I think you will find that natural gas is not any longer a "more expensive source". Development of horizontal drilling and its benefit of making shale gas practical have changed the equation significantly. If a fossil fuel is used, natural gas is the best choice.
“I think you will find that natural gas is not any longer a “more expensive source”. Development of horizontal drilling and its benefit of making shale gas practical have changed the equation significantly. If a fossil fuel is used, natural gas is the best choice.”
The government is trying to regulate coal fired power plants out of business. If natural gas is cheaper then let the market decide. It is a matter of supply and demand. At current usage rates this country has several hundred years of coal that can be extracted economically from the ground.
Where I live we had an electric generation plant that our public utilities spent around a hundred million dollars trying to comply with EPA regulations. It was designed to burn garbage, wood chips, and other solid fuel. The EPA classified it as an incinerator not a power generation plant and pulled it’s license. The whole place was dismantled. I used to work next door to it. It burned the fuel at such a high temperature and had so many filters for particulate that you couldn’t even tell when it was running... there was no visible “polution” at all. They were turning garbage into electricity and the EPA shut them down.