Posted on 06/01/2015 4:42:02 AM PDT by thackney
Natural gas isn’t killing coal but the Obama Regime.
The Obama Admin makes the coal power plants more expensive to run.
The Natural Gas boom in supply makes the NatGas competitively priced for base load power generation.
The gas glut should depress the price of coal and exports should pick up.
What country is planning to burn more, not less coal ?
>> When a $2 trillion financial institution deems an entire fuel source too risky for returns
I bet their divestiture has more to do with political correctness than financial risk/reward ratios.
B of A has long been a sucker for whatever goofy thing a liberal administration pressures it to do.
China's coal use is down, I'm not sure of any significant country planning to use more coal.
Japan.
Japanese nukes are out of favor...
True, I had forgotten about them.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-continues-to-re-embrace-coal-1426162227
Throw in Germany as well. they panicked after the Fukushima tsunami and threw away all of their nuclear capacity to chase after the imaginary Nirvana of “renewables”, and all they ended up doing was burning more coal. Mostly lignite, the worst polluter (other than biomass) of the lot.
Brown coal...
They only thing that isn't being hurt are the heavily-subsidized "renewables". In the most recent New England power auction, wind generators in the Northeast were able to bid negative prices into the auction and still make a "profit" because of the subsidies. I always say those kinds of wind farms don't farm the wind so much as they farm the subsidies.
There is an interesting occurrence locally.
A large chemical plant has converted 2 of it’s 5 generators to natural gas and ran a pipeline 6 miles from the pipeline end into the plant. The power plant makes electricity and process steam.
The company has two large coal gassification plants that convert coal to syngas to chemicals. The company either acquired or re-purposed existing property to coal storage and are amassing huge piles of coal.
I don’t know if the coal is being received under existing contracts requiring the purchase or to purchase coal while it is cheap. Either way, it is strange that conversion to gas has resulted in stock piling coal.
Germany
The government is applying US-style regulatory tactics to reduce emissions from coal-powered plants by setting ever higher standards. Under the plan announced by Sigmar Gabriel, the economics and energy minister, the rules will eliminate some 22m tonnes of carbon emissions and allow the country to meet its targets for 2020.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7ffe5ce-0215-11e5-92ce-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3boQPr54C
It’s fun, when visiting downtown Louisvilly KY, to watch coal barges pass each other on the Ohio River.
Cleaner, low sulfur coal going upriver for the electric plants, high sulfer coal heading downriver, where it will be put on ships in New Orleans and shipped to Germany.
We will regret the mindless elimination of coal as a power source. We are putting too many eggs in the green energy basket.
Utilities shuttered 4,100 megawatts' worth last year, and are on track to close an additional 12,800 MW in 2015.
Coal producted 2B megawatt hours in 2005 versus 12,800 shut down? That seems tiny. What am I missing?
In the longer term, China will likely aggressively pursue solar power for individual homes and for industrial use, safer forms of nuclear energy--for example the thorium-fueled molten salt reactor.
There will always be a place for coal.
If I owned a power plant, I would find a lot of comfort in seeing a massive mountain of coal right outside I could access to burn, instead of simply relying on the transportation of a product down a pipeline that could be sabotaged.
Are you comparing MWatts to MWatthours?
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