Covid vs Coal →
I was listening to an interesting news program on renewable energy recently that made claims and projections about the current state and future of energy - primarily about renewable energy overtaking coal as the major source of energy. As a result of Covid, demand for electricity has fallen and as coal has become more and more expensive than renewable counterparts, coal based electricity is facing an uphill battle. Will coal survive the covid crisis, in developed countries, is yet to be seen.
This prompted me to dig further into the data on energy production and consumption in the US. I was indeed surprised to see that coal based energy production is in fact decreasing in the US, and is decreasing drastically. I was surpised by two factors. First, I thought only under-developed or developing countries were the places where coal based energy was a major source, primarily due to the lack of infrastructure (like efficient transmission grids) and the cost of renewable energy (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.). Second, nuclear power production has flattened out somewhere in the last decade, and is now overtaken by renewable energy. With several nuclear power plants built over the decades, some of them dangerously close to fault lines, I was expecting more energy to be generated by nuclear plants. It turned out that was not the case.
Looking at the data, coal production is indeed decreasing and at such a rate that it is almost close to what it was in the 1950s. While renewable energy is all set to overtake coal based energy and experts predict 2020 to be the year for this to happen. In fact, renewable energy production has already overtaken nuclear energy.
While the above is certainly positive news, there are several other fossil fuels (natural gas, crude oil, etc.) just like there are several renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc.). Looking at more details at the different sources of fossil fuels, although coal production has reduced, total fossil fuel production is still way more than renewable energy production as the following chart shows.
Stay tuned for more insights into energy production and consumption in residential and transportation sectors.