The power plants out here also sell ash, for use in making concrete. Much of it is shipped by rail, in covered hoppers.
But this was not always the case, and I am not sure if the plants are able to sell 100% of the ash they produce. At least once of the Edmonton-area plants (Sundance, now converted to gas firing) disposed of their ash by dumping it back into old mine pits. An adjacent plant (Keephills, still coal-fired for now) uses a large ash lagoon, whose dike has been slowly collapsing for a number of years, requiring continuous maintenance.
Did the revenue earned from your ash sales overcome the cost of installing and maintaining the electrostatc precipitators and other ash handling infrastructure?
I work at a paper mill in northern Wisconsin. We put in a large gas fired package boiler and a smaller back-up boiler several years ago because CN jacked up the carload prices of delivered coal to the point it was not economical to run our coal cyclone boiler year round.
Management wants to convert our cyclone boiler to gas but our area has a volume constraint issue. We can’t run our gas boilers in the winter because they draw more than the combined towns in the area. We are working with our gas supplier to get more volume but it takes a lot of time and money. Due to new EPA regs we’re no longer allowed to sell our ash as filler to the local blacktop plant and now have to pay to landfill it.
Having said that, management still wants to convert fully to gas. This will get 24 truckloads off the highway and provide cleaner emssions. CN doesn’t want to handle carload traffic and our rail line will either be sold or scrapped.
As noted, I have been retired for 15 years. My memory tells me that the ash sales did not overcome the cost of the handling and required infrastructure. They mitigated the bottom-line impact.
Fly ash by itself is harmful to humans because of arsenic and trace heavy metals…is it not? I understand it’s use is beneficial to concrete but there is also an environmental reason why they mix it with concrete.
Gas became cheap because of technological advances in seismics, lateral drilling, and fracking. The oil & gas industry also pervasively regulated.
Coal was already heavily invested when the bottom started falling out. There would be no incentive for further investment when much of their present investment was stranded.
If there are government incentives to cut back on coal fired generation, then market forces of lower demand will drive down the price of coal.
As a retired employee of an electric utility, I concur with what JPS1 has said. It (the utility) started out with coal generation. The plants were small and local and then over time grew bigger and bigger. Coal to the plants came in cuts (10-30) 40 ton cars. Then we got to unit trains (110 cars) and then we built a mine mouth plant (It was less costly to send the energy by transmission line). But the coal we had been burning was high sulphur. Rather than install scrubbers, it was less expensive to change to western low sulphur (Wyoming) coal. Also, as electric load is variable, a daily cycle with low demand at night with it increasing in the morning and peaking in the afternoon. It also has seasonal cycles (some areas are summer peaking [air conditioning]and others are winter peaking [heating] and this influences the generation mix. Older coal plants are less efficient than newer larger units. So the bigger efficient units run as base load and and the older units are brought on line as the load increases And bigger units are harder to vary their output to follow load. So utilities need a mix of units to generate the power to follow the load. Gas as noted in previous posts had higher costs and the supply was limited. I remember when there were gas post lamps at houses and then there was a gas shortage. They got removed fairly quickly. There have been oil shortages also. The utility where I worked installed gas units that were low initial cost but high fuel cost. So they were used for the peak load days when people would turn the airconditioner on. Fracking has created a glut of gas available and it has caused a deep drop in gas price. Supply and demand is very evident in the cost of fuels. I have seen gluts and shortages and it will be interesting to see where this current cycle goes.
How can a President’s promise to force coal out of business by razing its price-- then have the effect of lowering the price? That makes no sense. The move kills the coal industry. Once that happens, there is no price.
Where is your evidence of coal prices being driven down, as you say?
Natural falling demand will lower prices, but killing demand by regulation will not lower the price. It just makes the price moot. The President even said that the new regulations will raise the cost of coal, and thus making it unattractive for investment, and thus destroying the coal industry. So then coal is destroyed by its rising cost of production. This government interference overrides any nat
Euclid
Without the poltical promise to end coal by the rasing the cost of new regulations, coal would have been less expensive. So, yes, the ultimate death of coal was caused by the market forces, but the market foreces were heavily influenced by the promise to destroy the coal market. If you scare away coal investment, it will raise the cost and price of coal.
If there are government incentives to cut back on coal fired generation, then market forces of lower demand will drive down the price of coal.
How can a President’s promise to force coal out of business by razing its price-- then have the effect of lowering the price? That makes no sense. The move kills the coal industry. Once that happens, there is no price.
Where is your evidence of coal prices being driven down, as you say?
Natural falling demand will lower prices, but killing demand by regulation will not lower the price. It just makes the price moot. The President even said that the new regulations will raise the
Thanks, I was a career geologist in the oil & gas industry, but my knowledge of coal is only cross-professional interest. The interest actually came about as much so as a railfan.
The move away from coal happened at least thirty years ago. I wrote of this in another thread a while back. My first job was with a world-wide consulting firm in 1990. In July 1990, the head of the EPA Global Change Division gave a company-wide presentation about global warming. As I wrote in that post, I expected the effort to focus on nuclear power. Instead, the plan was to shift from coal to natural gas, increase energy efficiency, and to increase renewables. Nuclear power was relegated to a mere footnote. I cannot remember the details of how each of these would be achieved, but I was flabbergastered that nuclear wasn’t the primary means of reducing CO2 emmisions. I still feel the same in 2020.
I pretty much feel the same way about nuclear with respect to CO2 reduction, requires a lot less resources per effective kW of capacity that almost all of non-fossil fuel alternatives.