn't have to be
| particularly adjacent to residences.
| adaisadais wrote:
| Source?
| whatshisface wrote:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-
| more-...
| xvedejas wrote:
| Switching from wood to coal for home heating does improve air
| quality, at least. That's the one benefit I'm aware of.
| frank2 wrote:
| And switching from coal to number 2 heating oil also improves
| air quality -- drastically.
| credit_guy wrote:
| One thing to mention is that nuclear power plants _do not_ emit
| radiation. So, sure, coal power plants emit more radiation, and
| bananas too.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's enough radiation released as a result of the activity
| of operating nuclear plants for your emphasis to be a bit
| off.
|
| "usually do not directly emit radiation" is pretty
| defensible.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > There's enough radiation released as a result of the
| activity of operating nuclear plants
|
| "An operating nuclear power plant produces very small
| amounts of radioactive gases and liquids, as well as small
| amounts of direct radiation. If you lived within 50 miles
| of a nuclear power plant, you would receive an average
| radiation dose of about 0.01 millirem per year. To put this
| in perspective, the average person in the United States
| receives an exposure of 300 millirem per year from natural
| background sources of radiation."
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related-
| info/faq.htm...
| CapriciousCptl wrote:
| I think they're referring to the radiation emitted
| because of nuclear plants, like nuclear accidents at
| Marcoule, Fukishima, Paks, etc, transport and waste
| disposal and so on.
| credit_guy wrote:
| The meme that coal plants emit more radioactivity than
| nuclear power plants originated with this Scientific
| American article [1] (linked somewhere else in this
| thread too). The article has the title "Coal Ash Is More
| Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste". The comparison is
| obviously preposterous, nuclear waste is probably
| trillions of times more radioactive than coal ash. When
| SA realized the mistake they added an explanation just at
| the end of the article that states
|
| "As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash
| released from a power plant delivers more radiation than
| nuclear waste _shielded via water or dry cask storage._ "
| (emphasis mine)
|
| By adding the qualification "shielded" the comparison
| becomes meaningless. Brazil nuts, bananas, beer, carrot
| juice and drinking water [2] all release more radiation
| than _shielded_ nuclear waste.
|
| Nowhere in the SA article they compare coal ash with
| Chernobyl of Fukushima.
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-
| is-more-...
|
| [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/common-naturally-
| radioactive-foods...
| lsb wrote:
| That 0.01 millirem is roughly 1 Banana Equivalent Dose,
| the radiation you get from eating a banana.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'm very confused how anyone can claim nuclear plants don't
| emit radiation...
| philipkglass wrote:
| This is not actually correct. See this NRC publication
| "Radioactive Effluents From Nuclear Power Plants: Annual
| Report 2008."
|
| https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1036/ML103620452.pdf
|
| Power reactors discharge a small amount of radioactive
| material into the environment under normal operating
| conditions. See figures 4.1 through 4.12 in the report. The
| Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona [0] released
| 1844 curies of radionuclides in a year from gaseous, liquid,
| and particulate discharges. In SI units, that's 6.8 * 10^13
| becquerels.
|
| According to the World Nuclear Association, a kilogram of
| coal ash contains about 2000 becquerels of radioactive
| material [1]. In 2012, the United States coal fleet generated
| about 110 million tons of coal ash [2]. In 2012, the United
| States generated 1514 terawatt hours of electricity from coal
| [3]. That puts the coal ash radioactive burden to the
| environment at roughly 1.45 * 10^11 becquerels per TWh of
| electricity generated in coal plants.
|
| The Palo Verde annual radioactive effluent discharge of 6.8 *
| 10^13 becquerels from an average of 32.3 TWh electricity
| generation [0] comes to 21 * 10^ 11 becquerels per TWh of
| electricity. Its radioactive discharge to the environment is
| significantly higher than the average discharged via coal ash
| to produce an equivalent amount of electricity.
|
| However, before getting alarmed, see figure 2.1 in the NRC
| Radioactive Effluents report that I linked at the beginning
| of this post. Even though nuclear plant effluent adds more
| radiation to the environment than coal ash does, industrial
| sources of radiation (including nuclear plants) account for
| about 0.1% of general population radiation exposure. Natural
| background sources add up to about 50%. So the marginal
| danger of radioactive exposure from normally operating
| nuclear plants _or_ coal ash dumps is very small.
|
| People who say that coal plants emit more radiation than
| nuclear plants are not helping to counter "radiophobia." They
| are in fact attempting to exploit "radiophobia" to stir up
| fear over a very minor aspect of coal's environmental harms.
| (And coal really is an environmental disaster in many other
| ways.) Worse, people making this argument are not even
| correct about the underlying numbers. Many of them are just
| parroting a Scientific American article [4] which itself is a
| misleadingly garbled retelling of an actual research report
| [5] [6].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generati
| ng_...
|
| [1] http://www.world-
| nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/Features/Radi...
|
| [2] https://www.epa.gov/coalash
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States
| #El...
|
| [4] "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste"
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-
| more-...
|
| [5] "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and
| Nuclear Plants"
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045
|
| [6] Detailed examination of what the authors were actually
| reporting in "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of
| Coal and Nuclear Plants" via my past comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14466887
| dboreham wrote:
| It depends if they're melting down or not.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Coal makes Chernobyl look downright mild.
| admiral33 wrote:
| How does this compare to uranium mining?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Granite doesn't have a lot of reactive carbon to turn into
| methane.
| twomoretime wrote:
| You mine orders of magnitude less uranium ore. It probably
| doesn't compare at all.
|
| Also coal itself biogenic source of gas and probably
| surrounded/connected to other gas generating lithology. So
| when you expose a coal seam to the atmosphere it will
| naturally release some amount of gas depending on exact
| composition and cook time. I'm just guessing here, my
| experience is in oil and IIRC coal is typically way past the
| "oil window" but probably comfortably within the very
| generous gas window.
|
| Uranium is inorganic.
| rsync wrote:
| "You mine orders of magnitude less uranium ore."
|
| I suspect this is true, but the amount of material you need
| to turn over to get this uranium ore is tremendous. I
| wouldn't be surprised to learn it is roughly equal to coal
| mining.
|
| There is a fairly detailed chapter in the excellent William
| T. Vollmann book _No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon
| Ideologies_ where he describes in fine detail the process
| of mining and refining uranium - it is much more energy
| intensive than I imagined ...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Huge, but still orders of magnitude behind coal. It is
| impossible for normal people to comprehend the scale of
| everything associated with coal.
| brundolf wrote:
| Coal _mining_? Wouldn 't have thought of that. Luckily the coal
| industry seems to be on a steep downslope already (much more so
| than the rest of fossil fuels).
| mordymoop wrote:
| Coal is basically extremely heavy oil, so it should offgas an
| enormous amount of volatile hydrocarbons.
| makomk wrote:
| Yep. There's a lot of methane trapped in coal seams, depending
| on the type of coal. The old miner's name for it is firedamp,
| and it killed or injured quite a few miners prior to modern
| equipment and safety measures. There's been a bit of a push to
| extract and use it in the US over the last few decades, but I
| think China pretty much just vents it to the atmosphere.
| sudoaza wrote:
| Including fracking?
| olivermarks wrote:
| 23.5% of US electricity production is from coal
|
| 'In 2019, about 4,118 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.12
| trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale
| electricity generation facilities in the United States.
|
| 1 About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels
| --coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 20% was
| from nuclear energy, and about 18% was from renewable energy
| sources'.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
| api wrote:
| That's much lower than it was even 20 years ago, and the
| renewable number is far higher.
|
| California is a bit unique but its not rare for the state to be
| getting up to 40% of its power from solar at midday.
|
| We are moving in the right direction, but probably not fast
| enough.
| makomk wrote:
| The almost complete shutdown of the global economy due to
| Covid-19 is massively disrupting the roll-out of renewables.
| Factories have been shuttered, installations delayed, and who
| knows where the funding is going to come from now anyway.
| It's probably going to cost at least a year, maybe more.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/12/wind-and...
| (Wind and solar plants will soon be cheaper than coal in all
| big markets around world, analysis finds)
|
| https://pvbuzz.com/renewables-capacity-overwhelms-coal-gas-o...
|
| > Over the next three years, renewables will add nearly
| 50,000-MW of new capacity and be more than a quarter of total,
| while gas, coal, oil, and nuclear will drop by 4,200-MW
|
| > Moreover, if FERC's data prove correct, then by the end of
| 2022, renewable sources will account for more than a quarter
| (25.16%) of the nation's total available installed generating
| capacity while coal will drop to 18.63% and that of nuclear and
| oil will decrease to 8.29% and 2.95% respectively. Natural gas
| will increase its share -- but only slightly - from 44.67%
| today to 44.78%.
| frankharv wrote:
| Have you ever seen all the trees that get removed for large
| solar arrays? I have not seen any analysis of that aspect of
| solar farms. Our power company has recently torn down entire
| forests near me to create 'clean energy'. I do not think coal
| is good but I worry about all the nasty chemicals used to
| produce PV panels. Lots of trade-offs.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I have no doubt that even with those inconveniences, solar
| is still cleaner than fossil fuels. Research has proven out
| EROEI [1] (energy returned on energy invested). Wind also,
| and the blade disposal is a mostly solved problem at end of
| life.
|
| Very cheap to pay to plant new trees somewhere else (about
| $1/tree, sometimes cheaper in bulk, but to be avoided when
| possible), and the containment of hazard waste from the PV
| manufacturing process can be managed. Not so much for the
| output of coal and natural gas generation.
|
| Coal is dead, incredibly dead, natural gas is right behind
| it.
|
| [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/03/solar-power-can-
| pay-eas...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Have you seen the reforestation that has happened in the
| 100 years since wood heating became less common?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Most of the ones I've seen are in deserts, or repurposed
| scrub or highly marginal farmland. Nobody is talking about
| the forests because that's a very minor case. And that's
| before we get into rooftop solar.
|
| Find me three solar farms in cleared forest areas.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| "it is clear that methane from closed mines will be a problem for
| years to come."
|
| And only 1% comes through the ventilation systems.
| aerodog wrote:
| Walls coming down on coal. Good riddance.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
| pacamara619 wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
| dang wrote:
| You're right, of course, but the system doesn't regulate
| itself without moderation comments and unfortunately my job
| involves posting them. They're a necessary evil, in the
| same way that some medicines are toxic: one uses them when
| the alternative is worse.
|
| If it helps at all, such comments are even more tedious to
| write than to read.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&qu
| e...
| petecox wrote:
| No, you are completely out of line.
|
| The coal industry needs to be shut down. The IPCC first
| convened three decades ago and yet batshit crazy
| denialist fuckers in Queensland are still proposing new
| coal mines to gift their mates billions of dollars in
| government subsidies and money laundering.
|
| 'orderly transition' is a complete lie. They've had 30
| years of doing nothing.
|
| Sorry for the strong language but your heavy handed
| moderation reads like shilling for the fossil fuel
| industry.
| dang wrote:
| Empty comments saying nothing more than "yay side" or
| "boo side" are unsubstantive regardless of how good and
| right their cause might be. On HN, we're trying to
| optimize for intellectual curiosity, which is definitely
| not served when people repeat talking points.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| It's not possible to have a site both for curiosity and
| for battle. In battle, repetition is critical: you have
| to hammer the same points over and over until you win.
| That affects curiosity the way that a tank battalion
| affects a park. Since we can't have both, we have to pick
| one; the one we pick here is curiosity. This implies
| nothing about any specific battle. It's simply the type
| of forum this is.
| petecox wrote:
| There is no intellectual curiosity in climate change
| denial. Don't editorialise.
| [deleted]
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