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Coal industry cuts

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by fotomoto, Sep 18, 2012.

  1. fotomoto

    fotomoto Senior Member

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    "Coal miner Alpha Natural Resources Inc is cutting 1,200 jobs, roughly 9 percent of its workforce, as tighter emissions regulations and increased use of shale-derived natural gas to generate electricity dent demand."

    As power plants use less coal, Alpha Natural cuts jobs| Reuters
     
  2. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    I have often wondered if it made thermodynamic and economic sense to feed natural gas to a coal head and combined them to form liquid fuels?

    Bob Wilson
     
  3. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    I bet more jobs are being created in the natural gas industry than are being lost in coal.
    Not that I think it matters ,but the USA CO2 output has been drastically reduced.
     
  4. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    No it doesn't make any economic sense if you are going to do it in a low polluting way. The easiest liquid fuel from coal or natural gas is methanol. All this takes is a mandate that cars can burn it - M85, has been tested and it is easy to make flex fuel vehicles that use it. Natural gas to methanol is less expensive than coal to methanol with current prices if you require the plants to actually comply with environmental regulations. We also have the pickens plan of liquid natural gas powered trucks which seems like a great idea to me. If natural gas prices rise, methane or methanol can be made from renewable means or - gulp - coal.

    We always have coal state proposals to do syn fuels - gasoline and diesel - from coal. This never made economic sense, but congress critters wanted it. Some of them out of a genuine concern to reduce oil dependance but many just to bring pork home to their districts. Subsidizing coal jobs is a net negative for the US economy. If you want to keep coal jobs, and don't care about the pollution, you can encourage government programs to build rail lines and shipping docks to export the coal.
     
  5. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Yes more jobs in natural gas production and wind turbines than we are losing in coal. If you are worried about the negative health effects of SO2, NOx, mercury, particulates, you are happy that these old polluting coal plants are finally being taken off line. The bulk of the coal power plants are over 40 years old, and many over 40 years don't have proper pollution control devices.
     
  6. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    I'm not a fan of coal, but I have to preface with that before I say that the irony is - if we really really really got hard up for fuel(s) - then chances are, all bets are off. The coal will flow. The coal MUST flow, if push comes to shove. We start running out of the 'stuff' that fuels industry - coal must necessarily come back - whether the fuel shortage comes from war(s), or peak what-ever fuel / depletion. Production wise - coal is easy. When all else is not available, coal can be used as fuel to mine coal. As I start passing thru my 50's - age wise - I thankfully doubt I'll live long enough to see that creepy day.
    .
     
  7. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    If the predictions of astrophysicists (including NASA)are correct,the Earth is NOW entering a cooling phase like the "Little Ice Age".
    For the next 30 years we may need all the fuel we can get , to stave off cold climate.
     
  8. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    You may want to check those NASA figures again, they don't say anything like the little ice age.

    Remember in warm places like I live, cooler weather means less air conditioning, means less electric generation needed. In cold places in North America, most use natural gas, or should switch for heating.

    The US is not getting rid of coal, we are just using less of it, and we should. We need to close down the old polluting plants.
    Existing U.S. Coal Plants - SourceWatch

    You will note the dirtiest 10% of electricity produces 28.6% of SO2, and likely produces much of the particulate, NOx, and mercury. If we could just close down 20% of the dirty coal electricity, and 1/3 with newer less polluting coal plants, 1/3 with ccgt natural gas, and 1/3 with wind, over 40% of the unhealthy coal pollution would be eliminated. The plants closing down are some of the most polluting ones.
     
  9. richard schumacher

    richard schumacher shortbus driver

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    Earth was on it's way to another ice age, but increased atmospheric CO2 has already killed any chance of that. At the current rate we'll be lucky to avoid thawing Antarctica.
     
  10. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    I would like to see increased emphasis on very clean coal technology (methanol manufacture, IGCC, Fischer Tropshe etc.). Right now Congress prefers to subsidize Nukes, Wind, Solar, and cellulosic biofuels. The cellulosic biofuels mandate is really questionable when you realize we could do coal Fischer Tropsche to make all the liquid fuels we need for national security, commercially proven. Many of the technologies I mentioned, need federal subsidies, so there is an issue: which technologies should we subsidize? I would like to add very clean coal to the list.

    BTW, among the hardest to spell chemistry words for me is Fischer Tropshe...I can never remember those guys names. Apparently "Fischer Tropsch" is the correct sp.

    The other implication is the T Boone Pickens plan for nat gas trucks is losing traction. Basically Pickens was trying to say, lets take nat gas away from power plants and mandate/subsidize that it be used instead for trucks. It looks like in this case, the free market is being allowed to operate to use cheap nat gas where the market sees fit. This includes power and new industry, hopefully coming on line.
     
  11. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    As SO2, NOx and mercury effects are mostly local to regional, one can certainly be happy about reduced fraction of US coal burn. Burn the same coal somewhere else (China perhaps?) and those things come out of the atmosphere somewhere else.

    As CO2 energy-balance effects are global, it matters not where the CO2 was emitted. So keep your eyes on global metrics like Scripps CO2. Most recent reported month (2012 Aug) 392.43 ppm, 2.25 ppm higher than 2011 August. The annual increase is increasing.

    As the solar cycle continues to build
    http://www.solen.info/solar/images/cycle24.png
    it seems that the sun did not get the memo about sunspots going away, triggering the next ice age and all that.
    Darn thermometers missed the memo as well
    State of the Climate | Global Analysis | July 2012
    with notable exceptions of thermometers in Norway and UK. Good on them.
     
  12. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    There is an IGCC-CCS that also captures NOx for urea production, and SO2 for sulfuric acid production being built with the help of federal money in west texas right now. Congress is funding clean coal. Its simply much more expensive than ccgt natural gas plants right now. We know how to make methanol from coal, its simply less expensive to make it from natural gas, no need to fund that. We have wasted money funding Fischer Tropsch manufacture of gasoline from coal. The oil sand and gtl from natural gas are much more economically viable. Not much has been spent on cellulosic ethanol Review & Outlook: The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle - WSJ.com no one is really making the stuff so the $1.01/gallon subsidy isn't being paid, but the mandate acts like a small tax on oil companies.


    There were two parts to picken's plan. The first to run trucks on liquid natural gas, requires federal mandates. It would not really require subsidies if a higher oil tax was put up to help make the case that natural gas will stay less expensive.

    The second piece was to free up natural gas by adding more wind. Natural gas is more available because of fracking, so that part of the plan does not need implementation. Switching from coal to natural gas and wind is in the countries best interest. Federal policies in the 70s and 80s overbuilt coal. Federal policies are also grandfathering the old coal plants, keeping them running. Change this and retire the non-scrubbed coal plants, and more clean coal, natural gas, and wind will be built. We are seeing the beginning of the process.

    Certainly true, although mercury is a global pollutant. I'm not sure if its the "same" coal, but as the ROW expands, the US reduction of coal does not impact ghg.
     
  13. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    ... I agree totally that other sources are cheaper...but according to Congress and military the most important thing is national security: the energy sources must be produced in USA and must not be oil. I question these priorities, but that leaves us trying to make military jet fuel from trees and plants, at great cost. Might as well use coal to make jet fuel if non-oil, USA-only energy sources is someone's top priority.
     
  14. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Congress/military decisions are heavily influenced by the industrial military complex. Weapons builders pay good money for congress' funding decisions. I'm sure if I were building multi billion dollar aircraft carriers / stealth jets & laser guided bombs - I too would not want my job cut. And yet without these we cannot go around 'protecting-ensuring' the world oil supply ... so it's a double edged sword. Please forgive the temporary FHOP spiel.

    SGH-I717R ? 2
     
  15. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    You can't really trust those politicians any further than you can throw them. I don't know why the sources must be in the US, why not the americas. I can't see Canada, Mexico, or Brazil withholding fuel from us. Keystone pipeline is an easy fix to north American supplies of oil to gulf refineries. Mandating M85 flex fuel for a percentage of cars, picken's plan for trucks, these are the low hanging fruit. We can easily make Jet A from biofuels, but it is easier to make the country less dependent on OPEC oil so we don't need to.

    As I said from the IGCC plants R&D we have commercial equipment to do coal to methane or methanol. From gtl - gas to liquids we also have project to go from methane to gasoline. There are 2 active projects for coal to gasoline, but I'm not expecting much.
    Wyoming coal-to-gasoline plant one of only two under way in U.S.

    The federal subsidies for coal to liquid require carbon capture of 75%.
     
  16. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    If man burning fossil fuels delayed an ice age, most would agree that would be a very good thing. It would mean we prevented mass extinctions of many speicies.

    I don't see evidence of this though. The last two interglacials, according to the ice record had much higher sea levels, even without man changing much of the environment. We should not have such high egos to believe man is the reason for everything.
     
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