Thread by @AlexEpstein

John Kerry casually mentioned in a COP 26 interview that the US won't be using any coal by 2030.

What an ignorant and presumptuous wannabe dictator he is.

In the last several years, reliable, *resilient* coal has bailed out solar, wind, and even natural gas many times.

THREAD

This past winter, reliable, resilient coal bailed out solar/wind (which largely disappear when it's very cold) as well as natural gas (which is more vulnerable than coal to supply disruptions) in many states including OK--see this quote from @GovStitt.

https://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1369279245881462790?s=20

The disastrous TX blackouts should have taught us that we need power plants that are 1) reliable and 2) resilient. Reliable means: they can produce as much power as we need, when we need it. Resilient means: they can keep producing power even under adverse conditions.

One key to resilience is "on-site fuel storage"--keeping a large amount of fuel at a power plant so that it can produce power even during a supply disruption. The champions at on-site fuel storage are coal and nuclear, which can cheaply keep months of fuel on hand.

Natural gas is not usually as resilient as coal and nuclear, because natural gas is expensive to store in large quantities. Most natural gas power depends on "just in time" delivery from pipelines. If pipeline transport is disrupted, many natural gas plants will go down.

Texas largely abandoning reliable, resilient coal was one reason for its terrible blackouts earlier this year.

https://twitter.com/AlexEpstein/status/1361691276769255424?s=20

Here's how Alberta, which uses a lot of coal, was able to avoid the disastrous February blackouts that Texas had despite experiencing lower temperatures the same week.

https://twitter.com/alexepstein/status/1363955008790691841

Casual calls to eliminate coal, by John Kerry and others, are going to get a lot of people killed one of these winters--maybe this winter. Our grid is extremely vulnerable right now because we have shut down many resilient nuclear plants and a vast amount of resilient coal power.