dakotafred Gentlemen, you hold out a ridiculous future in which we live with artificial and high-priced scarcity in a world of abundant and cheap energy (cheap, at least, until the politicians get busy with it). Meanwhile putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage with the developing world, which will never agree to such constraints for itself. And this doesn't even begin to explore the exploding cost to Washington (us), which will be forced to subsidize the energy consumption of more and more people along with their chronic unemployment. Which is not to say none of this insanity will happen. I'm saying, heaven forfend. To get back "on topic," I can see a future for the rails hauling sunshine and -- the real subject of speculation here -- moonbeams.
Gentlemen, you hold out a ridiculous future in which we live with artificial and high-priced scarcity in a world of abundant and cheap energy (cheap, at least, until the politicians get busy with it). Meanwhile putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage with the developing world, which will never agree to such constraints for itself.
And this doesn't even begin to explore the exploding cost to Washington (us), which will be forced to subsidize the energy consumption of more and more people along with their chronic unemployment.
Which is not to say none of this insanity will happen. I'm saying, heaven forfend.
To get back "on topic," I can see a future for the rails hauling sunshine and -- the real subject of speculation here -- moonbeams.
I think you are in denial. Ever see the show on TLC with the morbidly obese persons who have to be removed from their house on a forklift? That is us, and it cannot continue, the chickens have come home to roost.
The developing world will agree to restrict their emissions of greenhouse gases to a level proportional to their percentage of the world's population, just as we must.. 5% for US (300M people), 50% for China (2B people). Europe has already agreed.
Schlimm: I'm reminded of probably the only useful keepsake from John Connolly's (sp?) 1980 GOP presidential candidacy. He said, "The worst environment I can think of is to be cold, hungry and out of a job."
I don't know if you're old enough to have signed up for the global-cooling certitude of many scientists in the early 1970s, but if you were around, you probably did.
To get back to trains (Mr. Moderator!): If all coal disappears, there will be something else to haul, if there's any economy left. That's the lesson we've learned from the disappearance from the rails of passengers, LCL, livestock, produce (largely), and more. Thanks to deregulation, the near 200-year-old railroad model has proven quite resilient.
Fred: Apparently in your view, carbon and GCC is some myth or conspiracy? For everyone's sake, it would be nice your fantasy were right, just as it's nice to believe in stuff like the tooth fairy and Old Santa, but reality says differently.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Bucyrus dakotafred: DwightBranch: ... coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that. And, nuclear also being off the table, the future is ... ? (And please don't tell me we're going to make up the difference with wind.) The difference will be made up with massive conservation. Smart meters, smart grid, and smart appliances, coupled with conservation pricing (price rationing) will do the trick. This is ultimately the national energy policy today. How many times have you heard that Americans use too much of the world's energy? The conservation policy is easy to implement simply by reducing supply.
dakotafred: DwightBranch: ... coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that. And, nuclear also being off the table, the future is ... ? (And please don't tell me we're going to make up the difference with wind.)
DwightBranch: ... coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that.
... coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that.
And, nuclear also being off the table, the future is ... ? (And please don't tell me we're going to make up the difference with wind.)
The difference will be made up with massive conservation. Smart meters, smart grid, and smart appliances, coupled with conservation pricing (price rationing) will do the trick.
This is ultimately the national energy policy today. How many times have you heard that Americans use too much of the world's energy?
The conservation policy is easy to implement simply by reducing supply.
When the US is is finally forced, kicking and screaming, to sign a treaty limiting its greenhouse gas emissions (likely in response to the demands for ecotariffs on the US by Europeans that would cost roughly the same) the US will likely be limited to producing 5% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, because we are 5% of the world's population. For two decades the US has been trying to get a treaty in which the starting point is not population, but rather where we were in 1990, when the US produced about 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Developing countries such as China that didn't have as many factories or cars in 1990 as we did, and which has over 50% of the world's population but in 1990 was around 5% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, would never go for it, nor would India, Brazil etc.
So right now the US is producing roughly 25% of the world's greenhouse gases, meaning we will either need to reduce our emissions, or buy the right to emit over that amount in the form of TEPs (transferable emissions permits), sold on the market by countries under their threshold, mainly poor countries like Haiti with not much industrial development. That cost would then be added proportionately to the cost of doing things producing greenhouse gases, such as electricity rates and gasoline prices. There might (and should in my opinion) be some ways to apportion the cost more fairly so that, for example, poor working people who drive little cars to work won't be hit as hard as upper middle class professionals driving what are essentially commercial vehicles as passenger cars. I like the BAT standard (best available technology) for cars, appliances, etc. that place a tariff on relatively less efficient products, something the Japanese already do and which makes more energy efficient (and generally more expensive, think of the cost of putting extra insulation in a refrigerator) products cost the same as less efficient ones. So, if say a pickup truck is going to be used as a car it will need to pay a hefty fine when being registered to make up for its greater emissions relative to say a Prius, unless it is used as a work truck, and work trucks must BE work trucks, with tool boxes or a stakebed in back, not a Z75 or whatever it is called, with leather seats and aluminum wheels being driven by a woman in heels and makeup to her office job, as was ubiquitous in Denver.
As for renewables, Germany for example is up to 25% of its electricity production to non-nuclear renewables, that in a country with a lot of cloudy weather, so it is possible to increase our amount too. The upshot for railroads (to get back on topic) is that while coal transport will be fading away, because steel wheel on steel rail transport is the most efficient, railroads should have an increasing relative price advantage over trucks and passenger cars for transporting normal goods and passengers as these changes take effect.
nat. gas cheep now........... so was gasoline 10 years ago..... as demand increases so does price
coal plants converting to natural gas is much cleaner. prices are cheap now. gasoline prices were cheap too 10 years ago.......... look for natural gas to go up up up..... pickups and semi tractors and busses are being built to run on nat gas......as demand increases so does..................
And the interesting thing is that with conservation comes even higher prices...as energy companies discover that the price of conservation becomes less profit....
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
dakotafred DwightBranch: ... coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that. And, nuclear also being off the table, the future is ... ? (And please don't tell me we're going to make up the difference with wind.)
DwightBranch ... coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that.
MidlandMike Bucyrus: So, in reading this thread, the overall consensus seems to be that coal is declining because of tightening regulations on emissions of nuclear fallout and mercury, the substitution of lower cost natural gas, and the warm winter. But, the decline of coal has nothing to do with an intention of reducing CO2. Many investors have put their money into renewables which have tax incentives, and avoided coal fired power because if some uncertainties in their future.
Bucyrus: So, in reading this thread, the overall consensus seems to be that coal is declining because of tightening regulations on emissions of nuclear fallout and mercury, the substitution of lower cost natural gas, and the warm winter. But, the decline of coal has nothing to do with an intention of reducing CO2.
But, the decline of coal has nothing to do with an intention of reducing CO2.
Many investors have put their money into renewables which have tax incentives, and avoided coal fired power because if some uncertainties in their future.
Well, that sounds like the decline of coal does have something to do with an intention of reducing CO2 if a requirement to reduce CO2 is one of those uncertainties in the future of coal fired power.
Bucyrus So, in reading this thread, the overall consensus seems to be that coal is declining because of tightening regulations on emissions of nuclear fallout and mercury, the substitution of lower cost natural gas, and the warm winter. But, the decline of coal has nothing to do with an intention of reducing CO2.
Boyd Next to the St.Croix river on the border with Wisconsin is the King power plant in Bayport Mn. It is east of St.Paul by about 15 or so miles. A few years ago they finished a one Billion dollar upgrade of the plant to make less emissions. I think that part of the upgrades were in the scrubbers. Its quite beyond me how you can spend one Billion dollars just to upgrade a power plant. Thats a huge chunk of money. BTW they get their coal delivered there by UP. I think it was up to about 1985 it was delivered there by barges coming up the St.Croix river from the Mississippi.
Next to the St.Croix river on the border with Wisconsin is the King power plant in Bayport Mn. It is east of St.Paul by about 15 or so miles. A few years ago they finished a one Billion dollar upgrade of the plant to make less emissions. I think that part of the upgrades were in the scrubbers. Its quite beyond me how you can spend one Billion dollars just to upgrade a power plant. Thats a huge chunk of money. BTW they get their coal delivered there by UP. I think it was up to about 1985 it was delivered there by barges coming up the St.Croix river from the Mississippi.
A typical coal fired Steam Electric Station (industry term) can easy cost $5 to $7 billion to build. The cost depends to a large extent on the number of and size of the generating units. Accordingly, an upgrade of $1 billion, depending on the nature of the upgrades, is not unreasonable. My company has spent billions upgrading our older coal fired power plants.
The key question is whether the company can earn a return on the investment.
In Texas, where I have lived and worked for most of my life, the market determines whether the company can recover the investment. This is also true the other states that have deregulated generation. Deregulation, by the way, does not mean deregulating health and safety standards. It means deregulating the commercial terms of generating and distributing electric energy.
In those jurisdictions that have not deregulated generation, the company has to convince the regulators to allow the the cost of the upgrades to be passed through to the ratepayers. This is generally a highly political process.
NittanyLion carnej1: Putting aside the O.T debates about Global Warming (which prob. will lead to the thread being locked) from what I've read the big issue with older coal fired power plants is the pending Mercury emissions regulations. It is very expensive to retrofit older plants to comply with these. That.combined with the previously mentioned dip in Natural Gas prices, is what driving the changes in the Industry. I used to date a girl that worked as programmer making the software and a technician that installed air quality monitoring systems in power plants. She was extremely well versed in emissions regulations, on the federal and most states levels. After all, the regs defined the parameters for the detectors. In various discussions about it, the two big ones were mercury and radiological material. Even scrubbed and bagged, there's still more radioactive material released to the atmosphere in a day by a coal fired plant versus a nuclear plant. And a lot more captured material that is radioactive has to be dealt with (a nuclear plant's waste material is more radioactive in total, but comprises a smaller total volume, easing handling and storage). I could go into a whole big thing about how people go nuts over how much radiation could be released by a nuclear power plant in an accident and don't even seem to bat an eye at how much will be released by coal. But that's off topic.
carnej1: Putting aside the O.T debates about Global Warming (which prob. will lead to the thread being locked) from what I've read the big issue with older coal fired power plants is the pending Mercury emissions regulations. It is very expensive to retrofit older plants to comply with these. That.combined with the previously mentioned dip in Natural Gas prices, is what driving the changes in the Industry.
Putting aside the O.T debates about Global Warming (which prob. will lead to the thread being locked) from what I've read the big issue with older coal fired power plants is the pending Mercury emissions regulations. It is very expensive to retrofit older plants to comply with these. That.combined with the previously mentioned dip in Natural Gas prices, is what driving the changes in the Industry.
I used to date a girl that worked as programmer making the software and a technician that installed air quality monitoring systems in power plants. She was extremely well versed in emissions regulations, on the federal and most states levels. After all, the regs defined the parameters for the detectors. In various discussions about it, the two big ones were mercury and radiological material. Even scrubbed and bagged, there's still more radioactive material released to the atmosphere in a day by a coal fired plant versus a nuclear plant. And a lot more captured material that is radioactive has to be dealt with (a nuclear plant's waste material is more radioactive in total, but comprises a smaller total volume, easing handling and storage).
I could go into a whole big thing about how people go nuts over how much radiation could be released by a nuclear power plant in an accident and don't even seem to bat an eye at how much will be released by coal. But that's off topic.
When I was a grad student in Denver I was sitting in a bar near campus when I got into a conversation about global warming with a guy who happened to be a professor at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden (that big M you can see illuminated on a hillside on Hwy 119 between Boulder and Denver is for CSofM). He was pushing nuclear, which I am opposed to (too complicated to be safe and the consequences are too severe to be worth it, think radioactive Old Faithful if it melts into the water table). Anyway, my off hand remark was "what do you do with the waste?" (which is something else that has never been figured out). He said "put it into old coal mines" because they are already highly radioactive, and he told me why, which is something that has stuck with me: coal seams are like the charcoal filter on your faucet at home, water runs through it and deposits elements like uranium and mercury that it has washed through, and they become highly concentrated in the coal (and obviously fills the air when it is burned). I live near a mega power plant in Florida (but hopefully not much longer) that was featured in Trains a few years back and think about that conversation all the time. At some point, as you say, that feature of coal burning will become as hotly contested as the greenhouse gas emissions. To get back on topic: coal fired power plants are the past, and railroads should be ready for that.
So, in reading this thread, the overall consensus seems to be that coal is declining because of tightening regulations on emissions of nuclear fallout and mercury, the substitution of lower cost natural gas, and the warm winter.
carnej1 Putting aside the O.T debates about Global Warming (which prob. will lead to the thread being locked) from what I've read the big issue with older coal fired power plants is the pending Mercury emissions regulations. It is very expensive to retrofit older plants to comply with these. That.combined with the previously mentioned dip in Natural Gas prices, is what driving the changes in the Industry.
Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.
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.
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.
My first job as a new conductor back in March 1999 was a call off the extra board to spot a coal train at the Sutherland plant. The plant is on exCGW track, reached by a "new" connection off the exCNW main east of Marshalltown. You had to run around the train and shove it into the plant. One track ends at the Iowa River, and once in a while a couple of cars would get "wet." I never had that problem the times I spotted it, though.
Had the coal plant been built, the plan was to put in a complete loop for unloading trains. The existing plant is or has been under renovation, conversion to gas. There are hoppers still sitting on the tracks there, but I don't think there has been a coal train spotted into it this year, certainly not in the last 6 months.
Jeff
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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?
YoHo1975 The president is responsible for the rock bottom price of Natural gas that is replacing coal?
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.
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/
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.
chicagorails 57 coal plants this year and 90 more next 2 years to be shuttered... thanks president !!!!
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.
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