Coal Museum Sees the Future; Trump Doesn’t
© George Etheredge for The New York Times A statue of a coal miner in Benham, Ky. Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.
Did you catch this gem on CNN.com from April 6? “The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum in Benham, owned by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, is switching to solar power to save money. … Communications director Brandon Robinson told CNN affiliate WYMT that the project ‘will help save at least eight to ten thousand dollars, off the energy costs on this building alone.’”
Go figure. The coal mining museum is going solar, for solid economic reasons, and President Trump is reviving coal, with no economic logic at all. This bizarre contrast speaks to a deeper question of leadership and how we judge presidents.
Trump took two major national security decisions in the past few weeks. One was to strike Syria for using poison gas. Trump summoned his national security team, asked for options on Syria, chose the cruise-missile strike — which was right — and won praise for acting “presidential.”
The other decision you didn’t see. It was Trump dismantling budgets and regulations undergirding U.S. climate and environmental protection policies — in his nutty effort to revive U.S. coal-fired energy — while quietly announcing plans to withhold a promised $32.5 million U.S. contribution for the U.N. Population Fund, which supports family planning and maternal health.
Unlike the Syria decision, Trump made the second move without seeking a comprehensive briefing from experts — he controls the world’s greatest collection of climate scientists at NASA, NOAA, the E.P.A., the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — and without ever asking for an intelligence briefing on how the combination of climate change, environmental degradation, drought and population explosions helped trigger the civil war in Syria, spawn terrorist groups like Boko Haram around Africa’s central Lake Chad (which has lost 90 percent of its water mass since 1963) and become the main force pushing tens of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa into Europe each year, and from Central America up to the U.S.
Since Trump seems to be pivoting from some of his campaign nonsense, one can only hope he will do the same on these issues. If Trump is looking for a blueprint, he could not do better than to read a smart new book, “Climate of Hope,” by a most unlikely duo: former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope and billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
When Carl met Mike… It was 2011, Pope went to Bloomberg with a plan for generating bottom-up community activism to help shut down as many coal-fired power plants in America as possible, so another generation of American kids wouldn’t be afflicted with childhood asthma and another generation of coal workers wouldn’t have to make a living breathing coal dust.
Bloomberg put $50 million into the effort, and the rest is — helping to make coal — history, thanks to the Sierra Club mobilizing communities and technology making natural gas (when the methane leakage is controlled) a much cleaner, cheaper base-load power source for utilities, and wind and solar energy so much more cost-effective.
When the Sierra Club and Bloomberg started in 2011, there were 514 coal-fired power plants in America; since then, 254 have announced they will shut down. They expect that fully two-thirds will be phased out by 2022 — no matter what Trump says or does.
“Climate of Hope” is about how to build on this, by reframing the interrelated challenges of climate change, clean air, clean water and population “from questions of who is going to sacrifice to who is going to grab the profits,” Bloomberg explained in an interview. Each of these challenges, he said, can be met in ways that enable cities and countries to make themselves more prosperous, innovative, healthy and secure — if we just get the incentives right.
Imagine, added Pope, that every U.S. company joined Anheuser-Busch in committing to getting all of its electricity from renewable sources. Imagine that instead of subsidizing surplus cotton, destroying the livelihoods of small farmers in Africa, the U.S. government subsidized our farmers to grow crops that restore carbon and store water in their soils, thus drought-proofing Texas and California.
Imagine every U.S. city joining those already buying electric self-driving vehicles, thereby scaling a new auto-on-demand industry — while reducing the need for personal cars and the parking places and garages for them — thereby unlocking so much real estate for growth and easing urban housing prices. Imagine that instead of vowing to bring back coal mining jobs, our president offered to link West Virginia and the nation’s most prosperous metropolitan economy, Washington, D.C., with high-speed rail service.
Imagine … we could actually make American great again and not just prolong a dying industry. Now that would be presidential.
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Natural gas is replacing much of the coal industry. Trump is promoting it and coal.
Something has to give...and it's coal
Coal is yesterday's fuel in America. Coal fired plants are closing one after another and when new power plants are being built none of them are using coal as a fuel. There may be some overseas markets for awhile, but only in the
developing world". Even China is slashing it's use.
In March of 2015, Beijing announced that it was going to close its four major coal-fired power plants in 2016.
On a larger scale, over the past few months, China has made several moves to close a massive number of coal power plants. In October, China scrapped 17 gigawatts (GW) worth of coal-fired power plants, which included ten plants which were only under construction. The move was followed in January by a further announcement that China would scrap 104 under-construction and planned coal power projects, totaling 120 GW.
I just read where one of the coal companies is planning on taking two of it's mines and converting them to solar fields. In KY no less.
It's in the planning stages currently.
I have read the same thing-- maybe it will be a way for KY to see it's way out of the mess we're in... I hope it works!
Trucks are running again. Miners working seven days a week cannot keep up with current demand. Coal mines, long dormant after the industry’s collapse, are now buzzing again with antlike activity.
This is the difference between hard factual news and the NYT opinion pieces.
Being unable to keep up with current demand is usual for the coal industry. In six months time, they will be producing too much, and lay off about 1/2 their workers. So, MOST coal mining jobs are of 6 months duration. There is no other work available, so they must hang around until being rehired. All those $60K year jobs are really $30K jobs, which keeps the miners in debt up to their eyeballs.
Easter KY coal fields also have tons, and I mean tons of abandoned oil/gas wells. Many of them poorly abandoned with old pine trees. So the pressures associated with multiple well heads and new fracking techniques are going to be very difficult to complete without increasing pollution of the entire area, OR in gathering the gas from the fracked well. They are going to have to find all the old wells and plug them well, or the gas produced will be dissipated, the fluids injected will be lost/dissipated into the other rock formations nearby, and it's going to be a REAL mess.
Already, connate water, (water that was there when the rock was formed), is very salty and is, in many places only 60' below the ground surface, from poor water flooding practices of the past. It's going to be expensive, but it can be done right. However, since when have oil companies, or coal companies for that matter, done what is right?
Dean, you can believe what you want, but every source, including the coal companies themselves say that coal is dying and will never again be the force it once was.
From the article...
When the Sierra Club and Bloomberg started in 2011, there were 514 coal-fired power plants in America; since then, 254 have announced they will shut down. They expect that fully two-thirds will be phased out by 2022 — no matter what Trump says or does.
In the last month I've seen articles where 4 more coal fired plants are closing down.
That reality Dean....
Dean Kavika is right.
From Reuters
Electricity company Dayton Power & Light said on Monday it would shut down two coal-fired power plants in southern Ohio next year for economic reasons, a setback for the ailing coal industry but a victory for environmental activists.
Republican President Donald Trump promised in his election campaign to restore U.S. coal jobs that he said had been destroyed by environmental regulations put into effect by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.
Dayton Power & Light, a subsidiary of The AES Corporation, said in an emailed statement that it planned to close the J.M. Stuart and Killen plants by June 2018 because they would not be "economically viable beyond mid-2018."
Coal demand has flagged in recent years due to competition from cheap and plentiful natural gas.
The plants along the Ohio River in Adams County employ some 490 people and generate about 3,000 megawatts of power for coal.
Coal production-generation is set to rise over the next two years.
Dean from the article.
By 2018, the coal-gas trend is expected to reverse and gas will continue a resurgence, EIA said. "New natural gas power plants are currently being built, and by 2018 the availability of these units may lead to increases in natural gas-fired generation," the agency said.
It also shows a decline in coal production in the eastern region which is the area that Trump is talking about bringing coal jobs back.
Yes that is the prediction for the US globally coal consumption is still slated to rise. Now that Trump is working on reversing Obamas harmful regulations we could see a big improvement.
World coal consumption increases from 2012 to 2040 at an average rate of 0.6%/year, from 153 quadrillion Btu in 2012 to 169 quadrillion Btu in 2020 and to 180 quadrillion Btu in 2040.
Just out of curiosity, what countries are going to pay to ship US coal to them to use in power plants? Most of the large countries I know of have their own coal reserves... And most of our good coals are gone-- the anthracite and low-carbon bituminous coals...
Progess cannot be stopped. For example, horse watering troughs are no longer placed in cities.
It's my understanding that Canada still has beaver troughs.
That's why I followed Gomez Addams' advice and put all of my money in Amalgamated Lint. I used to have it all in United Buggy Whips.
LOL