blue streak 1Now Georgia power has announced another cost increase for its 2 new Nuclear power reactors. This is due to Westinghouse's bankruptcy and pull out from the construction contract. If work continues another rate increase for all of us even if we are on non profit EMCs.
We have deregulation in Texas plus our own independent electrical grid. I think I pay 8-9 cents per Kwh. For the worst month of running the AC all day I think I pay $89 for a 2100 sq foot home. I have made some improvements since building the home though:
* Upgraded to 19 SEER AC System from the builder grade 13 SEER.
* Added insulation in the attic on top of what the builder had.
* Replaced the windows on sides of the house where the sun shines in generating heat with new Andersen replacements that absorb the heat without allowing it to pass through the glass.
* With the exception of a few instances of decorative lighting (exterior porch light, coach lights on the garage and entry foyer lights), All lights are LED now. LED lights do not generate heat like the flourescent and incandescent do.
The house is uniformly cool in the Summer, no hot and no cold spots and my electrical bill is probably the cheapest on my block. All without flipping to renewable energy.......it would be really amazing if the United States passed some decent builder codes for constructing energy efficient homes. I am happier in a energy efficient house, the windows work better, the AC works better, I save probably $100 to $150 a month in electric bills in the summer. Winter I use Natural Gas for the fireplace and Furnace........also very cheap.
Next year I will replace the refrigerator with a more energy efficient model. On the water conservation front, replaced my toilets with the much more water efficient TOTO brand (Japanese). I can control how much water is used with each flush via the time I hold down the flush handle. So #1 only takes half the water to flush vs #2. Replaced the dishwasher with a more water efficient model that uses steam, in the next two years will have a new clothes washer that cuts water usage. Have rain and freeze sensors on my lawn sprinkler system. My water bill likewise never exceeds $100 in the Summer peak months.
jcburns I believe you can have renewable energy and you can work towards making it the lowest cost energy. Especially when you deal with the true cost—including health and environmental impacts.
I believe you can have renewable energy and you can work towards making it the lowest cost energy. Especially when you deal with the true cost—including health and environmental impacts.
Hydroelectric has often been the lowest cost source of electricity once the dam and plant has been paid for. Problem is that precipitation can vary over time (droughts). One of the things that hurt the Pacific Electric in the early 1920's was a severe drought that curtailed power deliveries and the PE had to cut back on their service.
Most forms of renewable energy are intermittent and the true cost would include the cost of storage and/or backup storage.
All forms of energy production have some sort of environmental issues in terms of land use, effects on wildlife and waste disposal. Rooftop solar has probably the smalest impact on land use and wildlife but still has the waste disposal issues from production and end of life for the panels.
Now Georgia power has announced another cost increase for its 2 new Nuclear power reactors. This is due to Westinghouse's bankruptcy and pull out from the construction contract. If work continues another rate increase for all of us even if we are on non profit EMCs.
MidlandMike Euclid The article linked above by Bruce Kelly should be an eye-opener for those who believe that the price of natural gas is killing coal. The near universal, thumbnail explanation for the death of coal is that it is purely due to economics in the falling price of natural gas making coal unable to compete. With this explanation, it is not regulations that are killing coal, and nobody is waging a war against coal. Coal is simply dying because the market says it is obsolete. It is true that what ultimately stops new coal plants is economics, but it is the economics of not being able to comply with objections of the anti-coal activists such as the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” movement. It is not just the economics in the cost of alternative fuels like natural gas. Far from it. ... You seem to ignore the fact that the Sierra Club's legal tactic in their war, is to point out the economics of the higher costs of coal vs going to gas or renewables. The Public Service Agencies' duty is to the ratepayers, and that is why the power companies were losing the cases. I does not matter who, whether the power companies changed to gas on their own, or were forced by legal arguements, but the "why" in either case was economics.
Euclid The article linked above by Bruce Kelly should be an eye-opener for those who believe that the price of natural gas is killing coal. The near universal, thumbnail explanation for the death of coal is that it is purely due to economics in the falling price of natural gas making coal unable to compete. With this explanation, it is not regulations that are killing coal, and nobody is waging a war against coal. Coal is simply dying because the market says it is obsolete. It is true that what ultimately stops new coal plants is economics, but it is the economics of not being able to comply with objections of the anti-coal activists such as the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” movement. It is not just the economics in the cost of alternative fuels like natural gas. Far from it. ...
The article linked above by Bruce Kelly should be an eye-opener for those who believe that the price of natural gas is killing coal.
The near universal, thumbnail explanation for the death of coal is that it is purely due to economics in the falling price of natural gas making coal unable to compete. With this explanation, it is not regulations that are killing coal, and nobody is waging a war against coal. Coal is simply dying because the market says it is obsolete.
It is true that what ultimately stops new coal plants is economics, but it is the economics of not being able to comply with objections of the anti-coal activists such as the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” movement. It is not just the economics in the cost of alternative fuels like natural gas. Far from it.
...
You seem to ignore the fact that the Sierra Club's legal tactic in their war, is to point out the economics of the higher costs of coal vs going to gas or renewables. The Public Service Agencies' duty is to the ratepayers, and that is why the power companies were losing the cases. I does not matter who, whether the power companies changed to gas on their own, or were forced by legal arguements, but the "why" in either case was economics.
Why would we need the Sierra Club to point out the economics of the cheapest source of power? The market is perfectly capable of finding the lowest cost. The Sierra Club uses certain cost arguments in the public interest for the purose of stopping coal plants. But they are not bargaining for the lowest possible cost as their ultimate goal. Their goal is to kill coal plants. Why would producers want to run coal plants if there were a less costly alternative?
After the new coal plant gets shot down by the Sierra Club on the pretext of protecting the ratepayers' interest, the replacement is likely to cost the ratepayers more.
If that is not true, why would the producers and consumers both want the lowest possible cost and know exactly what it would take to achieve that?
Why is "lowest cost at any cost" such an obsession? WE CAN BE BETTER AND SMARTER THAN THAT.
Edit: I answered the above post on page 9 of this thread before I realized there was a page 10. I see some of the other posters have already made the same point. But in question to one of your later posts, you talk about the price of alternatives going up, while the actual price of renewables are going down. Can you furnish a link to some reputable article that shows coal is going to become less costly than gas/alternatives.
SD70M-2Dude Norm48327 Boy, that escalated quickly. Just when I thought we we were finally having a back-and-forth discussion on this forum about a controversial topic without throwing insults. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Norm48327
Boy, that escalated quickly. Just when I thought we we were finally having a back-and-forth discussion on this forum about a controversial topic without throwing insults. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Discussions here only mirror the current US political situation.
When better mud slingers are manufactured - they are gobbled up by all the combatents and rushed into high volume service. Fire before you are ready, Gridly!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
[quote user="Euclid"]
As the Sierra Club fights coal in the public hearings, they use every tactic at their disposal including proposing less costly rates in the short term by not building a particular coal plant. But at the same time, they use other tactics such as scaring investors with the prospect of new regulations and further resistance to coal. So in the course of their strategy, they might lower costs temporality, but ultimately switching to renewables will add cost. They are adding costs right now.
In the big picture, the Sierra Club is not about reducing the cost of energy. They are about killing off fossil fuels. The two objectives are mutually exclusive. Either you have renewable energy or you have the lowest cost energy. You can’t have both.
As part of the pitch, most people have been led to believe that you actually can have both. They think solar and wind will save money because wind and sunshine are free. In Minnesota, the people who created the renewable energy mandates promised a veritable cornucopia. They told us it would dramatically lower energy costs, boost the economy, and create all the new jobs we could want. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This will all become clear as time goes on. The rate payers will soon find out whether or not renewable energy is a gold mine or a money pit. But I am guessing that if it were a gold mine, we would not need mandates to make it happen. /quote]
I am going to side with Euclid on this and don't give a damn what the liberals want to shove down our throats. The latter have an agenda that will lead us into a system of government those of us with independent minds will not accept as reality. Sure, the academics will pan those who disagree with the concept of AGW and disparage us for our opinions. Does that make our opinions wrong? Until scientific evidence does there is room for doubt, but that will not be accepted by those who claim it is "settled science". Science is an investigative process that will never be settled until proven otherwise. Those who pan us "deniers" for expressing our opinions are either delusional or are following the agenda of those who wish to rule the world.
The failure of academia to educate students and their mission to indoctrinate them should be a warning sign. Our entire eductional system, K/12 through a masters degree has been corrupted.
Some may disagree with me, and they have the right to do so, but when they are "indoctrinating" rather than educating they have betrayed the trust the public placed in them. I know two PHD's who never tout their credentials and would never express their opinions on AGW. Whether it is real or not remains to be seen. In the mean those who profess to have 'inside information' would be best advised to shut up.
Norm
US Politics - Figures that lie and liars that figure and use the lying figures to support further lies that they figure will snow the public. Throw them into each and every matter of public policy and you have a mess of almost Biblical proportions.
This will all become clear as time goes on. The rate payers will soon find out whether or not renewable energy is a gold mine or a money pit. But I am guessing that if it were a gold mine, we would not need mandates to make it happen.
VOLKER LANDWEHR Euclid They are killing coal without any economical, affordable alternatives. The article mentions that the Sierra Club does not care if affordable alternatives exist. If I understood the article correctly the Sierra Club shows the approving authorities more cost effective alternatives to keep consumer prices down. In one case the SC proposed changing to gas for $70 Mio. instead of refurbishing the coal power plant to comply with emission standards for $700 Mio. That is just one of the mentioned examples.Regards, Volker
Euclid They are killing coal without any economical, affordable alternatives. The article mentions that the Sierra Club does not care if affordable alternatives exist.
If I understood the article correctly the Sierra Club shows the approving authorities more cost effective alternatives to keep consumer prices down.
In one case the SC proposed changing to gas for $70 Mio. instead of refurbishing the coal power plant to comply with emission standards for $700 Mio.
That is just one of the mentioned examples.Regards, Volker
Exactly. From the article:
"Beyond Coal isn’t the stereotypical Sierra Club campaign, tree-huggers shouting save-the-Earth slogans. Yes, it sometimes deploys its 2.4 million-member, grass-roots army to shutter plants with traditional not-in-my-back-yard organizing and right-to-breathe agitating. But it usually wins by arguing that ditching coal will save ratepayers money. "
Sounds like those alternatives are economical and affordable.
EuclidThey are killing coal without any economical, affordable alternatives. The article mentions that the Sierra Club does not care if affordable alternatives exist.
SD70M-2Dude Euclid It is true that what ultimately stops new coal plants is economics, but it is the economics of not being able to comply with objections of the anti-coal activists such as the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” movement. It is not just the economics in the cost of alternative fuels like natural gas. Far from it. You mean "objections" like restrictions on the amount of mercury, particulate, SOx and NOx emissions? My takeaway from the article is that the Sierra Club's main strategy in their war on coal is to point out air quality problems at a local level, and to open eyes about what really is more economical. By the sound of it gas and/or renewables are now cheaper than "clean coal", and in some cases even coal plants without any emission controls are more expensive than the other options. I have no problem with that strategy, and neither do many of the local people in the story by the looks of it. If we didn't have people willing to raise those points then Chicago would look like Beijing. As the article stated of course they will go after natural gas, cars and trains (among other things) next. But I don't think widespread local-level campaigns for these will succeed unless credible, affordable alternatives exist. After all, natural gas and wind turbines were not invented yesterday, but only recently has the Sierra Club had real success pushing them as replacements for coal. After all, economics win at the end of the day (gotta keep the lights on). If reliable, affordable electric cars and electricity storage systems become widely known and available then I can see them having success in these areas too.
Euclid It is true that what ultimately stops new coal plants is economics, but it is the economics of not being able to comply with objections of the anti-coal activists such as the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” movement. It is not just the economics in the cost of alternative fuels like natural gas. Far from it.
You mean "objections" like restrictions on the amount of mercury, particulate, SOx and NOx emissions?
My takeaway from the article is that the Sierra Club's main strategy in their war on coal is to point out air quality problems at a local level, and to open eyes about what really is more economical. By the sound of it gas and/or renewables are now cheaper than "clean coal", and in some cases even coal plants without any emission controls are more expensive than the other options.
I have no problem with that strategy, and neither do many of the local people in the story by the looks of it. If we didn't have people willing to raise those points then Chicago would look like Beijing.
As the article stated of course they will go after natural gas, cars and trains (among other things) next. But I don't think widespread local-level campaigns for these will succeed unless credible, affordable alternatives exist. After all, natural gas and wind turbines were not invented yesterday, but only recently has the Sierra Club had real success pushing them as replacements for coal. After all, economics win at the end of the day (gotta keep the lights on).
If reliable, affordable electric cars and electricity storage systems become widely known and available then I can see them having success in these areas too.
My only point in that previous post is that what is killing coal is an activist protest directly attacking every aspect of coal usage with the intention of killing coal. This conflicts with the widespread explanation that coal is only dying because of economic competition against natural gas.
You say that this activism will not kill gas and oil unless more economical alternatives exist. Really? They are killing coal without any economical, affordable alternatives. The article mentions that the Sierra Club does not care if affordable alternatives exist. It says that their strategy is to kill fossil fuels and let the power companies figure out how to produce energy without fossil fuels. The belief that this will naturally bring about “credible, affordable alternatives” is wishful thinking.
If you believe that fossil fuels must be banned, the “economics” of that is that the alternatives need NOT be cheaper that the banned fuels. “Economics” also includes how price affects consumption. Prices will rise and cause consumption to fall.
The battle starts with killing coal, but in the end, it goes all the way to slowing consumption of everything in the name of “sustainability.” The solution goes right past renewable energy and lands squarely on CONSERVATION. It arrives there effortlessly precisely because renewable energy is not “affordable.” If it was affordable, we would adopt it voluntarily without the regulatory mandates.
So, yes, they will kill coal alright; and then oil/gas. But the truth comes home when peoples’ electric bills rise. As they rise, conservation will be the only affordable alternative. And in this new non-expanding, sustainable economy, we will live a much different, more authentic lifestyle.
tree68 Gramp And how much electricity will have to be generated to power all these vehicles and heat all these homes, and what happens to electricity prices? Ah - the problem for the ages. People who have absolutely no idea where their power (or their food) comes from. Hint - it's not the electricity fairy... They're anti-solar, anti-windmills, anti-dam, anti-nuclear, and anti-coal (and probably anti-natural gas, too).
Gramp And how much electricity will have to be generated to power all these vehicles and heat all these homes, and what happens to electricity prices?
And how much electricity will have to be generated to power all these vehicles and heat all these homes, and what happens to electricity prices?
Ah - the problem for the ages. People who have absolutely no idea where their power (or their food) comes from. Hint - it's not the electricity fairy...
They're anti-solar, anti-windmills, anti-dam, anti-nuclear, and anti-coal (and probably anti-natural gas, too).
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
From the linked article:
There will be no formal surrender in the war on coal, no battleship treaty to mark the end. But Beyond Coal’s leaders believe they can finish most of their work setting the U.S. electric sector on a greener path over the next five years. The next phase of the war on carbon would be to try to electrify everything else—cars and trains that use oil-derived gasoline and diesel, as well as homes and businesses that rely on natural gas and heating oil. Nilles hopes power companies like OG&E and DTE that Beyond Coal has spent the last decade fighting with—but then cutting deals with—can become allies in Phase Two. And allies will be vital, because if King Coal seems like a rich and powerful enemy, it’s a pushover compared to Big Oil.
“Once we’ve taken out coal, we’ll need to take on oil, and who better to help than our new friends in the utility sector who can make money from electrification?” Nilles says with a grin. “It’s a long fight. This is how we win.”
Huh, who knew that using financial logic and hard legal arguments would do a better job of swaying corporate actions than 'bleeding heart'-style protests? [/sarcasm]
Natural gas has been only part of the story.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/inside-war-on-coal-000002
SD70M-2DudeAs RME noted it is the fracking boom and its cheap natural gas that has really been displacing coal, not some left-wing green conspiracy.
We certainly agree on that point. There is no conspiracy.
Ulrich ... I knew I was close at a quarter. Will be interesting to see what it is in 20 years.. maybe up over a half by then.
I certainly see no reduction in either the setting up for production or the marketing of wind-turbine units (at a variety of scales and optimizations for wind speeds). I don't really know how much of the available resources for wind were 'low-hanging fruit' so that getting from 25% to 50% will be much harder in a variety of ways than getting where we are now.
I do know that a great deal of current solar power is a scam as it is commonly presented as a 'renewable' source. Even leaving out the problems with the technologies used to make PV panels, much of the equipment has what I'd consider a relatively short effective service life, after which it becomes inoperative or progressively degraded and will (how convenient!) need to be replaced. Remains to be seen if production of solar can be ramped up to the reliable level that makes new-build PV cost-effective in context net of all the production needed to maintain solar contribution at the current levels reported.
Of course, there are some large-scale renewable-energy projects that could be implemented -- offshore wind farms being one example -- that would get us progressively advanced with comparatively little pushback from people who have to live around large-scale renewable generation. i'm all in favor of cost-effective renewable life cycle development instead of either fossil or nuclear at this time.
Almost all the historical work in SRC was either academic or the sort of long-term pie-in-the-sky-tomorrow tech development that characterized Fischer-Tropsch-style gasification/fuel synthesis in the same period (which I think is what you mean by 'liquefaction of the coal' - you wouldn't burn carbon in n-methyl pyrrolidine!). Almost all you need to know about it, historically, is reflected in its impact on contemporary energy practice ... <cue the crickets chirping>.
I have a longstanding interest in producing relatively low-cost liquid 'carrier' fuel that is less refined/engineered than typical diesel fuel, and also in solid fuels with controlled and reliable ash characteristics and low sulfur. In part this specifically involves 'next-generation' steam power, which has comparatively little packaging area, balance, or weight capacity for things like electrostatic precipitation, fly-ash recovery or sulfur extraction -- that means 'engineering the fuel' has to be a preferred option. I always saw SRC restricted to this sort of field, and not to typical baseline power generation where there are better coal-handling and pollution-control means available (and at least at the time money and interest in building them) using conventional Rankine-cycle equipment in well-established ways. Until there is a mainstream 'case' for commercializing that sort of process, I wouldn't expect to see heavy funding for a resumption of overt SRC research.
There were a couple of key papers, available free via the Web at one time, that covered the effective minimum scale that would 'make sense' for the required solvent extraction and recycling flows, associated heat balance and power consumption for realtime "drying" of the product (and extraction of solvent from the bottom solids) - I think one even had tables of required makeup solvent per ton of product per day, and some of the required amelioration (pyrolysis, iirc) of the flows containing the various solvent slips.
There are alternative uses for refined SRC carbon; the Japanese 'specialty product' that GM used for the aforementioned coal-turbine Cadillacs was one, although I never did find out precisely what the 'first best use' of that stuff was at the time. At least part of your question about both the solvent extraction and handling of residual streams also involves a critical capitalization volume and throughput; in particular the prospective uses of the 'usual sort' for inorganic ash constituents in many coal feedstocks may be considerably restricted if even trace amounts of the 'wrong kind' of solvent or other process materials remain in it.
With some care, the energy footprint involved in SRC can be made comparatively small, especially if some effective use of solar or other renewable heat can be applied to evaporating the solvent effectively. There is little other heat or pressure requirement, much of the cost of crushing the coal to increase its surface area for quicker solution is common to other systems that would use coal firing, and the development of appropriate pumps, pipe and valve lining materials, and so forth that feature relatively low operating power and long service life is almost fully OTS at this point (compared to the mid-'70s to mid-'80s situation at the peak of the Carter administration's alternative fuel development efforts.) At large scale in a good recirculating setup, I think reasonable process cost (considering the interesting possibilities for several of the products) would not be difficult to achieve, and permit a reasonable profit margin for the operating company at least.
Note that this is still in the 'well to wheel' framework of production-energy-cost analysis; I'm not including any carbon credit activity, EPA interest or discouragement, etc. as they are too uncertain to incorporate until much closer to design-freeze time, and indeed might be net positive rather than restricting in a manner essentially impossible to predict over the time span associated with systems development.
RME, all I can find about solvent refining of coal is out of date (latest is 1983) and it's all academic papers that I am not paying for. Virtually all was aimed at liquifaction of the coal which would not help power generation. The most encouraging and largest scale was an 18 day run at Ga Power's Plant Mitchell, a 22.5 megawatt unit used mainly for testing and research, in 1983. In any case no one seems to realize or account for the energy to produce it. Where is that coming from? The stuff in the bottom ash still has to be handled somehow. Apparently it is possible to produce a solid fuel that burns clean, but at what cost?
Shadow the Cats ownerYet all these repairs and added costs were forced upon us in the name of fighting climate change.
These cost were not for measures against climate change but to make the air cleaner. As you said in other posts the milage of your trucks got down dramatically. So they emit more CO2.
The USA's emission standards were primarily set to clean the air as I understood them. The German standards were set to reduce CO2. NOx were not that important, til now.
CO2 and NOx emissions are linked. You have to find a compromise.Regards, Volker
erikemI've seen some analysis that shows carbon has a net benefit from higher agricultural productivity and fewer deaths from cold in conjunction with a low climate sensitivity.
You are right. There are areas in the world that might be better off. But what about all those areas that will get too hot to live, too dry to plant anything or those areas that just disappear because of rising sea water levels like Bangladesh or the Florida Keys.
It's not a local but a global problem. Locally there might be gains globally it costs.Regards, Volker
tdmidgetRME, you have used the abreviation SRC multiple times without, as near as I can tell, telling us what that means. We can't have a intelligent discussion without that knowledge.
Sorry about that; I had it in there and then took out the technical stuff as too arcane and the definition went with it.
As erikem said, 'solvent-refined coal' -- there were at one time a great many references to various forms and approaches via the NTIS technical literature service and on government-agency web sites.
The basic idea is that you can find solvent mixtures that dissolve the carbon and hydrocarbons in coal, but not the sulfur or ash-forming constituents. You can then distill off (and recover) the solvent mixture, controlling how the carbon-bearing materials come out of solution.
The process can be done at small scale with comparatively little equipment, but of course works best at full 'industrial' scale. I still have a large bottle of the "best" general solvent around the turn of the millennium, n-methyl pyrrolidine, sitting behind my desk.
SRC was likely the method used to produce the toner-like carbon powder that was the fuel for the famous coal-burning Eldorados. I believe one of the remaining issues with the chemical process (trace amounts of remaining structural sulfur bound in biological compounds from the original plants forming the coal beds) has been recently addressed with a revised chemical wash process developed to make extremely low-sulfur biodiesel in 'one pass'.
Note that you may well turn around and put additives back in the SRC carbon product after it's been purified. That's particularly important if you are going to use a cyclone combustor with FGR and enriched oxygen firing (FGR is 'flue gas recirculation', the analogue in steam generation to EGR in motors) because cyclones need a relatively lavish source of fusible ash to work properly. This is one of the places the 'right' kind of torrefied wood can become really useful.
erikem VOLKER LANDWEHR But there are estimates. I will not give links to avoid discussions about bias. But google for "social cost of carbon", defined as cost in $ for each additional ton of carbon dioxide for economic damages. I've seen some analysis that shows carbon has a net benefit from higher agricultural productivity and fewer deaths from cold in conjunction with a low climate sensitivity.
VOLKER LANDWEHR But there are estimates. I will not give links to avoid discussions about bias. But google for "social cost of carbon", defined as cost in $ for each additional ton of carbon dioxide for economic damages.
But there are estimates. I will not give links to avoid discussions about bias. But google for "social cost of carbon", defined as cost in $ for each additional ton of carbon dioxide for economic damages.
I've seen some analysis that shows carbon has a net benefit from higher agricultural productivity and fewer deaths from cold in conjunction with a low climate sensitivity.
That is of course if you live far away from the equator, and away from the shoreline...
Euclid He was basically saying that if we kill coal to reduce CO2, and it turns out to have been unnecessary, we will still have benefitted because we will have ended all of the other pollutants from coal even though eliminating CO2 from coal was later found to have been uncessary. But if we find that there was no reason to remove CO2 by killing coal, we will have killed coal needlessly because we could have eliminated those other emmissions without killing coal. So I think it would pay to wait until we have a better understanding of the CO2 issue before we rush to kill coal notwithstanding the crisis we are said to be facing and its associated belief that remedial action must be taken without delay.
He was basically saying that if we kill coal to reduce CO2, and it turns out to have been unnecessary, we will still have benefitted because we will have ended all of the other pollutants from coal even though eliminating CO2 from coal was later found to have been uncessary.
But if we find that there was no reason to remove CO2 by killing coal, we will have killed coal needlessly because we could have eliminated those other emmissions without killing coal.
So I think it would pay to wait until we have a better understanding of the CO2 issue before we rush to kill coal notwithstanding the crisis we are said to be facing and its associated belief that remedial action must be taken without delay.
The issue of CO2 levels and global warming have been studied for over 100 years, and heavily in the past 40. How much more research do you propose we do, perhaps keep going until we get a convenient answer that we want? What if that never comes?
And I stand by my comments about certain pollution and environmental damage going hand-in-hand with coal mining or oil/gas production (I am not just focusing on coal). Mines are not nice places, with black, acidic water draining away and lagoons of even blacker sludge from the washery (which often leak). That gets into the local creeks and rivers unless it is strictly controlled, which is costly.
As RME noted it is the fracking boom and its cheap natural gas that has really been displacing coal, not some left-wing green conspiracy. If that were true we would be seeing far more wind turbines and solar installations than gas plants.
Fracking has its own problems, notably earthquakes and groundwater contamination. In Alberta we have been lucky so far and have very little (if any) groundwater contamination, and have only recently started to see earthquakes. It remains to be seen how much those things will worsen as the boom continues.
That is a field that truly deserves further study.
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