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Re: Coal is not dead, though it should be, but won't be for a while...
Author: BOB2
Date: 11-10-2016 - 12:06
At the risk of setting off the loony's again....
Coal use, mostly used for electric power generation, is on a slow but accelerating decline in the US. This is because of cost since natural gas is just o much cheaper, with abundant domestic and worldwide supply, and also reduces costs for emissions reductions (even giving utilities CO credits to sell in the carbon market).
The US has also quietly and very significantly reduced the growth in electrical power usage over the last 25 years, through more and more incremental energy saving technologies. And, in an exponential increase in the watts per dollar invested, the decline in wind and solar power costs, are beginning to take a still small, but ever increasing, share of US electrical production.
None of those long term trends are going to change anytime soon, because that is being driven by technological innovation and the marketplace, not politician's promises or press releases. Maybe, the coal industry could ask Congress ban Home Depot from selling LED's, though....?
Those things, along with incrementally increasing vehicle efficiency, across the vehicle spectrum from airplanes, to alt fuel/and petro based hybrid and electric cars, trucks and busses, to choo-choo's will easily allow the US to meet those targets by 2025.
India and China remain big problems, but the market will win there, too... "in the long run".
China has been replacing old and very inefficient Stalinist/Mao era coal plants at the end of those plants useful lives with fewer, larger, modern higher efficiency plants. And, that also reduces the cost and the amount of carbon dioxide per kilowatt produced. Cleaner American coal would make those investments even cleaner.
So, now that these short sighted green fringe groups are now extremely unlikely to be able to block coal trains and exports for the next four years, I do expect to see a few more export coal trains.
The weenies on both of the fringes are too busy listening to their pseudo Marxist and Alt-right conspiracy theories to even comprehend these complex things, in their, fevered, delusional, emotion driven, and irrational, little worlds....
Coal use, mostly used for electric power generation, is on a slow but accelerating decline in the US. This is because of cost since natural gas is just o much cheaper, with abundant domestic and worldwide supply, and also reduces costs for emissions reductions (even giving utilities CO credits to sell in the carbon market).
The US has also quietly and very significantly reduced the growth in electrical power usage over the last 25 years, through more and more incremental energy saving technologies. And, in an exponential increase in the watts per dollar invested, the decline in wind and solar power costs, are beginning to take a still small, but ever increasing, share of US electrical production.
None of those long term trends are going to change anytime soon, because that is being driven by technological innovation and the marketplace, not politician's promises or press releases. Maybe, the coal industry could ask Congress ban Home Depot from selling LED's, though....?
Those things, along with incrementally increasing vehicle efficiency, across the vehicle spectrum from airplanes, to alt fuel/and petro based hybrid and electric cars, trucks and busses, to choo-choo's will easily allow the US to meet those targets by 2025.
India and China remain big problems, but the market will win there, too... "in the long run".
China has been replacing old and very inefficient Stalinist/Mao era coal plants at the end of those plants useful lives with fewer, larger, modern higher efficiency plants. And, that also reduces the cost and the amount of carbon dioxide per kilowatt produced. Cleaner American coal would make those investments even cleaner.
So, now that these short sighted green fringe groups are now extremely unlikely to be able to block coal trains and exports for the next four years, I do expect to see a few more export coal trains.
The weenies on both of the fringes are too busy listening to their pseudo Marxist and Alt-right conspiracy theories to even comprehend these complex things, in their, fevered, delusional, emotion driven, and irrational, little worlds....
