I was browsing through the current issue of Trains and there was a brief note concerning the decline in coal carloadings to the lowest level in years. I don't have access online, but seems worth checking.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
This is not good folks. Jobs are really scarce these days and now the EPA is going after coal mines and coal generating plants. And railroads are getting hit hard, loosing thousands of loaded coal cars every day. bnsf and up rr will be hit extra hard too if you add the opening of panama canal expansion they are going to loose containers. CSX NS wont get hurt as much, the superships will unload off east coast more and more containers.
There was a thread yesterday about BNSF running PRB coal to the Port Of Stockton for export to China. So where are the coal loadings declinng?
Year to date coal production in the USA is down about 8% from a year ago this time, at 438.6 million tons.
In 2008 at this time, coal production was 533.9 million tons. Which puts it down about 18% from pre-recession levels.
It's not the end of the world, but it is very significant. A little more digging on the site and you could get the results by east vs west, region, and state.
Google is your friend. Figures are courtesy of the US Energy Information Agency, your tax dollars at work.
http://205.254.135.7/cneaf/coal/weekly/weekly_html/wcppage.html
Local coal fired power plants that my carrier serves have their coal stockpiles filled to overflowing - the mild winter in the area did not use the normal amount of coal for the plants to generate additional electricity for heating as had been expected. To date the Spring has been fairly mild and has not caused the need for a high amount of air conditioning to be used. When some of the stockpiles are worked off, then coal traffic will resume.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Why would they lose container traffic with the expansion of the canal?
Oddly, BNSF and UP both serve the Gulf Coast ports, and we have handled one, maybe two or so, Ok, maybe a couple of containers down here...
Unless a lot of the east coast ports do a serious upgrade, some of the ships just wont fit, and the facalities are not up to the volume levels the west coast ports handle.
UP still runs several daily coal moves to our bulk plant for export down here, and the coal power plants are getting the same volume of trains they alway have...of course, down here elecrtic consumption is pretty constant year round, we have two major seasons here, Not summer, and summer!
23 17 46 11
I believe the brief article indicated coal use was down at utilities b/c of the switch to natural gas and older coal-fired plants closing. Exports should be growing long-term, but since China is in a downtown, those exports may be down short-term. The canal was not discussed.
I know one of the UP trains is loaded into barges and heads out the intracostal to the Mississippi.
The rest goes via ocean going ship.
The canal part was a reply to Chicagorails comment about containers...silly me forgot to quote it...
The bulk material plant is undergoing a major upgrade, even getting its own yard, new load out and such, so I have a feeling the coal flow might be expected to increase...same place loads out a lot of coke too, at least 2 unit trains a day, and Shell, right across the ship channel, has its own coke plant and load out dock to ocean going vessels.
Shell is of course, petroleum coke, but one of the unit trains we get, from Sweeny Texas, is coal coke, looks like it would be used in steel making.
There is the proposed coal terminal in Oregon/Washington (it keeps changing) that keeps getting blocked, but it will eventually be built to export PRB coal to China. Wyoming's Gov. Matt Mead is currently in China working with them to develop long term strategies for using PRB coal cleanly in their industries.
RJ
"Something hidden, Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges, Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go." The Explorers - Rudyard Kipling
http://sweetwater-photography.com/
The terminal mentioned in the Trains article was Coos Bay, OR. To be used, the track would need upgrading and that would cost $ X millions.
There are two factors in play for utility/steam coal. One is the very low cost of natural gas. Power companies are burning as much as possible at the expense of coal. The second is the weather. The northeast had the warmest winter and spring on record, so even less coal was needed.
Met coal is holding OK and export coal - met and steam, is so-so.
You can read more about it at NS's and CSX's web sites. Look for the quarterly Wall St. presentations.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Powder River Basin coal is also being exported via the MERC facility at Superior, WI. It is being transloaded to larger oceangoing bulkers at Quebec City.
Ok, china has said that its going to build more nuclear generating plamts. The smog pollution from coal plants is bad. Here in Jacksonville Fl we are going to deepen the ship canal so the 10000 plus container capacity ships can unloed here to FEC NS CSX rrs.other ports from texas to New York are quickly deepening ,expanding for the boom comming!
The coal traffic down under is still booming. It is mainly exported to China and India. I would say the Japanese will increase their coal imports soon. The main problem the lack of infrastructure to handle the output. The ports are congested, rail is saturated, and trucks are wrecking the roads!!! And yet they want to open more mines!!!
Several things have happened with electric generation:
1. Electric generation growth rate has flattened since the start of the recession.
2. Natural gas prices have made that fuel more attractive.
3. Tax incentives and impending air quality regulation have steered investment to renewables and natural gas.
4. Several states have passed laws requiring electric companies to have at least 10% renewable in their portfolios.
None of this speaks well for coal. As old coal fired plants have been retired, they have often been replaced by natural gas. While large coal fired base load plants continue to operate, natural gas is especially useful in peaking plants and as a backup for renewables like windmills. Nevertheless, natural gas prices are historically too volatile to stay low for too long, and they are studying things like carbon sequestration and other technologies to make coal burning more palatable.
yea with china surprisingly going green there may be a reduction of coal there. Here at least some coal plants will be converted to gas. solar and wind is a pipe dream for obama,way too early, he jumped the gun!
Recently Richard Muller, a scientist and prominent skeptic of global warming announced in an op-ed the results of his 3 year study funded by the Koch brothers, oil billionaires and political activists. What's different is that after the study he now agrees with most climate scientist that the climate is indeed warming and goes further to say that human activity is almost entirely the cause.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
While some have criticized the op-ed as premature before publication and peer-review, admittedly he only reconfirms much of what most climate scientists have said for 20 years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/so-called-blockbuster-climate-change-studies-prove-little/2012/07/30/gJQAZZNMKX_blog.html
While Muller is still skeptical of some of the more alarmist predictions, he said if China goes ahead with rapid development using coal it will only speed up warming. Politics often ignores physical changes for as long as possible, but eventually catches up. I don't believe the long term outlook for coal is good, but I also believe the railroad industry will be able to adjust.
57 coal plants this year and 90 more next 2 years to be shuttered... thanks president !!!!
The president is responsible for the rock bottom price of Natural gas that is replacing coal?
chicagorails 57 coal plants this year and 90 more next 2 years to be shuttered... thanks president !!!!
While you're at it, you can also thank him (and Bush Jr) for the initiative they got going a few years ago to modernize our power grid. Have you noticed that this year, even with all the record-breaking heat, that not one community in the US has suffered any blackouts or brownouts due to high demand?
They're having lots of fun over in India right now.
This comes from Public Power Daily for Today. It sort of puts things in prospective. I suspect that the older smaller units will be retired first. The newer larger ones will last longer although there are a couple of 719 MW units to be retired also. I think coal will be with us for thr foreseeable future.
EIA expects 27 GW of coal-fired capacity to retire between 2012 and 2016
Plant owners and operators expect to retire almost 27 gigawatts (GW) of capacity from 175 coal-fired generators between 2012 and 2016, the Energy Information Administration said July 27. In 2011, there were 1,387 coal-fired generators in the United States, totaling almost 318 GW. The 27 GW of retiring capacity amounts to 8.5% of total 2011 coal-fired capacity of 318 GW and is more than four times greater than retirements performed during the preceding five-year period (6.5 GW), EIA said.
YoHo1975 The president is responsible for the rock bottom price of Natural gas that is replacing coal?
The person that inferred that is jaded. The real cause is oversaturation of the market coupled with a warm winter that had a horrible impact on demand. Chesapeake Energy has a $3.2 billion loss for last year due to their policy of being highly aggressive in buying leases in giant land grabs and then drilling the well as a loss and not producing it due to low prices. In these hard times you can expect to see some MASSIVE sales of assets and whole companies. One that has started the whole thing off is the purchase of El Paso companies by Kinder Morgan. But due to contract obligations and monopoly conflicts Kinder Morgan will have to sell off all of the assets in Wyoming. Everyone is preapring for the worst like they did in the mid 1980s during the last recession in the industry.
We will jettison coal to our sorrow, especially when natural gas reassumes something more like its historical price.
As we were hammered over the head with during the energy problems of the 1970s, electrical production is a wasteful application of natural gas, whose efficiency there is only about 35 percent, versus virtually 100 percent in home heating.
We have a glut of natural gas now. But a lot of that production is associated with oil drilling, and if the extremists ever succeed in shutting down fracking, hang onto your keister.
China would be better advised to clean up its coal plants than to shut them down. If its plants burned as cleanly as most of our newer, bigger ones, they wouldn't have a problem.
dakotafred We will jettison coal to our sorrow, especially when natural gas reassumes something more like its historical price. As we were hammered over the head with during the energy problems of the 1970s, electrical production is a wasteful application of natural gas, whose efficiency there is only about 35 percent, versus virtually 100 percent in home heating. We have a glut of natural gas now. But a lot of that production is associated with oil drilling, and if the extremists ever succeed in shutting down fracking, hang onto your keister. China would be better advised to clean up its coal plants than to shut them down. If its plants burned as cleanly as most of our newer, bigger ones, they wouldn't have a problem.
I am no expert (and at the risk of getting off topic) but I thought that Natural Gas Gas/Steam Turbine Combined cycle plants were more efficient than that? Is'nt the 35% efficiency rating for Thermal plants; I.E burning the NG to make Steam as can be done in many primarily coal burning plants which are equipped to use both fuels?
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Your point is well taken, that it is potentially disastrous to rely too much on natural gas. Hopefully it would just be a transitional phase. There have been some anecdotal gas fracking incidents (mostly involving chemical waste mishandling), but I don't think the extremist will ever build a scientific case against it.
It would be good of China cleaned up it's power plant emissions for sulfides, particulates, etc., but if they don't sequester their CO2, then they will still have a problem (science has built a case against CO2.)
The company had announced plans more than five years ago to build a coal fired plant near its Sutherland Generating Station in Marshalltown. But the coal-plant plans, on the cusp of regulatory changes to combat carbon emissions had upset environmental groups, ultimately received mixed support from state regulators.
http://thegazette.com/2012/08/02/alliant-seeks-to-build-700-million-power-station/
Here is an example of coal the Union Pacific will not be hauling.
Victrola1 The company had announced plans more than five years ago to build a coal fired plant near its Sutherland Generating Station in Marshalltown. But the coal-plant plans, on the cusp of regulatory changes to combat carbon emissions had upset environmental groups, ultimately received mixed support from state regulators. http://thegazette.com/2012/08/02/alliant-seeks-to-build-700-million-power-station/ Here is an example of coal the Union Pacific will not be hauling.
This is a tragedy that duplicates dozens of others around the country in the past three years as utilities fold rather than fight in the face of the uncertainty of what's coming down from the EPA. There are consequences for railroads, as Victrola points out, which to my mind makes on-topic the need to inquire more closely into the "case" against C02.
That case posits that man-made C02 is responsible for global warming. Man accounts for approximately 3 percent of C02, the rest naturally occurring. The totality of C02 makes up less than 1/2 of 1 percent -- 500 parts per million -- of all atmospheric gases. That C02 does not just hang around creating mischief but has a half-life of only 10 years.
Who has a political agenda -- me or the scientists and politicians who would make economic policy on the basis of the "case" against C02?
dakotafred Victrola1: The company had announced plans more than five years ago to build a coal fired plant near its Sutherland Generating Station in Marshalltown. But the coal-plant plans, on the cusp of regulatory changes to combat carbon emissions had upset environmental groups, ultimately received mixed support from state regulators. http://thegazette.com/2012/08/02/alliant-seeks-to-build-700-million-power-station/ Here is an example of coal the Union Pacific will not be hauling. This is a tragedy that duplicates dozens of others around the country in the past three years as utilities fold rather than fight in the face of the uncertainty of what's coming down from the EPA. There are consequences for railroads, as Victrola points out, which to my mind makes on-topic the need to inquire more closely into the "case" against C02. That case posits that man-made C02 is responsible for global warming. Man accounts for approximately 3 percent of C02, the rest naturally occurring. The totality of C02 makes up less than 1/2 of 1 percent -- 500 parts per million -- of all atmospheric gases. That C02 does not just hang around creating mischief but has a half-life of only 10 years. Who has a political agenda -- me or the scientists and politicians who would make economic policy on the basis of the "case" against C02?
Victrola1: The company had announced plans more than five years ago to build a coal fired plant near its Sutherland Generating Station in Marshalltown. But the coal-plant plans, on the cusp of regulatory changes to combat carbon emissions had upset environmental groups, ultimately received mixed support from state regulators. http://thegazette.com/2012/08/02/alliant-seeks-to-build-700-million-power-station/ Here is an example of coal the Union Pacific will not be hauling.
Where are you getting your numbers, the only place I could find them on the net was a conservative climate change denial website. Here is what the EPA says:
Since 1750, atmospheric concentrations of CO2, CH4 and N20 have increased by over 36 percent, 148 percent and 18 percent, respectively. Scientists have concluded that this is due primarily to human activity.
DwightBranch: I can no longer find my original source, which was (yes) skeptical on manmade warming.
The site justfacts.com/globalwarming.asp corrects my "approximately 3 percent" for manmade C02 to 5 percent; it roughly agrees with the EPA on the 36-percent increase in atmospheric C02 since the start of the Industrial Revolution. (Maybe its source is the EPA?)
The ppm of C02 in the atmosphere is easy to find elsewhere, and is usually put at between 360 and 390, so I over-expressed that.
My apologies to the Forum for this stretching of the thread's theme.
I suggest you check the meta-study paid for by the Koch's (Big Oil rightists) in which the lead researcher, a now-former skeptic, says he was wrong, and that warming is at a crisis point and that the warming is primarily man-made.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
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