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New Video Premiering today at 12:15pm EST

🕑 Added 2023-01-18 16:20:27 +0000 UTC

Comments

Jeremy C

This is a masterpiece. I had no idea clean coal was such a grift. Thanks Obama!

Madeleine Jubilee Saito

This was so funny!!! You are only getting stronger!!! Yay!!!

Mike Kolesnik

Nuclear is getting too much hate unfortunately :( While we wait for renewable power to rise up, it's the most "green" power we can get, but instead too much fearmongering and FOMO led to increased reliance on fossil fuels and less on this source.

Calvin Airport

Thanks for the explainer! I knew the bustup at Lutzerat was bad but didn't realize how deep the problem ran. Hope it uhhhh gets fixed!

Arno Fleck

Nice video, thank you! But while I'm here... let me introduce you to the renaissance of coal in Germany (where I'm from). As you may have heard, Germany is pushing hard to move to wind and solar. In 2022, 21% of total electricity generated was from wind and 9% from solar - but 28% was from coal, and that includes locally sourced lignite, which emits over 1kg CO2 per kWh. In 2022, several coal plants (including lignite) were reactivated due to the energy crisis. The reason is of course that Germany does not have natural gas, it gets imported from Russia. So the plan in switching to renewables was to build lots of new gas plants to cover the times when there's no wind and/or no sun. Because, as elegantly as you glance over this boring old problem in your video, Germany merely has *minutes* of storage capacity, despite significant efforts to improve that. To put this in comparison, just last December we had over two weeks of virtually no wind or solar power, and all necessary electricity came from... coal and gas. So, all that wouldn't be nearly as bad if Germany didn't also phase out nuclear power at the same time, with the last 3 reactors scheduled to be shut down at the end of 2022, only to be slightly extended into April of this year (but only to burn off the last rods at lower total output). So by mid of this year, we'll be at zero nuclear power, not nearly enough gas coming through pipelines (because, you know, Russia) and virtually no electricity storage. So what happens? We rely more and more on coal. There is a political plan to shut down all coal plants by 2030, but realistically, we do not have a plan to replace them with another reliable electricity source and no strategy to build out nearly enough storage for renewables (and questionable extension goals to even build enough of that in the first place). So I'm willing to bet significant amounts of money that Germany will still have significant amounts of coal electricity well into the 2030s, probably into 2040. The functioning nuclear plants are in the process of literally getting destroyed, so there goes the immediate low-carbon alternative. If you want to play around with the data, https://app.electricitymaps.com/map is a good start.

Alan Hensley

Unreal, Petra Nova was at the power plant I used to see on the horizon where I grew up. Drove out there one time and my jaw never really got back into position after I saw the size of the coal stockpile. Anyway, their "newest" unit (from the 80s) caught fire last summer and remains down. Real good stuff, thanks for the video and unexpected extra laughs. 👍

Tamara Johnson

Well worth the wait! EXCELLENT video!

Jan-Herbert Damm

Here in Germany we could add another chapter to this video. Following a deal between a green minister and the biggest coal player, police evicted activists that had occupied a village (Lützerat) sceduled for demolition by the Coal industry. We've now locked in an amount of co2 with which Germany is programmed to fail its climate goals - a 1.2 billiion dollar profit guarantee for Big Coal.