Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Hey Bambi, half our electricity comes from coal

h/t Instapundit for pointing to this article.

This article cites a report (you can get a free copy here - need to register, then they e it to you) that discusses the impact of a flu pandemic on coal supplies (link to article), but it’s the report itself presents more interesting information.

Let’s recall Bambi’s coal position first: So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah he wants clean-coal technology. Son, you gotta dig it out first! I come from a line of coal crackers. I get pissed off just thinking about this simpleton flatlander. OK, back on point.

How reliant are we on coal? From the linked article: In 2007, the nation's 620 coal-fired power plants supplied 48.6% of the nation's electric power, the report says. The reliance on coal varies by region, ranging from 74% in the Midwest to 5% on the West Coast.

Check your state to see how reliant you were on coal in 2007:


How much coal do we produce in the US? From Appendix C of the report, we learn that we had 1,374 active mining operation producing 1.146 b-b-billion short tons of coal in 2007.

To put coal into perspective, there is the allocation by source for our electrical generation for 2007:


Here’s a hard fact from the report: In 2007, the electrical power sector generated 4,006,482 megawatt hours of power in the United States (EIA 2008d). More than 71% of this power was derived from a fossil fuel, including coal or natural gas.

So Bambi is going to carbon-tax out of existence half of our electrical supply, and switch another 23% to be wholly from here – and this is just our electrical system needs. The rest of the imported natural gas and oil needs to switch as well. All in ten years.

And replace it with what? Sure ain’t gonna be nuke plants. Ten years from today, they will not be online. So it’s going to come from that footnote on the pie chart that reads “3% Other.” Yeah, right. Thank you, MSM, the Vetting Goddess.

So, are we planning to decrease our reliance on coal? Report: Coal is projected to supply 54% of the nation’s electricity by 2030. In accordance with this projection, currently 28 new coal-powered plants are being built in the United States,

Hey, Bambi! There’s 28 in-your-face new coal plants. Better get those carbon-taxes up and running. Thank you, MSM, the Vetting Goddess.

But why are we cranking so much coal? From the report: One of the primary reasons the United States relies so heavily on coal for the generation of electricity is that it has the largest known reserves of the fuel in the world (EIA 2007c). At current usage rates, known coal reserves in the United States could provide well over 200 years' worth of fuel …

Oh. It’s domestic and we have more of it than anyone. You listening, Bambi?

When Bambi talks about offing coal and the MSM sits silently, it’s because neither of them know what the hell they are talking about.

10 comments:

  1. They don't understand. They don't want to understand.

    They've no clue about how long it takes to develop technology.

    For instance, at an American Electric Power Co. facility in West Virginia, on the Ohio River, which has an 800-megawatt coal-fired boiler, there have been plans through a DOE grant to demonstrate carbon-capture-and-sequestration technology.

    A fairly recent estimate of that project, which will take only a 30-megawatt slipstream of exhaust gas and work with a chilled-ammonia CO2 scrubbing process, is $90+ million.

    American Electric Power's total system is about 38,000 megawatts.

    Obama and his minions do not understand that all forms of fossil and non-fossil energy must be explored, simultaneously.

    And take off their blinders and see that it's not just that in the U.S. that more than 50 percent of electrical generation is from coal-fired plants, but that a significant portion of the world's power comes from that fuel.

    Did I mention that they'll also need to explore nuclear?

    They have painted themselves in such an dulled-intellect corner that I do not think they can get out.

    One more thing: In the U.S., about as much, if not more, CO2 comes from transportation sources as electricity.

    You don't hear Obama and his minions talk about turning off the ignitions of cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, marine vessels and other transportation-related sources, though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. the point of the report - which i didn't get into - was that coal plants carry about 30 days of supply. a big issue is simply space to store it.

    the report focused on a fly pandemic interrupting the supply chain. a couple of train accidents several years ago took supplies in some places to just 2 days.

    can you imagine if our electrical grid had nothing to distribute because these clowns shut down coal?

    the incompetence is staggering.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Clyde, respectfully, it's not just that their incompetence is staggering. It's that their ignorance, willful and otherwise, is even worse.

    ReplyDelete
  4. true. incompetence reflects stupidity - and you can't fix stupid. these people choose to be uninformed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yep, there's a cure for ignorance, but none for stupidity.

    Their intellectual dishonesty is truly frightening.

    They think they can just legislate something into existence.

    Makes me wonder if any of them has actually had to do something, anything, that required them to use their hands and heads, backs and brains, you know?

    Wonder if they've even gotten dirt under their fingernails? Blisters? Or worked in place so dirty that you spit out dirt in your spit, or you blew coal dust or dirt out of your nose?

    I've thought that what the coal associations in the coal-producing states should do is create a TV ad that shows how much of the country -- especially, the Mid-Atlantic, including metropolitan D.C. -- would be blacked out IF there was no coal-fired electricity being shipped to them.

    Maybe that'd get their attention?

    Naw.

    ReplyDelete
  6. they can start with the map of US form the article that i included - and then the highest concentrations just turn to black ...

    i watched my grandfather die from blacklung. his uncle was killed in the mines. coal has been here for generations. but here is what they don't get - and you touched on - it is not some 1800s fuel. it is HALF of our fuel.

    i can only hope that the boy in chief has good advisors. that is one advantage to have clintonites there - they at least have seen the complexity of the problems in a running a country.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Sierra Club now has a national strategy to stop the construction of any new coal-fired power plant.

    Their latest victory was Kansas. That state's governor, a Democrat, is rumored to be a candidate to head Obama's EPA.

    Another candidate is Carol Browner, who served for eight years as Clinton's EPA chief. She was a disaster. And she's now the head of the engery-and-environment group within Obama's transition project or whatever it's called.

    Respectfully, I have no confidence that the Clintonistas' experience will help, especially with Obama's ties to the enviro-wackos and the noise from the left.

    As I recall, too, he wasn't very enamored of the folks in Pennsylvania, with their guns and faith in God. West Virginia voted against him. Southwestern Virginia, the coal-bearing part of that state, voted against him. Kentucky, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota all voted against him.

    In fact, most of the country's coal-producing states voted against him.

    BTW: The top three? According to the Energy Information Administration, in 2007, those were West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming.

    Yes, Pennsylvania and Ohio are coal producers, but ....

    BTW: Sorry to hear about your grandfather. I know men who've died or who are dying of black lung.

    BTW2: I've read recently that the enviro-wackos are set to stop ALL coal-fired plants, carbon-capture-sequestration or not.

    ReplyDelete
  8. oh, i am not comforted by clintons anywhere around government. but they are, i think, the lesser of two evils when compared to the chicago mafia. old gangsters can perhaps explain some pitfalls to new gangsters.

    to be direct, this country is fucked for the next 4 years. let's hope they don't do too much damage.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Clyde - fyi

    http://logisticsmonster.com/2008/11/26/barack-obamas-birth-certificate-issue-for-dummies-or-leo-donofrios-suit/

    ReplyDelete
  10. Clyde, I wanted to leave a note here also to thank you for putting my article up everywhere and I have a question for you. Do you think I should be really concerned that the Pentagon is a regular visitor to The Monster? ;)

    ReplyDelete