Why has the world started to mine coal again?

I don’t think we ever stopped mining it

Why "going back to it" have we ever stopped?

Oil propaganda convinced millions of people that renewable energy sources like nuclear power or wind turbine were dangerous/ineffective.

Basically humans are stupid and don't like change and rich people know and took advantage of it.

It never stopped. Hasn’t even really slowed down.

People need electricity. Renewables are great, but they don’t provide for the full generation need. Coal and natural gas power generation will continue unabated until a better (read: lower price for similar reliability) solution takes their place.

In my opinion, fossil fuel generation won’t take a real hit until the grid-scale energy storage problem is solved.

Because it got cheaper than natural gas.

Nobody thinks it's clean, they just don't care.

There are concerns outside of the list you wrote. For example:

• people need energy and coal is a source of energy

Again? Did we stop?

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned metallurgical coal yet. Even if you don't burn it for energy, the carbon in steel has to come from somewhere and that's usually coke, which is coal that has been further pyrolised into a fairly pure carbon producing a byproduct of coal tar.

Climate change 'looming'? Dude, it's already here.

Because the ecofanatics focused on fighting nuclear power for 50 years instead of fighting fossile fuels.

Fast forward to now, renewable are not ready at all and they need fossile fuels anyway to provide steady energy. But geopolitics is making oil too expensive, so countries are mining coal again.

In brief, ecofanatics were stupid (and still are) and war in Ukraine.

It didn't, at least not in the way you think. The headlines of the past few days show the aftermath of the last decades: industry contracts that were made in the last century and the political heritage of a generation of politicians who are no longer in power.

Coal is being phased out and that's not changing. It cannot change substantially anyway; there is only so much coal in the gound. Recent political decisions moved to keep most of it there. For technological, political, economical and industry related reasons this won't be a fast process unfortunately.

One of the roadblocks of our transition to a sustainable energy supply is how much money (and in our capitalisic society, therefore, power) the industry itself holds. Coal lobbies will work hard for you not to think about them too much. Nuclear lobbies will work hard for you to blame those pesky environmentalists. A game of distraction and blame shifting. This thread is a good example of how well it's working.

Our resources are limited. This is true for good old planet earth as well as our societies. We only have so much money, time, and workforce to manage this transition. And as much as I'd love to wake up tomorrow to a world with PVC on every roof, a windmill on every field, and decentralised storage in every town center, this is just not realistic overnight. We'll have to live with the fact of our limited resources and divert as much as possible of them towards such a future. (And btw, putting billions of dollars in money, time, and workforce towards a reactor that will start working in 10-30 years is not the way to do this, as much as the nuclear lobby would like you to think that.)

Yes, countries like Germany are turning to coal as a direct result of nuclear-phobia.

The US, with all its green initiatives and solar/wind incentives, is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US has been the top oil producer on whole the planet for the last 5-6 years. The problem is getting worse.

In my country, because of a decades long fearmongering and disinfomation campaing that destoyed the nuclear energy industry. So now we're stucked with coal to keep the power running at night and during winter.

Over here (Australia) we never stopped. Our coal lobby is simply too influential with our government.

As many people pointed out, we never stopped. Nor will be stop for decades to come. Unlike what people hear online, change takes time.

It's never really stopped.

But from the actions of those in power it seems they're just plowing through climate change and making money whilst they can. Imagine the decision is we're fucked anyway so let's get mine whilst I can and see if it helps me survive.

Because renewable energy and nuclear energy require significant capital investment, which the private sector and governments in the age of 'fiscal discipline' are not willing to make.

Because of the war against nuclear plants. Our green party shut down nuclear plants in favor for renewable energy. But as predicted, renewables don't meet our demands. So the green party started building gas plants to compensate instead of keeping nuclear running.

So why? Because of green idiocracry that demand the impossible of green energy (at this moment) and nuclear = evil

I blame the release of both Factorio and Victoria 3.

$$$

When did they stop?

It will slow when nuclear is the main energy source, especially in the United States (its currently ~47%)

Nuclear can also get recycled, and for the average American, the actual waste that can no longer be recycled is about a soda can (standard 12 ounce can)

Imo, the US needs to work toward nuclear usage being 90-95% instead of using coal. There's still a need for natural gas but it can be minimized

It's a cheap, non intermittent, easily scalable, and highly available source of energy compatible with existing infrastructure. When the choice becomes rolling electricity blackouts/shutting down factories, or coal powered electricity due to extremely poor planning for the future, coal will win every time. I wish we just started getting renewables running decades ago. Most of the limited electricity in South Africa is produced from coal power plants or diesel generators.

I'm typing this during a rolling electricity blackout. Really not looking forward to my cold shower in the next few minutes

Obligatory: we didn't stop.

There's also good reasons to have a fistful of generation plants with coal or natural gas.

To put it simply, nuclear is clean, far cleaner than just about anything else we have. If you compare the waste product with the energy produced... It's just not an argument that nuclear loses versus something like coal. Where coal puts out its waste mainly in the form of smoke, nuclear waste, like discarded nuclear power rods, are a physical and far more immediately dangerous thing. The coal waste kind of blends in, and lobbyists have been throwing around "clean coal" for a while... Although coal use has gotten a lot more efficient and produces less waste than before, it's still far more than what nuclear could do. "Clean" coal is a myth, it's just "less bad" coal, with good marketing.

Regardless, coal and natural gas fired plants can ramp up and down far quicker than nuclear possibly could. Where nuclear covers base demand and can usually scale up and down a bit to help with higher load times, to cover peak demand, coal and natural gas can fire up and produce power in a matter of minutes. With nuclear, they have to ramp up slowly to ensure the reaction doesn't run away from them, and to ensure all the safety measures and safeguards are working as intended as the load increases. It's just a fat more careful process.

The grid is hugely complex, and I'm simplifying significantly. But from the best of my understanding, nuclear can't react fast enough to cover spontaneous demand. So either coal or natural gas needs to exist for the grid to work as well as it does.

Wind is unpredictable and solar usually isn't helping during the hours where the grid would need help with the demand. The only viable option is with grid scale energy storage, which can hold the loads while the nuclear systems have a chance to ramp up.

There's still far more coal fired plants in the world than we need for this task alone, so there's still work to be done... But I suspect coal use will diminish, but not be eliminated from grid scale operation for a while.

I'm sure places that are still banning nuclear power aren't helping either.

Actually I thought it's maybe because our crazy "friend", who recently decided to show how it never actually left from behind the red curtain, had no problem shelling multiple nuclear power plant sites. Just saying.

Permanently Deleted

Until all coal plants are replaced there will be a need for more coal. We can’t just shut down these plants over night, the world is transitioning to cleaner energy production, unfortunately it’s just not happening fast enough.

Ukraine war plays a big part of it

I know Germany is shutting down its reactors and without Russian gas they need to get a reliable baseload power generation from somewhere… :/

Tf you mean stopped

• a German

People will do everything that givesthem an advantage in anykind of way. If coal is an affordable resource to fulfill a need it will be mined and put to use.

You may change the view on a thing for a few persons, but never of all of them.

Same reasons we won't solve the climate crisis, democracy and capitalism are not great at dealing with long term, side spread problems.

If you re-open a coal mine in a depressed community, you've earned a lot of votes while the people who were on the green side of things are diffused throughout the world.

Why do we still do stuff like fracking, just to get the last bit of C out in the air?

Rhetorical question, please don't answer.

It's still needed until the transition to full renewables is viable in most places. People still need to afford electricity so it's a means to an end

Will renewables ever be viable in countries like the UK or Ireland, where there isn't actually a whole lot of land for things like solar and wind?

Out of necessity probably. In Germany for example they're turning off nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal because nuclear is dangerous apparently. However you still need to produce the power somehow to run the country. Not even the most hardcore climate activists want to sit in a dark, cold apartment with no power.