Is there a war on coal, and is coal winning?

Yep, that's it. Ironically it's just a few miles away from the nearly carbon-emissions-free Three Mile Island plant.

Just a little tidbit of trivia -- The coal I am hauling in my Prius in my avatar, it is Kittanning seam high-volatile bituminous coal, mined in western PA near Punxsutawney. It's the primary fuel source for Brunner Island! It amazes me that they can scrub the emissions from the stuff. Although I have burned it in my stove to "see how it burns", I only keep some on hand for my coal fired forge.

It sounds like we're on the same page here.

In eastern PA, where I am located, the coal industry is quite small, indeed. The anthracite coal mined here is more of a specialty product these days, and is too high in value to be used for power generation. This stuff is as close as you can get to "clean" coal. Of course, it still produces CO2 when burned, but it truely is smokeless, and the non-carbon emissions are miniscule. The primary use domestically is home heating, and significant amounts of it are exported to 3rd world nations for water purification.

Anthracite is what I use to heat with, and I find it to be a good middle road environmentally and economically. Compared to electric resistance heating, on coal fired grid electricity, the carbon footprint is reduced drastically. The kittanning seam coal burned at Brunner Island has about 12,600 btu/lb, but only about 1/3 of that makes it to the end user. That being the case, resistance electric has a much higher carbon footprint than just burning the anthracite coal that's mined less than 5 miles from my house, also around 12,600 btu/lb.

I *do* have a "hybrid" heat pump water heater, that I have sitting about 10 feet from the coal stove. It does an excellent job moving some of that coal stove heat into my domestic hot water, and in the summer it de-humidifies the basement. For home heating, air source heat pumps don't make much sense in this area, since they end up switching to resistance backup heat fairly often. Ground source heat pumps are nice, but I don't have tens of thousands of dollars for the install!

Back to burning coal for power generation... Here in schuylkill county, we have a fleet of co-gen plants that burn waste coal, which are still in abundance from century-old coal mining operations. The plants burn this coal along with natural gas. These plants were built to remedy the problem of heavy metals and other pollutants from the waste coal, from leaching into the local groundwater. However, these same plants get blasted for high CO2 emissions. Whether they are good or bad just depends on who you talk to, and if they are more concerned about clean drinking water, creeks, and streams, or CO2 emissions....

As far as effeciency measures, I wish they would enhance those. Especially in the more economically disadvantaged areas around here, even though we have ridiculous amounts of coal left in the ground, many people burn oil. Many are too poor to buy oil, so they are on gov't assistance, and get discounted or free oil. Their rickety old homes are poorly or not insulated, so the taxpayers get streched thin with this vicious cycle. In the long run, it would be better to offer people steeply discounted or even free insulating products.

 

In how cold of temperatures do you need it to work? My mini-split has no built-in backup. It works down into the teens, but I must turn on some of the original electric wall heaters to supplemental it when temperatures fall below about 25F. Some others and newer units work even down to 0F, lowering the threshold where backup is needed. I believe some central heat pumps use natural gas for backup.

 

There does not appear to be a successful war on US coal production as it has increased since 1980. I got that from index mundi. A better source would have been eia.gov - cannot access that site at present.

Perhaps one could say that there is a war on coal combustion, if a increasing fraction of that increasing production is exported. Is that the case? If so it could be described as a war on air pollution. Already mentioned in this thread. Yes indeed the US has a 'war' on air pollution and is winning, generally speaking.

Coal burned elsewhere means everything except the CO2 deposits elsewhere. They rain out on regional scales. Only for CO2 does that not matter, because it goes global.

The notion of government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry has been rather loosely defined, including here by me. Perhaps someone could examine 'preferential fiscal policies' towards coal, crude oil and methane separately? Then we could be more precise. It would not make sense to talk about war on coal if the government is giving them money.

There is no war at all on a related industry - the manufacture of mining equipment. It is a major US export including to ... large Asian countries.

 

My understanding is Northern hemisphere ice is getting soot that accelerates melting. This begs the question of whether the Southern hemisphere has an inventory of soot for Antarctica.

Bob Wilson

 

My understanding mercury spreads globally.

 

Coal's share of energy market at highest level since 1970 | Environment | The Guardian

 

Be sure to distinguish markets here. The OP was referring to the U.S., while this UK article refers to the global market. It mentions that coal consumption is down in the U.S., but up in Europe and China and India.

 

Nicely done, just be careful about flying too close to the sun. I appreciate your efforts and the data you shared.

We looking at PV for our house in West Virginia, there is a group purchase discount available through an organization called PAN. I doubt if WV offers much of a state tax credit for solar.

Is your 30% tax credit state, federal or the sum of the two? Sounds like your credit includes cost of installation.

 

In Washington state, you get the federal tax credit of 30%, no state or local sales tax. The utility (using Washington made Panels and inverters) pays you outright, through 2020, $.54 kwh, plus net metering so it works out to about $.65 kwh. If you use non Washington state hardware the rate drops to ~$.34 kwh plus net metering.

As it turns out, my (new) location is not very well suited for PV, too much annual shading. Even with the incentives the pay off (for a complicated, multi pitch installation) is over 10 years. I am trying to figure out what to do. I think my money is better spent on (more) conservation.

Icarus

 

As Icarus already mentioned, it is a federal income tax credit. It also includes installation costs, though I went DIY so can't claim any labor. WA has no income tax, but with sales tax running 9.5% in most areas, the sales tax exemption is significant. Unfortunately, my property tax is running about 1.5%/year, so when the county finally catches up to the 'improvements', that will be an additional cost. Until then, what they don't know won't hurt me.

The production incentive ends June 30, 2020, though the final payment probably won't arrive until that December.

Without made-in-WA equipment, the incentive is only $0.15/kWh, and that is my tier. There is one boost for made-in-WA panels, and another for WA inverters. Combined, they push to total to $0.54/kWh.

For 'Community Solar', the incentive doubles, topping out at $1.08/kWh. I contributed to the Seattle Aquarium community solar project, buying enough shares to cover a full PV module. A new project as been announced for the Woodland Park Zoo and Phinney Neighborhood Association, fundraising to commence soon.

Knowing what I know now, I'd probably go the WA route, but would have missed all last summer's production and would have risked loosing the sales tax exemption, which hadn't yet been extended beyond last June. Between local weather and tree shade impairments, lack of industry contacts to get the made-in-WA panels for DIY use, and concerns about the available microinverter reliability (the known dependable WA string inverters were not appropriate for my project), I wasn't sure I'd get enough return to cover the higher cost of WA equipment.

I'm still uncertain that mine will pay back within 10 years, primarily because the production incentive expires before then. But I did it anyway, to put my money where my mouth is. The Russian-Ukraine-Crimea situation and impending collapse of Iraq are both strongly entangled with energy, and our nation's dependence constrains our responses.

Fortunately, my PV project ran immediately after re-roofing (rails went up on the south before roofers were done with the north), and the roofers made several changes to greatly simplify the solar panel fields. South pitch penetrations that couldn't easily be moved to the north side were lined up in a single row in the center, leaving the south pitch as two perfect empty halves. The east half is now 80% filled with PV, filling one 20A branch circuit. The next phase (equipment choice TBD), to reach Net Zero, will take about half of the west portion. The rest will be held in reserve for a future electric car.

I'll agree with conservation first. My load reduction through conservation is still larger than my PV production. Without that conservation, the roof's south (and largest) pitch simply isn't big enough to hold the PV needed to reach Net Zero, let alone have any leftover for a plugin car.

 

There is long range mercury transport

Long-range mercury transport | GRID-Arendal - Maps & Graphics library
and you can download this article for free
"Trans-Pacific transport of mercury"

Rather a complex picture, at least because of re emission of mercury vapor after the first round of particulate rainout.

At high N latitudes, rainout is not very effective (not enough rain), so particle and gases tend to have longer atmospheric lifetimes. Among other things this does put soot on top of snow and ice. At high S latitudes there is much less 'source strength'. A distinct shortage of land surface area there means not much forests etc. to burn.

Back to the money thing there is a sourcewatch page about coal subsidies etc.

Federal coal subsidies - SourceWatch

but a fella could argue that sourcewatch is not without an agenda I suppose.

 

There is news from the 'war front':

Don Blankenship, ex-Massey Energy CEO, sentenced - CNN.com

Whether Mr. Blankenship is a sacrifice while the industry marches on... is for wiser minds to decide.

But aside from his personal website I must say that the fellow does not look good via internet searches.

 

Source: Quarterly Coal Report - Energy Information Administration


I haven't looked at domestic consumption beyond the occasional coal train passing the dog park.

Source: WorkForce West Virginia - Laid-off Coal Miners

The U.S. Department of Labor has awarded a $7.4 million National Emergency Grant (NEG) to WorkForce West Virginia to provide retraining and reemployment services to dislocated coal miners and displaced homemakers impacted by mass layoffs and coal mine closures. The grant will help participants find new career paths outside the coal mining industry and long-term reemployment opportunities.

The grant provides up to $5,000 per participant for Classroom Occupational Skills Training in an occupation expected to be in high demand, such as Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), Welding, Electrical Engineering, HVAC, Diesel Technology, Chemical Processor, etc… Participants who meet training program attendance requirements will be eligible for training allowances to cover costs of gas, food, child care, etc. at the rate of $20.00 per day for the days attending class up to $100.00 per week.​

Bob Wilson

 

Well that does look like USA is moving away from coal. Mountains, watersheds and lungs say "thanks".

But I want to make sure that none here fail their 'war on fossil energy' test. What country is currently extracts the most petroleum? please guess before checking wiki.

If instead what we have is a war on thinking, then may I have a horse and spear please?

 

Oh Boy! Spot quiz:

1. USA
2. Russia
3. not sure

Bob Wilson

 

D.) None of the above

 

Bamboozle@37. The Wiki page on oil production puts USA on top and does include biofuels. So, there you go.

The top 3 are Russia, Saudi Arabia and USA (in alphabetical order), a tight bunch, with all other countries far behind. Of top 3, USA has the strongest positive recent trend, in crude oil only. So might take the lead in near future, depending on how fracking goes.

Personally I feel bamboozling goes the other way, chiding USA for not doing more. But baby, we are drilling

Top coal producers (MMT/Y) are China 3,621, United States 922, India 629, Australia 432, Indonesia 410, Russia 351.It would take a lot of new holes in the ground to capture top spot here; please don't hang your patriotism on that!

Only one country makes the top 3 on both lists! Cue the Anthem!