Coal IS going away, but slowly. It will never be completely gone because some amount is needed to make steel. Quite a bit of what come out of WV for export is met coal, for example.
What “replaces” coal as source for electricity? Everything. Oil, nat’l gas, wind, solar, nuclear, conservation. But, I’d put most of my money on natural gas. It has about half the carbon per BTU than coal and we currently have a surplus. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 Wind is interesting because it’s already part of the base generating capacity - about 4% if I remember right. The tricky part about wind and solar is that output varies from minute to minute and you need a way to transport and balance on a grid that wasn’t built to do that. I wonder if doubling or tripling wind and solar output would require some pretty hefty upgrades to the grid?
I also wonder how coal gasification and liquification factor into the equation? At some point does technology allow for economical and “clean” use of coal? We have a awful lot of it and those BTUs are just begging to be used…
I can’t imagine any scenario where limits on carbon emissions don’t increase the cost of electricity. Nat’l gas is cheaper than coal right now because of where each one is relative to supply and demand. If you increase the rate of consumption of nat’l gas to offset the reduction in coal, Nat’l gas prices will go up, but coal can’t come down below the cost of production. Also, the cost to raise the capital for new/modified generation plus other infrastructure have to come from someplace!
What are RRs going to do as coal shipments diminish? Survive quite nicely, I think. Oil train traffic will grow some, but never to coal train levels.
Wind and solar both have their opponents, some as vocal as those opposed to coal.
We have been going through a very acrimonious discussion in this area about putting in wind power - it caused at least one “summer resident” to change their residence so they could vote “no” on it here. The wind power company finally threw in the towel.
Ironically, this rivershore community now gets to look out over the river to the wind towers installed in Canada…
Opponents to wind power in general point to the damage to wildlife and to decreased property values.
So far, the main objection to solar seems to deal with the large mirror array installations, which can apparently cook a bird in flight… I’ve seen some residential installations, however, that wouldn’t help one’s property value.
There’s a picture in our paper today of a coal-fired power plant, in PA, I think, in which the caption incorrectly labels the condensation (ie, water vapor) coming from the plant’s stacks as “smoke.” The fact that the condensation dissipates in-frame is apparently lost on the writer of the story/caption.
That same photo appears in our local newspaper, too. Propaganda put out by the anti-coal coalition, knowing that John Q. Public doesn’t know any difference between steam and smoke.
We cannot ignore the fact that much of Europe and other parts of the world are weaning themselves off coal, oil, even gas (fossil fuels) in favor of thermal, wind, and sun captured energies. The charge in the US is that the petroleum industry money is working hard to maintain itself by ignoring and working to defeat new energy development. I am one who believes the end of the coal, oil, and gas energy cycle is at hand and sooner or later we have to accept that. We cannot accept that by denying it. We must adapt, move away from fossil fuels toward other energy sources and not be forced to make an instant switch…that is the costly way. In these pages our question what replaces coal has to do with what railroads must hone in on, develop, and market to to replace lost coal transit income. And, they have been doing it quite well since the surge of trailers on flatcars in the mid 50’s to the stack trains of today. Intermodal will be expanded so much more from where it now is.
The “CO2 advantage” of natural gas over coal is even better than what’s predicted by the “carbon per BTU”. The newest combined cycle plants have thermal efficiency of 60% vs 33% for a typical coal plant. OTOH, an integrated coal gasification plant could improve on the 33% by quite a lot. It’s also possible that the gasification process would lead to separation of a significant portion of the CO2, which could be used for such purposes as improving tertiary recovery of oil.
Increasing the amount of electric energy generated from wind and solar will require some means of electric energy storage. California is expecting to have problems with accommodating solar generation by 2020.
So, if i did my math right, it’s close to a 4:1 advantage and coverting 1/3 of coal generation to natural gas will get us a 25% reduction in CO2 - the 2020 target.
For the railroads, this means coal transport might decline by 33% over the next 6 years. That’s a pretty steep rate of decline.
The investment bank Barclays had a report out last week downgrading traditional utility companies due to the increase in use of solar panels. Their report basically indicated this usage is progressing fairly quickly as the cost is decreasing and storage is becoming viable.
Exxon Mobil made a huge investment a few years ago in natural gas, which seemed to be an investment away from coal.
Well the greenies don’t want fracking, pipelines, tank trains and I assume lng or cng trains so it is somewhat delusionsal to think the permits to do anything other then shut down coal fired plants will be easily obtained and the conversions or replacement plants will not have significant delays like five to ten yearsb or longer. The power industry is on a very ragged edge. Forcing existing power plants to shut down has to result in brown outs or rolling blackouts. Facts are always a problem.
They will be as opposed to natrual gas as they are to oil and coal. The only acceptable alternative will be renewables. That will drive up the price so high and so soon that there won’t be any debate about that point. The high price will kill demand. This will amount to price rationing of fossil fuels. This forced conservation will be the primary way we solve the inadequacy of reneable energy to take up the slack after killing coal. It will start with eye-popping electric bills.
At the heart of the “green” ideolgy is the belief that the U.S. consumes too much. They want to roll that back with something they call “degrowth.” Google it.
What I don’t think is being taken into account is that CO2 molecules are excellent at bouncing heat very uniformally but the climate people only consider the heat generated from the earth. I guess the solar heat on the backside of the atmosphere isn’t reflecting a like amount of heat away from the earth and therefore it balances causing no change at all. But then I don’t have millions in government grants to have to justify.
Here in Arizona two years ago we had three days of continuous below zero temperatures. Natural gas supplies ran short because well heads froze in Texas and couldn’t pump gas. The gas company was forced to shut off supplies to thousands of homes. If our local Apache Power Plant had been gas-fired at the time, their supply would possibly have been cut off. What then? No electricity; no natural gas; no heat. People had to move to locations where there was still heat available.
Makes me think of this wonderful old song. We should write an updated version for these current ‘obaminable’ circumstances…
(For those irritated at the premise in the song, answer the riddle from just a few short years later: ‘What’s the difference between a Texan and a pigeon?’)