Colorado will not use any coal for electricity generation by 2031. It currently has ten coal fired power plants. It will take three of them off line in 2025. The rest are scheduled to be taken off line in the five years that follow.
Colorado will be more aggressive than most states in this time frame, but some states are already coal free, and almost all states are reducing the extent to which coal powers their electrical grids.
Greatly improved solid state electric vehicle batteries will start coming on line in 2025 and vehicles powered by them will make up a large share of new vehicles by 2031, greatly reducing gasoline and diesel consumption.
These developments, taken together, will greatly reduce U.S. fossil fuel consumption over the next seven years, and the reduction will be particularly dramatic for coal consumption. The falling demand for coal will hit Wyoming and West Virginia hard, because they are the two dominant producers of coal right now in the U.S. (the U.S. imports little, if any, coal). This will also heavily impact freight rail and barge transportation demand, because those are the two main ways that coal is delivered to power plants. Coal is the single largest revenue stream for both means of transportation.
The coal fired power plants are being replaced largely by wind, solar, and natural gas over the next seven years. So, the U.S. is going to see continued strong demand for natural gas, which is mostly sourced from North America, but should be seeing a gradual decline in petroleum demand (a fuel that the U.S. is largely self-sufficient in now, although global oil prices still influence domestic oil prices). The energy self-sufficiency of the U.S., however, buffers it from major macroeconomic shocks driven by rising oil prices like those seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The increase in the share of vehicles that are electric, spurred by solid state batteries, will be global. Indeed, many places in Europe are already in the lead on this front. And, since gasoline and diesel powered vehicles are the predominant end use of oil, this should drive down the price of oil in the global market. This will make high cost oil producers, like fracking wells and off-shore oil rigs, uneconomic first.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine War has put intense pressure on Europe, which has cut off or reduced access to Russian oil and gas, to be more efficient in order to reduce its fossil fuel consumption, to increase it share of renewable power, to delay shutting down coal fired power plants, and to keep its nuclear power plants on line. This may mean more insulation, more blankets and sweaters, more heat pumps, more electric vehicles, a shift to buses and trains, and fewer natural gas power plants.
China is in the way of these developments strongly addressing global warming, because it seems to be increasing, rather than decreasing, its coal consumption in the short to medium term.
But China is also a world leader in electric car production and in building a high speed rail network, so China may play an important part in reducing global petroleum consumption. And, China's path in electric vehicle development is likely to heavily influence countries in Southeast Asia that in its sphere of influence, and to a lesser extent, may influence Africa and South America in which China has attempted to expand its economic influence.
China is also a leading producer of high efficiency, low cost solar panels, and eventually this, together with its rapidly declining fertility rates and starting to shrink population, may make its current round of investments in coal fired power plants short lived.
As oil demand and prices fall, this will eventually undermine the often authoritarian leaning countries with heavily oil dependent economies, in the Middle East, but also Brunei, Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. It will also impact Norway, the U.K., Canada, and U.S. states like Alaska, Louisiana, and Texas that are major oil producers. Oil wealth is what has made ultra-conservative Islam feasible in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. It has been central to the economies of Iran and Iraq. It has been an important factor allowing Russia and Venezuela and Iran to continue to be authoritarian.
These countries will see a collapse in their standard of living and they will face intense pressure to convert to a commercial economy. Most of their "guest workers" will be sent home for good.
1 comment:
Hum... pissing on China's breakfast cereal has always struck me as ineffective at best. At worst it generates a dynamic where China tries to hurt us return instead of just ignoring our ineffectual tariffs and export bans. China is currently building solar panels for a quarter of the best US or European manufacturers. And are testing wind turbines at the leading edge of efficiency and power. China will power the rest of the world as we decarbonize slower than we would if fighting climate change were the priority it should be. At least we are rich enough to afford a fair amount of waste and grift.
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