Cheaper Solar Power Forces World’s Largest Coal Company to Close 37 Mines, China to Close 500 Coal Mines in 2017
Good news for Mother Earth: a recent economic forecast from Bloomberg predicts the United States’ coal power capacity will be about half of what it is now by the year 2040.
Alternative solar solutions are replacing unsustainable harvesting and mining of non-renewable resources, which take thousands and sometimes millenniums of years to restore. My modeling nature's harmony, new innovations are not only cheaper, but win/win for people and planet.
Plants harvest sunlight using solar energy to feed themselves from the air and water around them through photosynthesis. Scientists have developed an artificial leaf, using bacteria to convert solar energy into liquid fuel. The sunlight splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a bacterium engineered to convert carbon dioxide plus hydrogen into the liquid fuel isopropanol.
The Canary 'Is' the Cold Mine
Countries like India and China, which are heavily invested in coal, are already converting to solar energy solutions.
China plans to close at least 500 coal mines in 2017. The Bloomberg report predicts, by the early 2020s that renewable energies are a far cheaper and more efficient route.
India says renewables will generate 57 percent of the country’s power by 2027. Coal India, the largest coal mining company in the world has announced it will close 37 mines because they are no longer economically viable. Producing around 82 percent of India’s coal, the mines would be decommissioned by March 2018. At this rate, India could pull out of coal completely by 2050, cites the Indian government.
America is lagging behind this evolved economic future, with Trump's new plan to increase coal mine production. People don't want jobs that damage their health, or their children's planetary and environmental future.
The Green Good News
Alternative solar energy solutions have the math on their side of preserving earth. Over the next two decades, $10.2 trillion will be spent globally on new electricity plants. Of that total, Bloomberg’s research group forecasts 72 percent will be invested in renewable energies.