Lol are you basing this on any concrete policy plans? Any phase out of coal fired plants will be a gradual process. Don't be a dumbass. It's very simple. All new power plants that rely on fossil fuels are the newer type combined cycle gas turbine plants that use natural gas. They increase thermal efficiency compared to the old single cycle coal fire plants by up to 50%. These are old outdated systems for creating electricity. Why would anyone want to build a new single cycle coal fired plants? Why? The only reason coal extraction in the fire is going to be needed is for making steel. Joe Manchin has a personal financial stake in wanting coal plants still up and running for the long run.
do you think at this particular moment it was politically wise for the president to alienate the senator from WV?
I understand West Virginians and their senator being defensive about coal but this train has left the station. What's ironic is that Biden is getting criticized on oil and gas production when it's fracking that's allowing natural gas to push ahead at killing coal
Like I implied, this current crop of GOP is selling "nostalgic victomhood" over personal responsibility. The great history of the US is mobility and adaptability. Obama admin approved a lot of the LNG export terminals, refinery expansions, and pipelines connecting it all together which caused the US to become a top exporter in energy. Trump deregulated the industry and many of the major export and refining projects came online. I've been a bit disappointed how dogmatic Biden has been when this really is a golden opportunity to make North America into a much bigger global energy producer and exporter.
Exporting natural gas costs a lot of money as I'm sure you know, in the liquifying process. I remember reading about Shell among other companies investing a lot of money in the plants to do this in the last ten years I don't know where it is but obviously we have to invest here and there has to be investment in the countries that we will be shipping to
Everyone but China, India, Germany, Russia, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Poland, Australia and...yes...the United States. Wait... https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-consumption-by-country
Umm you do know we are taking about rate of change not raw output right? 4,320 trillion MMcf is a empty number when you don't incorporate trends and the confounding factors. For example maybe you can find an instance where coal extraction increased in a country like China for a period of 20 years but does that increase stay in pace with the increasing energy demands or does it not? If the increase doesn't stay in pace with the increase in energy demands in a country that signals that the county is finding other sources and slowly phasing coal fired plants out. Do you have the intellectual curiosity to ask these questions rather than just spit out raw totals for coal extraction per country?
The infrastructure bills that Manchin helped shepherd has provisions to increase more domestic green renewable energy. Coal is a dead end technology and it should be replaced. Obviously this won’t be done overnight and Biden should’ve phrased things differently but eventually coal will be left behind. Also just to not under Trump who said he was going to save coal more coal jobs were lost during his term than Obama’s.
The only advantage that coal has for energy is that it is plentiful and cheap. Natural gas rather than government policy has been the biggest factor leading to coal’s diminishing role. As more technologies replace it we will side its usage drop.
But that is the thread topic. I understand your point, the world uses a lot of coal still. It is harder for other countries to move to natural gas , obviously there has to be natural gas in that country Here we have plenty of natural gas and we are quickly making the transition. I'll be honest, I never knew we relied so much on coal. I fired off on Basso actually thinking we used a lot more natural gas. I guess I just never thought about electricity like that and then a 15 years ago I worked in energy, electricity and natural gas, and so I really never thought about coal Oil companies are so rich that I just think about energy in terms of oil and gas. This thread does give me a better understanding of why coal producing states are still reluctant to change. I personally viewed coal as something that has been on life support for years. The whole idea of a coal mine is so antiquated in my head
The world isn't ready for 100% renewable transition. Europe has been firing coal plants as payment for relying on Russian gas. They will even burn refined oil of Russian origin if the winter is too cold. Biden and liberals went 100% into ESG during the post lockdown spending spree and our energy secretary totally bought into it while trying to starve domestic energy majors. Granholm is out of her league and at least Obama had a nuclear physicist who was able to crunch numbers to form policy decisions. Fracking companies who took deep losses at the onset of covid is on pace to make profits in 2024. Should those companies be trrated like a national security asset and backstopped like our chips industry? We're at a point where we are courting blood thirsty murderers and fist bumping state pariahs just to reduce inflation at home while vilifying domestic energy corps for existing. Companies like Blackstone took on the ESG mantle to shift capital away from energy stocks. In a sense, we're declaring them dead companies in our "future economy", but if they're not investing more into developing capacity, they're considered evil. This is all while existing renweable capacity hasn't change much in proportion to existing demand. We're stuck in a political gridlock where supporting fossil fuels means we're dooming our children's future while denying them for half baked goals places us in a critical and existential danger with sticky inflation and a destabilized global order. Can't fully blame Biden for the political will of the left, and while the left may well be justified in 20-30 years, I'm not sure they imagined or predicted this situation. If they haven't, maybe they should hold leaders and experts to higher standards as the sources we get this information is mostly piped from them
Yes there will not be a transition over night and we still see a lot of burning of coal. This is an evolutionary process and we are taking the steps to make that happen. This is why I keep on harping on infrastructure. As why we still use fossil fuels even though the technology has existed for a long time to completely move from them is because of infratructure. This is like the replacement of land lines. Land lines haven’t disappeared completely but cellular technology has largely replaced the wired phone. That took building infrastructure of things like cell towers to make widespread use of cell phones feasible. My understanding is that we are making big strides in renewable energy and there was a recent article that some of the worst predictions of Climate Change haven happened because people actually took action to address it. That doesn’t mean it’s stopped or reversed but progress is being made. As we build new infrastructure and technology improves there will be more results. As for coal we can’t make it cleaner, we can’t make it more efficient, it’s extraction is both deadly to the environment and to the people who mine it, and no new coal is being created. It’s a dead end.
Coal is dead. It should be dead in WV too. You don't cut it off right away. You announce that it will end in 2 years or 10 years or however long it will take to get more renewable and also natural gas sources to replace what currently relies on coal. Build monuments, museums, and exhibits to honor the contributions made by those that worked and died in the industry. Help train miners to do other work.
