We’re Keen To Protect Coal–Here’s Why
Robert Murray hugging Energy Secretary Rick Perry
NPR reports: President Trump has ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take immediate steps to help financially troubled coal and nuclear power plants, which are in trouble because across much of the country they’re having trouble competing with cheaper forms of electricity generated by natural gas and renewable energy.
“Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix, and impacting the resilience of our power grid. President Trump has directed Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to prepare immediate steps to stop the loss of these resources, and looks forward to his recommendations,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says in the statement.
This is like saying, ‘We’ve seen a rapid depletion of ebola, but we’re making plans to insure it isn’t entirely eradicated.”
The report is correct, coal isn’t competitive. The only reason it’s even close to being a reasonable enterprise is that it dumps its toxins directly into the air we breathe and the waters from which we take the fish we eat. Millions of people die around the world each year from these poisons, and countless millions of others get horrifically ill. 
Aside from the suffering, the medical costs and the long-term environmental damage, if borne by the coal industry (instead of the taxpayer), would make the cost of energy from coal completely outrageous; it would be just as feasible to power your house with the electricity generated from hundreds of thousands of hamsters running on tiny wheels.
The only reason to keep coal around is to foster the amity of people like those shown above. This is coal baron Robert Murray hugging Energy Secretary Rick Perry at the Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, at the conclusion of a meeting in which Murray presented his energy wish-list to the man whose job it is to make it all come true.
Craig,
Well gosh, two old acquaintances embracing at a highly publicized conference some years ago, Rick Perry also embraced retired Vice Admiral Dennis V. McGinn, President of ACORE in the same manner.
All that proves is Rick Perry’s a huggy kind of guy, despite looking a bit like Clark Kent, it certainly doesn’t prove the sort of sinister connotation you are desperately trying to imply.
If we can get past all the hyperbole and political ranting, the issues become far more simple.
It no seems hard to believe a mere 10 years ago the US and the world was still operating on the basis of “peak oil” and difficulties with OPEC. It’s even more difficult to think back to all the Hoo Haa created by the anti-fracking anti-natural gas protestors.
Over the subsequent decade (and the decade prior) the US coal industry became badly neglected as investment was diverted to renewable sources of energy and the US the Obama administration waged an active “War on Coal”.
Coal is a capital intensive industry, requiring high levels of ongoing investment and relatively stable prices. It’s fair to say the US Coal industry is facing considerable difficulties.
US Coal suffer suffers from a number of disadvantages;
1)Coal is capital and labour intensive with logistical difficulties and high transportation costs.
2)Coal mining often involves considerable land rehabilitation costs.
3)Coal mining without terrestrial environmental damage is expensive
4)Transforming coal into energy emits significant toxic and environmental pollutants.
That having been said, Coal does possess the following advantages:
1) The US (and the rest of the world) has hundreds of years of coal reserves
2) Coal fired generation is 100% reliable. Coal produces the kind of “Power on Demand ” needed by intensive industrialized societies.
3) Coal gives the US “energy independence”.
4) Coal can be logistically economic, transporting coal to where energy is needed makes more sense than the high cost of energy transmission over great distances.
5) Coal provides employment in areas which would otherwise be destitute.
6) Low cost natural gas will not last forever. The cost of natural gas will increase as export demand grows, while coal costs are dropping with modernization.
7) Coal is a major export earner and strategic trade weapon.
8) Coal remains 33 % of US power generation and over 40% of global generation.
On the balance, the major disadvantage of Coal is the pollution the industry creates.
There are two approaches to this problem.
1) Continue to demand the coal industry be further demonized and neglected, and gamble US prosperity on renewables and natural gas being able to replace that 33% baseload power. Oppose coal violently internationally, thereby depriving billions of people of any hope to escape poverty.
Increase the destruction of US industry and ensuring the rise in poverty and unemployment among the poorest American communities.
Allow China and other nations to build cheap, but pollutant coal fired power generation, thereby increasing global pollution and enslaving third world nations to Chinese owned power generation and distribution. Lose US and Western influence while increasing security threats as the US further retreats and the Dragon grows bigger claws.
Or:
2) Follow the administrations lead and embrace emerging new “Clean(er) Coal” technologies.
These technologies are already proving effective in curbing emissions, and even recycling waste into valuable commodities and by products.
Encourage investment in the coal industry to modernize with incentives to continuously research and develop high tech solutions to pollution and environmental issues.
The choice is yours.
Craig, there was a time, not so long ago, when you would have supported the introduction of clean technology. That was before it undermined your political bias. At some point you must decide, what’s more important, environmental progress or your membership of the “Never Trump” club !
Each time I post new concerning real, existing, practical new developments in clean(er) coal technology, you choose to ignore their existence or assert they’re a mere “hoax “, without even studying the sources.
Why ? Are you so much in debt to the Renewable Fuel Association Lobby, or are you just unwilling to abandon you utopian beliefs and hatred of the President ?
Maybe it’s a just a thing with some Californians to believe the rest of the nation, or world, is just an extension of California.