Posted on 02/18/2015 4:23:44 AM PST by thackney
On the banks of the Illinois River, about 60 miles west of the state capital in Springfield, an old coal-fired power plant sits waiting for its future to arrive. First opened in 1948, it's been dormant since 2011, when its owner, St. Louis-based Ameren, shut down the plant rather than retrofit it to meet federal standards. Last year workers came to give it a makeover. Using almost $1 billion in stimulus money, the project was supposed to become the poster child for clean-coal technology. Rather than spewing into the sky, the carbon dioxide produced as the plant burned coal would be captured into a pipeline buried below corn and soybean fields. It would run 30 miles east to Jacksonville, where the gas would be injected 4,000feet underground....
The resurrection was short-lived. On Feb.3, the Department of Energy announced it was withdrawing support. Environmentalists who want investment in renewable power technologies rather than fossil energy cheered the decision. "We don't need it, and we can't afford it," Bruce Nilles, head of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, says of carbon-capture projects.
President Barack Obama has made addressing climate change a key part of his legacy. In November he struck an historic agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The White House has backed solar and wind power projects and touted the benefits of the country's surging production of natural gas, which burns about 50 percent cleaner than coal, still the largest source of electricity in the U.S. Last year the Environmental Protection Agency proposed tighter standards forexisting power plants....
A similar project is under way in Texas, where NRG Energy, a utility in Houston, is leading a $1billion effort to build a clean-coal plant called Petra Nova.
The project got $167million in federal funds....
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
Watch what they do, not what they say.
“Using almost $1 billion in stimulus money, the project was supposed to become the poster child for clean-coal technology.
-snip
The resurrection was short-lived. On Feb.3, the Department of Energy announced it was withdrawing support.”
So we spent a billion for nothing, except to illustrate the duplicitous nature of this administration.
The government giveth. The government taketh away.
Yet another reason we should never look for the government to help private industry, except to get out of the way.
It is rumored, that even liberals, when they die (not just conservatives who die), their bodies rot, and, it forms stuff like natural gas, oil, coal, over time, which is renewable. Even precious trees when they die, they form such renewable fuels.
So, liberals need to find a way to avoid death, which will validate their electric cars...oh, wait, something has to turn a turbine to create electricity...Liberalism is mental disorder, which is why so many liberals, especially the PhDs have such illogical things like touch therapy and astrology stickers on their cars.
‘”We don’t need it, and we can’t afford it,” Bruce Nilles, head of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, says of carbon-capture projects.’
LOL...statements like this demonstrate just how flaming narrow these people are. In his view its not needed just b/c he said so. Facts need not apply. Oh ya...these are the smartest people in our society...NOT.
This is just insane!
So true. They don’t want coal in any way, shape or form or gas and oil either. They want to put us on wind and solar and hydro. That’s the agenda 21.
Mr. GG2 holds a patent on a gasification process that will burn coal so clean you cannot believe it. He pitched it to the govt. several years ago. Not interested.
Not wven hydro. The greenies don’t even like hydro because of its impact on the ecosystems in and around waterways.
Another benefit of coal is when the train carrying it derails, it does not blow up.
There ya go. :-)
They’re against coal on principle.
But they’re also using it as an economic weapon against coal-producing states that are increasingly going and solidifying Republican. West Virginia and Kentucky for instance. McConnell calling out the Obama Admin’s War on Coal played a huge partvin his 15 point landslide victory last Fall, as well as Jay Rockefeller’s Senate seat in WV flipping to the GOP. The Admin and it’s supporters are very much in a reprisal-driven mood.
That is the bottom line. However, "clean coal" projects have been around since the Arab oil embargo of 1973 with untold federal dollars being spent to develop the technology. It is not just an Obama boondoggle.
U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has supported Obama’s campaign since it began.
“The claims you are hearing from the McCain-Palin campaign are misleading and untrue,” Rockefeller said in a news release. “Barack Obama has been very clear with me and with you on his plan for clean coal and it’s the most aggressive plan in support of clean coal we’ve seen from any presidential candidate.
“The idea that the McCain-Palin campaign is alleging the day before the election that Barack Obama’s commitment to coal is anything but solid is absolutely ridiculous,” he added.
“This is exactly the kind of deceptive politicking voters are fed up with.”
http://www.hsconnect.com/page/content.detail/id/511265.html?nav=5010
Twenty years back I got a call from the BN railroad first thing on a Winter Monday morning. A railcar of lumber I sold to a customer in Ohio had rolled into the yard outside of Chicago ON FIRE. Either that or some bums(that is what we all called homeless folks back then) lit it on fire to keep warm.
The other possible cause was a spark that ignited the grease on the wheels. Anyways, the lumber was a total loss, and the fire was so hot that the steel on the 73’ A Frame car bent/melted from the heat. The sawmill replaced the car for the customer and reshipped it promptly.
That coal fire started from a bad wheel on the train. In investigating the problem, the train unfortunately stopped with that car over the wood bridge.
We get offered salvage loads from trucking companies and the insurance companies all the time. We love them. They are huge profit potential. Plus they are sold “as is”, no claims.
Is that a problem with a coal train, or a problem with a train, or a problem with a wooden trestle?
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