Green | August 13, 2008 | 12 comments

Blackening the coal industry

source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?blogid=49&entry_id=28923

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MeganMcKenzie
Much like offshore drilling, expansion of coal power seems inevitable because coal, the reasoning goes, is cheap and readily available in the U.S.

Coal prices, however, are spiking, and with them, electric bills. American Electric Power announced plans yesterday to raise its Ohio prices by 45 percent over the next three years. Tennessee Valley Authority is also raising its prices.

So coal isn't cheap. And it's only "readily available" if destroying Appalachian communities strikes you as acceptable.

And despite the desperately false (and exorbitantly expensive) advertising campaign the industry is mounting, it's not clean either. Not in liquid form [PDF], probably not even with carbon capture and storage. In any case, CCS coal would cost as much as renewable energy.

So why are we still blowing up mountains to get to the stuff and building new plants to burn it?
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12 comments // Blackening the coal industry

  • jacijacijaci
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  
    • jacijacijaci:

      LMAO!!! true, true.

      Ever walk down the railroad tracks on a hot day? Know that black tarry stuff that gets on your shoes or clothes and is almost impossible to get out? That is creosote. They put it on railroad ties and telephone poles to keep insects from eating them. That is because creosote is FULL of toxic materials that are poison----arsenic, lead, bismuth, antimony, mercury, and a lot of other compounds that are highly toxic. They use it for railroad ties and telephone poles because it is cheap and deadly. Creosote is industrial waste. It is the tarry gunk that collects inside chimneys where coal is burned. It condenses on the inside of the chimney as the flue gasses travel through and cool. Most of it goes off into the atmosphere. What condenses in the chimneys needs to be scrapped out or you can have a flue fire---when the creosote catches fire and burns(very dangerous---it generates very high temperatures and can burn a building down). So it is scrapped out regularly and used to treat railroad ties, telephone poles and other wood that might be inviting to insects.

    • 3 years ago
  • ihateyou
  • regjoeschmo
  • Wetdog
  • crob80227
    • 0
      crob80227  
    • Image

    • Wanna get FREE money from the government?

      Start up a coal plant!

      "Congress has been giving away billions to coal companies who were supposed to create synthetic liquid fuels but instead are using it for standard coal processing.

      According to Time, coal producers have taken in $9 billion in tax credits from through this giveaway, and new legislation will make it easier for coal companies to continue scoring free money.

      Coal companies have been receiving tax credits based on the price of petroleum -- when oil prices rise, they receive less of a credit. But a clause inserted by inserted by Rick Santorum (R-PA) into the Tax Relief Act of 2005 (currently making its way through Congress), will fix the credit based on 2004 prices, so no matter what, coal producers will continue to receive their windfall."

    • 3 years ago
  • SDLN
  • crob80227
    • 0
      crob80227  

    • The tide is definitely turning against Big Coal.

      Fewer and fewer people are buying into their PR campaigns anymore and that is filling me with a lot of optimisim.

      Every 3 months wind and solar and all the other "alt fuels" are announcing massive technological breakhroughs -- and people are looking at the dirty, antiquated coal technology from the 1800's and realizing that coal is a dead end technology. I almost feel bad for coal. It's like trying to sell someone a broke down 1973 Pinto covered in rust for $500,000! No matter how slick the sales pitch it's pretty obvious that it's a bad deal.

      Why the hell would we invest the next ten years building a power plant that is already hopelessly out-of-date when we could (for nearly an identicial amount of money) build something totally clean and nearly maintenance free?

      It's at the point where it really doesn't matter how many commercials or PR campaigns Big Coal runs because it's just so self-evident and obvious that the age of coal is over.

      You'd have a better chance bringing pagers and beepers back into vouge then you would making coal seem like a hip 21st century energy technology.

    • 3 years ago
  • Allorno1
    • 0
      Allorno1  

    • Coal is definitely not the answer, its trading in expensive poison for cheap poison. The link on Wetdog's post has some sound ideas check it out.

    • 3 years ago
  • Wetdog
  • victimofcoal
  • Wetdog
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