Burning Coal

[Chuckinden]

What is your take on burning coal?

I know it has really hurt some regions in our country economically, but unless we can come up with a way to stop the pollutants from being released in the air, I hope we get away from using coal.

 

[AustinTXCat]

What is your take on burning coal?

I know it has really hurt some regions in our country economically, but unless we can come up with a way to stop the pollutants from being released in the air, I hope we get away from using coal.

Filthy and disgusting practice.

 

[DaBossIsBack]

 

[jtrue28]

Is this the new global warming thread?

 

[bigblueinsanity_rivals250340]

The use of fossil fuels is a filthy and disgusting practices that greatly damages our environment. Problem is, its currently the only realistic option. The use of fossil fuels needs to be stopped ASAP. The problem is, "ASAP' will be decades from now, probably longer. So for the foreseeable future, this is what we're stuck with.

Coal is a domestic resource. The problem with removing coal as a source of energy, is the economic impact will be felt as oil and gas prices rise. Not good, especially as we try to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Burn fossil fuels until theres a better option. But the moment better options become available, switch.

 

[jwheat]

The use of fossil fuels is a filthy and disgusting practices that greatly damages our environment. Problem is, its currently the only realistic option.

lol no

 

[RacerX.ksr]

I think coal burning is a nasty way to produce energy. Funny though, the same environmentalist hippies that rail against coal are a major reason we still burn so much of it.

Once we learned how to harness the atom for our energy needs, coal should have been phased out. Solar and wind would come along in due time with funding from private sources, but will never be able to meet all our demands.

 

[BlueRaider22]

1. I like the idea of using local. I would like the US to be energy independent as possible.

2. If there is a better way, I will usually be in favor of such. Like, if we can maximize cleaner forms of energy production....wind, solar, hydro, etc., then I think we should get these cranking and if we still need coal, then use it. Or develop other technologies.

3. Have a plan - I don't like the idea of the gubment saying, "Shut down plants a, b, and c."....without having a plan for the people they just put out of work.

 

[jtrue28]

The problem is the "instant on" ability of our grid. During high use times, like now, the fuel has to be available to meet demand. It is not always sunny and not always windy. If there is a drought, your hydro ability is drying up. You're always going to need that source that is ALWAYS available.

 

[BlueRaider22]

^Agreed. But we currently aren't using wind, water, sun nearly as much as we could. Thereby relying on the "steady" sources of power too much.

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

^Agreed. But we currently aren't using wind, water, sun nearly as much as we could. Thereby relying on the "steady" sources of power too much.

Can you define too much? What criteria are you using to say that it is too much?

 

[Free_Salato_Blue]

Was and article about MIT's work on fusion. Seem like it's been always 10 years away 50 years ago.
Plus you need rare earth metals and China has a monopoly of those resources.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/mit-has-plans-for-a-real-arc-fusion-reactor

 

[chitown87]

I'd like to see a couple coal powered plants open up in Austin. If they were in an area that would interfere with bicycle paths, even better.

 

[Deeeefense]

If the coal companies want to stay in business, and utilities want to continuing burning it, they should fund the development and testing of coal sequestration, a process that eliminates the pollutants from coal combustion. Otherwise the government should assess utilities with the true cost of coal combustion including the environmental damage and health issues that result from it. If they did that it would be more expensive then alternatives like nat gas and renewables.

The bottom line is if we want clean energy we have to be willing to pay a little more in the short term. As more non-coal methods are used for producing power the economies of scale will bring the cost down over time.

 

[BlueRaider22]

Can you define too much? What criteria are you using to say that it is too much?

If using solar/wind/hydro can reduce the use of coal in any way......but we aren't using solar/wind/hydro much currently.....then we are using coal too much.

I agree with bbonds that more "stable" forms of energy are likely always going to be needed, but if there is a better way then lets go for it......(unless there is some understandable reason not to)

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

If using solar/wind/hydro can reduce the use of coal in any way......but we aren't using solar/wind/hydro much currently.....then we are using coal too much.

I agree with bbonds that more "stable" forms of energy are likely always going to be needed, but if there is a better way then lets go for it......(unless there is some understandable reason not to)

What about cost? Is that a consideration for whether or not we are burning too much coal?

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

If the coal companies want to stay in business, and utilities want to continuing burning it, they should fund the development and testing of coal sequestration, a process that eliminates the pollutants from coal combustion. Otherwise the government should assess utilities with the true cost of coal combustion including the environmental damage and health issues that result from it. If they did that it would be more expensive then alternatives like nat gas and renewables.

The bottom line is if we want clean energy we have to be willing to pay a little more in the short term. As more non-coal methods are used for producing power the economies of scale will bring the cost down over time.

I agree it is the governments responsibility to have a pollution standard that is reasonable for any polluting activity. However, we don't do what you suggest for any other pollution source. If you are going to do that, lets also do it for your car, lawnmower, chainsaw, chemicals you use, etc. It just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[BlueRaider22]

What about cost? Is that a consideration for whether or not we are burning too much coal?

Perhaps. Sometimes the cost is astronomical at first, but evens out in the end. I'm from Tennessee which of course has the TVA. All the hydroelectric dams and such were an enormous cost.....not to mention controversial.......but now Tennessee has some of the lowest home electricity costs. And, it's not without coal power. I think the vast majority of the power still comes from coal, but it's supplemented a lot from cleaner means.

Now, certainly, I don't agree with everything that happened during the development of the TVA, but it is an example of how cleaner energy can be used as a supplement.

 

[RacerX.ksr]

The consequences of burning coal haven't killed anyone this year other than a few random miners here and there. Meanwhile, 19.000 people have died on the nations highways, this year, so far.

 

[tammefan]

I prefer my electricity bill to average $200-$250 per month for the year. So yes I like coal. Why should we quit burning coal if other countries wont?

 

[DaBossIsBack]

I prefer my electricity bill to average $200-$250 per month for the year. So yes I like coal. Why should we quit burning coal if other countries wont?

Be a better example? Lead the way for the rest of the world? I'm sure we can find a reason.

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

Perhaps. Sometimes the cost is astronomical at first, but evens out in the end. I'm from Tennessee which of course has the TVA. All the hydroelectric dams and such were an enormous cost.....not to mention controversial.......but now Tennessee has some of the lowest home electricity costs. And, it's not without coal power. I think the vast majority of the power still comes from coal, but it's supplemented a lot from cleaner means.

Now, certainly, I don't agree with everything that happened during the development of the TVA, but it is an example of how cleaner energy can be used as a supplement.

I just want to explain how capacity gets installed in virtually every regulated jurisdiction in the United States. The utility has to model their system, usually for 20 years out. The model is used to project capacity short falls. Once the model determines there is a need for additional capacity, the utility must seek permission to build new capacity from the regulator. The utility will then look at a number of options to satisfy that needed capacity. They will do a revenue requirement analysis (how much revenue do they have to get from customers to pay the cost of installing, maintaining, and operating, the capacity over its life. The utility will then propose the kind of capacity it installs based on the economic analysis. In theory, the mix we have is the least cost scenario for the serving the load requirements. That doesn't mean least cost up front necessarily. It means the least cost alternative over the life of the capacity.

TVA is an entirely different animal than most utilities in the country. Their financing is different. They provide capacity and also regulate those who buy capacity from them, which is crazy. I could go on, but it really is beside the point.

 

[BlueRaider22]

^Let's just put it this way. If there is a better way, then I'm for it.....within reason. My first post in this thread outlines a few of those reasons.

 

[MegaBlue05]

Neutral.

Understand it's a big part of life in Kentucky. Also understand it's a filthy *** pollutant that probably should be shelved.

 

[Chuckinden]

The consequences of burning coal haven't killed anyone this year other than a few random miners here and there. Meanwhile, 19.000 people have died on the nations highways, this year, so far.

How many have died from black lung and drinking polluted water caused by chemicals released in the ground and the streams by coal companies?

 

[elwood_blue]

It's mainly white trash chicks from the trailer park who still do that right?

 

[Barong23]

Even better, let's continue to level entire mountains while strip mining it and filling the valleys and poisoning the creeks then leaving behind a nice toxic sludge pond as a thank you note. Then we'll ship the coal off to China and tell the local rubes their utility bill will triple if they object to any of the aforementioned activities.

Oh, I almost forgot the very best part. Since we'll be ripping the top off the mountain and using heavy equipment to process the rubble we don't need all these actual miners around here, so we'll lay them all off, then get this, we'll tell them it was because of BIG GOVERNMENT that we laid them off, not that it is because we're strip mining so we don't need all these people. Then, we'll send these laid off miners, miners WE laid off mind you, out to protest BIG GOVERNMENT on our behalf!

Isn't that the very best part? Taking advantage of these ignorant rubes while we destroy their land, level their mountains, and sell their coal to China while they defend our practices?

 

[VT/UK Rondo]

Why ship the coal off to China? Why not load it into railroad cars and semi-trucks and send it to the steel mills of the Northeast and then on to various plants for assembly and eventually on to Detroit? Oh yeah those ignorant rubes are unemployed too.
While were saving our water we better shut down our water cooled nuclear facilities as well and all other companies that use water to cool their plants at the risk of releasing pollutants. Farmers, your up next you dirty bastards trying to kill us all with you crop runoffs!

 

[Mime-Is-Money]

Solar and wind would come along in due time with funding from private sources, but will never be able to meet all our demands.

False.

As you can find throughout the interwebs, "[e]very hour, the sun radiates more energy onto the earth than the entire human population uses in one whole year." It's just not cost effective to harness and store.......for the timb eing.

We're quickly moving in that direction as energy storage, specifically with renewables, is slated to be commercially viable in 5-10 years. Most if not all all greentech companies throughout the energy value chain are researching and planning for the widespread implementation of renewable energy storage solutions and enhanced battery technology in the short term because the disruptive potential is immense. </bschoolspeak>

 

[Free_Salato_Blue]

Why ship the coal off to China? Why not load it into railroad cars and semi-trucks and send it to the steel mills of the Northeast and then on to various plants for assembly and eventually on to Detroit? Oh yeah those ignorant rubes are unemployed too.
While were saving our water we better shut down our water cooled nuclear facilities as well and all other companies that use water to cool their plants at the risk of releasing pollutants. Farmers, your up next you dirty bastards trying to kill us all with you crop runoffs!

 

[Mime-Is-Money]

The consequences of burning coal haven't killed anyone this year other than a few random miners here and there. Meanwhile, 19.000 people have died on the nations highways, this year, so far.

Once again, False.

The aggressive estimate per the Clean Air Task Force is that the extraction and combustion of coal for energy is responsible for 13,000 premature deaths per year in the US, with the lower end around 7.500 per year.

The total economic cost of burning coal (including health costs) is higher than that of using renewable sources.

 

[Barong23]

Some native Kalahari bushman lit a campfire in the jungle so we should be able to burn all the coal we want to. People fall in their own bathtubs and get hurt so we should be able to burn all the coal we want to. Unless you want your energy bill to triple then shut up and let us keep tearing these mountains apart. Coal, coal, coal... CLEAN coal. I built a dinette out of coal and lounge around on my nice coal couch. I'm working on a coal toothbrush design right now to pitch to Crest. Clean coal can clean your teeth!

 

[rmattox]

My biggest concern relative to energy is our dependence on foreign countries with governments that will be increasingly hostile toward the US and our allies. No problem cutting back on coal use AFTER we first develop replacements for oil. While neither a scientist nor an environmentalist, I'd guess that polution resulting from the burning of petroleum is just as harmful as burning coal. At least coal is produced by our own people....and we have plenty of it. Attack the use of coal after weaning the nation from foreign oil.

I'm not for doing anything that is going to cost more!

 

[RacerX.ksr]

Once again, False.

The aggressive estimate per the Clean Air Task Force is that the extraction and combustion of coal for energy is responsible for 13,000 premature deaths per year in the US, with the lower end around 7.500 per year.

The total economic cost of burning coal (including health costs) is higher than that of using renewable sources.

If you are going to "false" me, at least have a smidgeon of reliable evidence beyond pure conjecture. It doesn't matter the source of information that is pulled out of an ***. "Pulled out of an ***" is the focal point.

I call your false and raise you a ********.

 

[Barong23]

The US Energy Information Administration provides a comparison of levelized costs for different power generation sources. Levelized cost represents the present value of the total cost of building and operating a generating plant over a period of time, and reflects overnight capital cost, fuel cost, operation and maintenance costs, financing costs, and an assumed utilization rate for each plant type. To convert from dollars per megawatt-hour to cents per kWh, move the decimal point in the table below one spot to the left (for example, conventional coal is 9.48 cents per kWh on average).

As you can see, the externalities are sufficient to triple the cost of coal power, if they were reflected in its price. If we include the coal externalities, it increases the levalized costs to approximately 28 cents per kWh, which is more than hydroelectric, wind (onshore and offshore), geothermal, biomass, nuclear, natural gas, solar photovoltaic, and on par with solar thermal (whose costs are falling rapidly). Suddenly coal doesn't look like such a good deal.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/true-cost-of-coal-power.html

 

[Barong23]

Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300 premature deaths a year and costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days, says a major study of the health impacts of burning coal to generate electricity.

The research, from Stuttgart University's Institute for energy economics and commissioned by Greenpeace International, suggests that a further 2,700 people can be expected to die prematurely each year if a new generation of 50 planned coal plants are built in Europe. "The coal-fired power plants in Europe cause a considerable amount of health impacts," the researchers concluded.

Analysis of the emissions shows that air pollution from coal plants is now linked to more deaths than road traffic accidents in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. In Germany and the UK, coal-fired power stations are associated with nearly as many deaths as road accidents. Polish coal power plants were estimated to cause more than 5,000 premature deaths in 2010.

The cumulative impact of pollution on health is "shocking", says an accompanying Greenpeace report. A total of 240,000 years of life were said to be lost in Europe in 2010 with 480,000 work days a year and 22,600 "life years" lost in Britain, the fifth most coal-polluted country. Drax, Britain's largest coal-powered station, was said to be responsible for 4,450 life years lost, and Longannet in Scotland 4,210.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths

 

[Barong23]

In 2000, 2004 and again in 2010, the Clean Air Task Force issued studies based on work by Abt Associates quantifying the deaths and other adverse health affects attributable to the fine particle air pollution resulting from power plant emissions. Using the most recent emissions data, in this 2014 study, CATF examines the continued progress towards cleaning up one of the nation's leading sources of air pollution. This latest report finds that over 7,500 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants. This represents a dramatic reduction in power plant health impacts from the previous studies.

This reduction reflects improvements due to a variety of federal and state regulatory and enforcement initiatives that CATF has supported, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule (MATS) and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the active enforcement of existing regulations such as New Source Review (NSR). Since 2004, these measures have dropped Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) pollution by 68% and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) by 55%, the leading components of fine particle pollution. This was achieved through the near doubling of the amount of scrubbers (the technology used for reducing SO2 pollution) installed at power plants and additional retirements of coal capacity. Yet, despite this progress, some in the power industry and several recalcitrant states persist in trying to overturn the MATS and CSAPR regulations in court and reverse this life-saving trend.

Our 2004 study showed that power plant impacts exceeded 24,000 deaths a year, but by 2010 that had been reduced to roughly 13,000 deaths due to the impact that state and federal actions were beginning to have. The updated study shows that strong regulations that require stringent emission controls can have a dramatic impact in reducing air pollution across the country, saving lives, and avoiding a host of other adverse health impacts. The study also shows regrettably that some areas of the country still suffer from unnecessary levels of pollution from power plants that could be cleaned up with the application of proven emission control technologies.

http://www.catf.us/fossil/problems/power_plants/

NOTE: this website has a great interactive feature where you can plug in your location and see if you are at risk from power plant pollution.

 

[Barong23]

Emissions from coal plants in China were responsible for a quarter of a million premature deaths in 2011 and are damaging the health of hundreds of thousands of Chinese children, according to a new study.

The study by a US air pollution expert, commissioned by Greenpeace, comes as many areas in northern and eastern China have been experiencing hazardous levels of air pollution in recent weeks.

In some eastern cities including Shanghai, levels were off the index that tracks dangerous pollution, with schools closing and flights being cancelled or diverted. Sales of air purifiers and face masks have soared with many retailers selling out of stock as residents try to protect themselves from the poisonous smog. In Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces visibility was reduced to less than 50 metres earlier this week and in the city of Nanjing a red alert for pollution was maintained for five consecutive days.

The analysis traced the chemicals which are made airborne from burning coal and found a number of health damages were caused as a result. It estimates that coal burning in China was responsible for reducing the lives of 260,000 people in 2011. It also found that in the same year it led to 320,000 children and 61,000 adults suffering from asthma, 36,000 babies being born with low weight and was responsible for 340,000 hospital visits and 141 million days of sick leave.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/12/china-coal-emissions-smog-deaths

 

[RacerX.ksr]

Finally Z, you've managed to find some unbiased information to prove your suppositions. If I can't trust Greenpeace info, who can I trust?

 

[Barong23]

Do you trust Forbes?

But an energy’s deathprint, as it is called, is rarely discussed. The deathprint is the number of people killed by one kind of energy or another per kWhr produced and, like the carbon footprint, coal is the worst and wind and nuclear are the best. According to the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Academy of Science and many health studies over the last decade (NAS 2010), the adverse impacts on health become a significant effect for fossil fuel and biofuel/biomass sources (see especially Brian Wang for an excellent synopsis). In fact, the WHO has called biomass burning in developing countries a major global health issue (WHO int). The table below lists the mortality rate of each energy source as deaths per trillion kWhrs produced. The numbers are a combination of actual direct deaths and epidemiological estimates, and are rounded to two significant figures.

For coal, oil and biomass, it is carbon particulates resulting from burning that cause upper respiratory distress, kind of a second-hand black lung. Our lungs just don’t like burnt carbonaceous particulates, whether from coal or wood or manure or pellets or cigarettes. The actual numbers of deaths in China from coal use exceeded 300,000 last year since they have ramped up coal so fast in the last decade and they usually do not install exhaust scrubbers. The impact on their health care system has been significant in not just deaths, but in non-lethal health effects and lost days of work.

Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)

Coal – global average 170,000 (50% global electricity)

Coal – China 280,000 (75% China’s electricity)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/