Report Finds That Replacing Coal Plants With Renewables Saves A Lot Of Money

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.

Energy policy think tank Energy Innovation Policy & Technology issued a new report earlier this week looking at the relative cost of operating coal plants versus renewable energy. What they discovered in looking at the basic economics is that “the cost of new clean energy technologies has plummeted over the past decade while coal costs have stayed flat or risen. The upshot of their analysis? They found that out of the 210 U.S. coal plants they investigated, 209 of them – over 99% – are more expensive to run than if their generation capacity was replaced with solar or wind power.

The cost savings would be significant, too–the analysts behind the report determined that the cost of new wind or solar would be at least thirty percent cheaper than running over 75% of the existing coal plants. The savings are so significant that they can even cover the cost, in many cases, of adding battery storage to those solar plants to improve the reliability of the grid.

“The economics are clear,” the authors of the report wrote. “Solar and wind offers much cheaper power compared to coal and without compromising the reliability of our electricity system.”

The Big Read

Inside The Audacious Plan To Use 10,000 Nuclear Microreactors To Wean The World Off Coal

Bret Kugelmass of Last Energy aims to build his first 10 inexpensive, off-the-shelf fission reactors in Poland, which currently gets 70% of its electricity from burning coal.

Read more here.

Discoveries And Innovations

Greentech startup Heirloom announced it has successfully captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, turned it into limestone, and then worked with CarbonCure to store it in concrete in a way that prevents the CO2 from escaping to the atmosphere even if it’s demolished.

Planting more trees in cities could cut the number of people dying from high temperatures in summer, according to a new study, a strategy that could help mitigate the effects of climate change as it continues to drive temperatures upwards.