Dominion pulls back on plan for scrubbers
By SCOTT HARPER, The Virginian-Pilot© December 8, 2006 Last updated: 7:58 PM
At a news conference last year, Dominion Virginia Power announced that it would spend millions to install anti-pollution scrubbers at its coal-fired power plant in Chesapeake.
With less aplomb, the state's largest electric utility has quietly changed plans.
A company spokesman confirmed this week that Dominion will not install the scrubbers any time soon. Instead, it will import and burn low-sulfur and low-mercury coal, principally from Indonesia and Colombia, to create electricity at the Chesapeake plant.
The Dominion spokesman, Dan Genest, said the move is intended to save money and still reap environmental benefits without having to invest in expensive technology.
By burning the foreign coal naturally low in pollutants, beginning next year, Dominion anticipates "the same, significant reductions" of mercury and sulfur emissions - except sooner, Genest said.
The scrubbers - essentially, giant industrial filters - were supposed to be built in 2010 and 2011 onto all four units at the Chesapeake plant, a towering landmark off Military Highway near the Gilmerton Bridge.
"By going this way, we'll see cleaner air faster" - in 2007 instead of 2010, Genest said.
Environmental groups are questioning the shift, however, saying that scrubbers are the surest way to keep toxic mercury from polluting air and water and causing contaminated fish and fish-consumption warnings.
In addition, they question the wisdom of relying on coal from countries such as Indonesia, where Islamic radicalism is fermenting and where one anti-Western terrorist attack already has occurred - in Bali, in 2005.
"I wouldn't want to trust my mercury levels in Virginia to the political winds in Indonesia," said Cale Jaffe, a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville.
The Virginia coal industry is concerned, too.
Dink Shackleford, executive director of the Virginia Mining Association, said Dominion's pursuit of foreign coal signals an ominous future for domestic production in southwest Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Shackleford does not blame Dominion for seeking a cheaper resource. Instead, he blames environmentalists and increasing government regulation for forcing utilities to look overseas. "We're financing our own demise," he said, "when we have plenty of coal right here."
He said more than 100 agencies regulate coal mining today in Virginia, which drives up costs dramatically.
Shackleford also questioned why U.S. environmentalists decry his industry when the alternative is coal mining in developing countries such as Indonesia, where scant environmental and worker-safety regulations exist.
"I just think the environmental movement in this country has gone berserk," he said.
It will be cheaper for Dominion to bring Indonesian coal by barge to coastal Virginia than to carry it by rail from the other corner of the state, said Genest, the utility's spokesman.
Dominion is constructing its own pier on the Elizabeth River, where the foreign coal will be unloaded at the foot of the Chesapeake power plant. The pier is expected to be completed in June, Genest said.
But Dominion intends to start burning imported coal by March, he said, temporarily offloading the low-pollution resources at a commercial pier in Portsmouth owned by Giant Cement Co.
Dominion remains committed to installing scrubbers at its huge coal-fired plant in Chester, outside of Richmond, and at another plant in Yorktown. Plans for Yorktown could change, though, Genest said, depending on the emission-reductions seen with foreign coal at Chesapeake.
Genest acknowledged that Dominion is not sure of the precise mercury benefits from burning Indonesian coal. But he said that if levels are not as low as anticipated, Dominion may install a separate technology to cut mercury emissions and comply with state and federal air-quality rules.
Reach Scott Harper at (757) 446-2340 or scott.harper@pilotonline.com.
© 2006 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
More and more on coal to liquid
Liquid coal touted as fuel of the future
Material considered cleaner and cheaper than petroleum
STEVE JAMES
Reuters News Agency
NEW YORK -- When railways ruled, it was the sweating firemen shovelling coal into the furnace who kept the engines running.
Now, nearly two centuries after Stephenson's "Rocket" steam locomotive helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, that same coal could be the fuel that keeps the jet age aloft.
But with a twist: The planes of the future could be flown with liquid fuel made from coal or natural gas.
Already the United States Air Force has carried out tests flying a B-52 Stratofortress with a coal-based fuel.
And JetBlue Airways Corp. supports a bill in Congress that would extend tax credits for alternative fuels, pushing technology to produce jet fuel for the equivalent of $40 (U.S.) a barrel -- far below current oil prices.
Major coal mining companies in the United States, which has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil, are investing in ways to develop fuels derived from carbon.
The technology of producing a liquid fuel from coal or natural gas is hardly new. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed by German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923 and used by Germany and Japan during the Second World War to produce alternative fuels. Indeed, in 1944, Germany produced 6.5 million tons, or 124,000 barrels a day.
And coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel is already in use elsewhere, like South Africa, where it meets 30 per cent of transportation fuel needs.
In addition to being cheaper than oil, advocates point out that the fuel is environmentally friendlier and would also help the United States wean itself of foreign oil imports.
"America must reduce its dependence on foreign oil via environmentally sound and proven coal-to-liquid technologies," said JetBlue's founder and chief executive officer, David Neeleman. "Utilizing our domestic coal reserves is the right way to achieve energy independence."
In a recent briefing to power and energy executives, Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said bio-diesel fuels offer little in the way of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, have enormous production costs and present "serious transmission and infrastructure" problems.
In contrast, CTL transportation fuels are substantially cleaner-burning than conventional fuels.
Mr. Popovich warned that the United States risks falling behind economic competitors such as China, which plans to spend $25-billion on CTL plants.
The United States is "already behind the curve" when it comes to tapping the vast liquid fuel potential of coal, said John Ward, of natural resources company Headwaters Inc., which builds CTL plants.
He said U.S. plants would likely each produce 40,000 barrels of CTL fuel a day, with a typical plant using 8.5 million tons of coal a year. In contrast, China is focused on building plants capable of producing 60,000 barrels of CTL fuel a day, he said.
"There is significant investor interest in what could be a major growth opportunity," said Paul Clegg, an alternative energy analyst with Natexis Bleichroeder.
"It is a viable technology, but the question is where do hydrocarbon prices go now? Will we continue to see oil above $40 a barrel forever?
Material considered cleaner and cheaper than petroleum
STEVE JAMES
Reuters News Agency
NEW YORK -- When railways ruled, it was the sweating firemen shovelling coal into the furnace who kept the engines running.
Now, nearly two centuries after Stephenson's "Rocket" steam locomotive helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, that same coal could be the fuel that keeps the jet age aloft.
But with a twist: The planes of the future could be flown with liquid fuel made from coal or natural gas.
Already the United States Air Force has carried out tests flying a B-52 Stratofortress with a coal-based fuel.
And JetBlue Airways Corp. supports a bill in Congress that would extend tax credits for alternative fuels, pushing technology to produce jet fuel for the equivalent of $40 (U.S.) a barrel -- far below current oil prices.
Major coal mining companies in the United States, which has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil, are investing in ways to develop fuels derived from carbon.
The technology of producing a liquid fuel from coal or natural gas is hardly new. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed by German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923 and used by Germany and Japan during the Second World War to produce alternative fuels. Indeed, in 1944, Germany produced 6.5 million tons, or 124,000 barrels a day.
And coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel is already in use elsewhere, like South Africa, where it meets 30 per cent of transportation fuel needs.
In addition to being cheaper than oil, advocates point out that the fuel is environmentally friendlier and would also help the United States wean itself of foreign oil imports.
"America must reduce its dependence on foreign oil via environmentally sound and proven coal-to-liquid technologies," said JetBlue's founder and chief executive officer, David Neeleman. "Utilizing our domestic coal reserves is the right way to achieve energy independence."
In a recent briefing to power and energy executives, Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said bio-diesel fuels offer little in the way of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, have enormous production costs and present "serious transmission and infrastructure" problems.
In contrast, CTL transportation fuels are substantially cleaner-burning than conventional fuels.
Mr. Popovich warned that the United States risks falling behind economic competitors such as China, which plans to spend $25-billion on CTL plants.
The United States is "already behind the curve" when it comes to tapping the vast liquid fuel potential of coal, said John Ward, of natural resources company Headwaters Inc., which builds CTL plants.
He said U.S. plants would likely each produce 40,000 barrels of CTL fuel a day, with a typical plant using 8.5 million tons of coal a year. In contrast, China is focused on building plants capable of producing 60,000 barrels of CTL fuel a day, he said.
"There is significant investor interest in what could be a major growth opportunity," said Paul Clegg, an alternative energy analyst with Natexis Bleichroeder.
"It is a viable technology, but the question is where do hydrocarbon prices go now? Will we continue to see oil above $40 a barrel forever?
Monday, December 18, 2006
COAL can go to liguid for U.S. needs
More on Coal to liquid
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When railroads ruled, it was the sweating firemen shoveling coal into the furnace who kept the engines running.
Now, nearly two centuries after Stephenson's "Rocket" steam locomotive helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, that same coal could be the fuel that keeps the jet age aloft.
But with a twist: The planes of the future could be flown with liquid fuel made from coal or natural gas.
Already the United States Air Force has carried out tests flying a B-52 Stratofortress with a coal-based fuel.
And JetBlue Airways Corp. supports a bill in Congress that would extend tax credits for alternative fuels, pushing technology to produce jet fuel for the equivalent of $40 a barrel -- way below current oil prices.
Major coal mining companies in the United States, which has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil, are investing in ways to develop fuels derived from carbon.
The technology of producing a liquid fuel from coal or natural gas is hardly new. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed by German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923 and used by Germany and Japan during World War II to produce alternative fuels. Indeed, in 1944, Germany produced 6.5 million tons, or 124,000 barrels a day.
And coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel is already in use elsewhere, like South Africa, where it meets 30 percent of transportation fuel needs.
In addition to being cheaper than oil, advocates point out that the fuel is environmentally friendlier and would also help America wean itself of foreign oil imports.
"America must reduce its dependence on foreign oil via environmentally sound and proven coal-to-liquid technologies," said JetBlue's founder and chief executive, David Neeleman. "Utilizing our domestic coal reserves is the right way to achieve energy independence."
In a recent briefing to power and energy executives, Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said bio-diesel fuels offer little in the way of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, have enormous production costs and present "serious transmission and infrastructure" problems.
In contrast, CTL transportation fuels are substantially cleaner-burning than conventional fuels.
Popovich warned that the United States risks falling behind economic competitors such as China, which plans to spend $25 billion on CTL plants.
America is "already behind the curve" when it comes to tapping the vast liquid fuel potential that coal offers, said John Ward, of natural resources company Headwaters Inc. , which builds CTL plants.
He said plants in America would likely each produce 40,000 barrels of CTL fuel per day, with a typical plant using 8.5 million tons of coal per year. In contrast, China is focused on building plants capable of producing 60,000 barrels of CTL fuel per day, he said.
"There is significant investor interest in what could be a major growth opportunity," said Paul Clegg, an alternative energy analyst with Natexis Bleichroeder.
"It is a viable technology, but the question is where do hydrocarbon prices go now? Will we continue to see oil above $40 a barrel forever?"
In October, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and a consortium of energy and technology companies announced the state will be home to one of America's first CTL energy plants.
The $1 billion Bull Mountain plant is slated to produce 22,000 barrels per day of diesel fuel and 300 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 240,000 homes -- in six years.
Schweitzer and the companies behind the plant, including Arch Coal and DKRW Advanced Fuels LLC, say the production of fuel and electricity will not release the greenhouse gases associated with coal-generated electricity.
Arch has a 25-percent stake in DKRW and the companies are also developing a CTL plant in Medicine Bow, Wyoming.
At a recent coal industry conference, the heads of two of America's Big Four producers talked up CTL development.
Arch Coal Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steven Leer said it "could be a game-changer." Chemical companies and railroads were asking him about using coal-based liquid fuels.
"It's a whole new group of potential customers," he said.
Peabody Energy Chief Executive Gregory Boyce said of CTL: "Stay tuned, as the sector continues to evolve.
"I have heard reports that China can produce oil for $25 per barrel from coal. We see it more in the $45 range here."
Peabody recently announced an agreement with Rentech to evaluate sites in the Midwest and Montana for CTL projects. The plants could range in size from producing 10,000 to 30,000 barrels of fuel per day and use approximately 3 million to 9 million tons of coal annually.
Another alternative fuel company, Syntroleum , said recently that its ultra-clean jet fuel was successfully tested in a USAF B-52 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The bomber flew with a 50/50 blend of CTL and traditional JP-8 jet fuel.
"The program ... is the first step in opening up new horizons for sourcing fuel for military purposes," said Bill Harrison, a fuels expert with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
The flight test was part of the Department of Defense's Assured Fuel Initiative to develop secure domestic sources for the military's energy needs. The Pentagon hopes to reduce its use of crude oil and foreign producers and get about half of its aviation fuel from alternative sources by 2016.
Copyright 2006 Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When railroads ruled, it was the sweating firemen shoveling coal into the furnace who kept the engines running.
Now, nearly two centuries after Stephenson's "Rocket" steam locomotive helped usher in the Industrial Revolution, that same coal could be the fuel that keeps the jet age aloft.
But with a twist: The planes of the future could be flown with liquid fuel made from coal or natural gas.
Already the United States Air Force has carried out tests flying a B-52 Stratofortress with a coal-based fuel.
And JetBlue Airways Corp. supports a bill in Congress that would extend tax credits for alternative fuels, pushing technology to produce jet fuel for the equivalent of $40 a barrel -- way below current oil prices.
Major coal mining companies in the United States, which has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil, are investing in ways to develop fuels derived from carbon.
The technology of producing a liquid fuel from coal or natural gas is hardly new. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed by German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923 and used by Germany and Japan during World War II to produce alternative fuels. Indeed, in 1944, Germany produced 6.5 million tons, or 124,000 barrels a day.
And coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel is already in use elsewhere, like South Africa, where it meets 30 percent of transportation fuel needs.
In addition to being cheaper than oil, advocates point out that the fuel is environmentally friendlier and would also help America wean itself of foreign oil imports.
"America must reduce its dependence on foreign oil via environmentally sound and proven coal-to-liquid technologies," said JetBlue's founder and chief executive, David Neeleman. "Utilizing our domestic coal reserves is the right way to achieve energy independence."
In a recent briefing to power and energy executives, Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said bio-diesel fuels offer little in the way of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, have enormous production costs and present "serious transmission and infrastructure" problems.
In contrast, CTL transportation fuels are substantially cleaner-burning than conventional fuels.
Popovich warned that the United States risks falling behind economic competitors such as China, which plans to spend $25 billion on CTL plants.
America is "already behind the curve" when it comes to tapping the vast liquid fuel potential that coal offers, said John Ward, of natural resources company Headwaters Inc. , which builds CTL plants.
He said plants in America would likely each produce 40,000 barrels of CTL fuel per day, with a typical plant using 8.5 million tons of coal per year. In contrast, China is focused on building plants capable of producing 60,000 barrels of CTL fuel per day, he said.
"There is significant investor interest in what could be a major growth opportunity," said Paul Clegg, an alternative energy analyst with Natexis Bleichroeder.
"It is a viable technology, but the question is where do hydrocarbon prices go now? Will we continue to see oil above $40 a barrel forever?"
In October, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and a consortium of energy and technology companies announced the state will be home to one of America's first CTL energy plants.
The $1 billion Bull Mountain plant is slated to produce 22,000 barrels per day of diesel fuel and 300 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 240,000 homes -- in six years.
Schweitzer and the companies behind the plant, including Arch Coal and DKRW Advanced Fuels LLC, say the production of fuel and electricity will not release the greenhouse gases associated with coal-generated electricity.
Arch has a 25-percent stake in DKRW and the companies are also developing a CTL plant in Medicine Bow, Wyoming.
At a recent coal industry conference, the heads of two of America's Big Four producers talked up CTL development.
Arch Coal Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steven Leer said it "could be a game-changer." Chemical companies and railroads were asking him about using coal-based liquid fuels.
"It's a whole new group of potential customers," he said.
Peabody Energy Chief Executive Gregory Boyce said of CTL: "Stay tuned, as the sector continues to evolve.
"I have heard reports that China can produce oil for $25 per barrel from coal. We see it more in the $45 range here."
Peabody recently announced an agreement with Rentech to evaluate sites in the Midwest and Montana for CTL projects. The plants could range in size from producing 10,000 to 30,000 barrels of fuel per day and use approximately 3 million to 9 million tons of coal annually.
Another alternative fuel company, Syntroleum , said recently that its ultra-clean jet fuel was successfully tested in a USAF B-52 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The bomber flew with a 50/50 blend of CTL and traditional JP-8 jet fuel.
"The program ... is the first step in opening up new horizons for sourcing fuel for military purposes," said Bill Harrison, a fuels expert with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
The flight test was part of the Department of Defense's Assured Fuel Initiative to develop secure domestic sources for the military's energy needs. The Pentagon hopes to reduce its use of crude oil and foreign producers and get about half of its aviation fuel from alternative sources by 2016.
Copyright 2006 Reuters
Friday, December 15, 2006
While China digs in and makes wise energy decisions Calf makes stoopit choices.
This just moves more and more manufacturing over seas and now they want mining coal to be moved over there also. Oh they still want the power but they want it to be mined over seas where there are no environmental regulations. shift the shaft so to speak. They sleep good at night not knowing they are selling out our children and their future. Keep it up enviro wackos you done have most of the manufacturing base the production of coal is next. Keep making china the new world power. It bugs the heck out of the Russian's.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 14, 2006
California utility rejects cheap power from polluting coal plantSAMANTHA YOUNGAssociated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A small utility near Lake Tahoe's north shore thought it had the answer to providing long-term affordable energy - coal.
But after an outpouring of public criticism and political pressure, the Truckee Donner Public Utility District voted to reject a 50-year contract to obtain energy from a planned coal plant in Utah.
The district's vote late Wednesday night was an illustration of a larger debate within California. Over the last month, several utilities have considered renewing or negotiating new contracts for cheap power from high-polluting sources before a new state law takes effect Jan. 1.
Under that law, utilities in California will be prohibited from entering long-term contracts to buy power from out-of-state coal-fired plants unless they meet the lower emission levels of a combined-cycle natural gas plant.
Utilities have found themselves squeezed between competing forces - the desire to provide inexpensive power to their customers and California's political shift to cut the emissions that contribute to global warming.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September signed legislation requiring California utilities to buy energy from clean-burning sources. The measure is part of the state's strategy to combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Schwarzenegger and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein were among politicians, environmental groups and community activists to write letters urging the Truckee Donner board to reject the coal contract.
In his letter, Schwarzenegger warned of the potential consequences of greenhouse gases. Those include early melting of the Sierra snowpack around the picturesque town off Interstate 80, where the seasonal economy is highly dependent on the ski industry.
"We all recognize the need for a stable and affordable supply of electricity, but we have a responsibility to generate it in a way that is environmentally sensitive," Schwarzenegger said in a statement issued Thursday.
In a related effort, the California Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday issued regulations that would ban state-owned utilities from buying electricity from any source that emits more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt generated. That's about the amount emitted by a modern natural gas power plant.
The regulations are scheduled for a vote next month.
The contract being considered by the Truckee utility had been in the works for about three years. It would have allowed the district to buy power from a Utah coal plant at cost, which supporters said would save the utility millions of dollars a year.
That plant is scheduled to be online by 2012, when the Truckee contract would have kicked in.
Truckee Donner officials acknowledged they rushed the vote on the contract to try to get it approved before California's new law takes effect. They said rejecting the Utah power likely would raise rates on the district's 12,000 customers by 30 percent.
California's law also prompted a handful of Southern California municipal utilities to consider renewing their coal contracts about 20 years early. The cities, including Pasadena and Anaheim, ultimately rejected the idea last month and decided instead to pursue power from wind farms, solar and other alternative sources.
Environmental groups commended the utilities for rejecting offers by Utah's Intermountain Power Agency Inc. to lock up contracts by the end of the year before the new law and PUC regulations take effect.
"California still runs on about 20 percent of coal, and that's not going to change overnight," said Paul Vercruyssen, development director for the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, a nonprofit based in Sacramento. "But what we can do is say we're not going to financially support any new coal."
The votes against the coal contracts were expected given California's political environment, said Reed Searle, general manager of Intermountain Power Agency, based in South Jordan, Utah.
He said the company's plans to build a third coal-fired plant in western Utah are unaffected by the Truckee vote because cities in Utah are on a waiting list for the contract. Nevertheless, he said the company has heard California's demand for cleaner energy.
"We have been doing research and putting funds into carbon-reduction technologies," Searle said.
© 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.mercurynews.com
Posted on Thu, Dec. 14, 2006
California utility rejects cheap power from polluting coal plantSAMANTHA YOUNGAssociated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A small utility near Lake Tahoe's north shore thought it had the answer to providing long-term affordable energy - coal.
But after an outpouring of public criticism and political pressure, the Truckee Donner Public Utility District voted to reject a 50-year contract to obtain energy from a planned coal plant in Utah.
The district's vote late Wednesday night was an illustration of a larger debate within California. Over the last month, several utilities have considered renewing or negotiating new contracts for cheap power from high-polluting sources before a new state law takes effect Jan. 1.
Under that law, utilities in California will be prohibited from entering long-term contracts to buy power from out-of-state coal-fired plants unless they meet the lower emission levels of a combined-cycle natural gas plant.
Utilities have found themselves squeezed between competing forces - the desire to provide inexpensive power to their customers and California's political shift to cut the emissions that contribute to global warming.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September signed legislation requiring California utilities to buy energy from clean-burning sources. The measure is part of the state's strategy to combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Schwarzenegger and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein were among politicians, environmental groups and community activists to write letters urging the Truckee Donner board to reject the coal contract.
In his letter, Schwarzenegger warned of the potential consequences of greenhouse gases. Those include early melting of the Sierra snowpack around the picturesque town off Interstate 80, where the seasonal economy is highly dependent on the ski industry.
"We all recognize the need for a stable and affordable supply of electricity, but we have a responsibility to generate it in a way that is environmentally sensitive," Schwarzenegger said in a statement issued Thursday.
In a related effort, the California Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday issued regulations that would ban state-owned utilities from buying electricity from any source that emits more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt generated. That's about the amount emitted by a modern natural gas power plant.
The regulations are scheduled for a vote next month.
The contract being considered by the Truckee utility had been in the works for about three years. It would have allowed the district to buy power from a Utah coal plant at cost, which supporters said would save the utility millions of dollars a year.
That plant is scheduled to be online by 2012, when the Truckee contract would have kicked in.
Truckee Donner officials acknowledged they rushed the vote on the contract to try to get it approved before California's new law takes effect. They said rejecting the Utah power likely would raise rates on the district's 12,000 customers by 30 percent.
California's law also prompted a handful of Southern California municipal utilities to consider renewing their coal contracts about 20 years early. The cities, including Pasadena and Anaheim, ultimately rejected the idea last month and decided instead to pursue power from wind farms, solar and other alternative sources.
Environmental groups commended the utilities for rejecting offers by Utah's Intermountain Power Agency Inc. to lock up contracts by the end of the year before the new law and PUC regulations take effect.
"California still runs on about 20 percent of coal, and that's not going to change overnight," said Paul Vercruyssen, development director for the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, a nonprofit based in Sacramento. "But what we can do is say we're not going to financially support any new coal."
The votes against the coal contracts were expected given California's political environment, said Reed Searle, general manager of Intermountain Power Agency, based in South Jordan, Utah.
He said the company's plans to build a third coal-fired plant in western Utah are unaffected by the Truckee vote because cities in Utah are on a waiting list for the contract. Nevertheless, he said the company has heard California's demand for cleaner energy.
"We have been doing research and putting funds into carbon-reduction technologies," Searle said.
© 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.mercurynews.com
China to spend one TRILLION yuan (128billion in US) for Coal to liquid fuel.
Published on ShanghaiDaily.com (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/)http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/12/14/299867/Coal-to-liquid
Coal-to-liquid fuel gets a lift in China
Fu Chenghao
Created: 2006-12-14 CST, Updated: 2006-12-14 CST
CHINA plans to spend one trillion yuan (US$128 billion) through 2020 to develop its coal-to-liquid-fuel and chemical industry as it works to reduce reliance on oil imports and cut pollution. The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top industrial policy planner, said on Wednesday that it has mostly completed an opinion-gathering process for a long-term industry blueprint that will be sent soon to authorities for approval. The Shanghai Securities News said yesterday the total proposed budget for the 2006-2020 period is more than one trillion yuan, half of which will be used for equipment supply and 10 percent for technological knowhow. The country plans to increase annual capacity for turning coal into liquid fuel from a very small amount now to 1.5 million metric tons by 2010, 10 million tons by 2015 and 30 million tons by 2020. As a result, the fuel could make up four percent of the country's total refined oil products by 2015 and 10 percent by 2020. China also wants to build the capacity for making dimethyl ether to five million tons, 12 million tons and 20 million tons by 2010, 2015 and 2020. DME, produced from methanol made by gasifying coal, is a clean-burning fuel alternative that can be blended with other fuels. On the other hand, the government plans to add only limited production capacity for traditional coal-to-chemical products such as coke and fertilizer. "China is rich in coal, but the coal conversion industry could be hurt by risks such as falling crude prices, rising coal costs and environmental protection issues," said China Jianyin Investment Securities analyst Ye Zhijun. Building a DME plant, for example, will cost much more than a crude oil refinery with comparable capacity, and the DME production process also consumes more water, industry analysts pointed out. To avoid investment in uneconomic projects, the government has said it will approve only new coal-to-chemicals plants that meet specified production capacities.
Copyright © 2001-2005 Shanghai Daily Company
Shenhua approval
2006-12-16
SHENHUA Group Corp, China's biggest coal company, and partner Shanghai Huayi Group have won state approval to build a 12 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) plant that will convert coal into chemicals to tap rising demand. The plant in Baotou, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is designed to produce 1.8 million metric tons a year of methanol and convert 600,000 tons a year into aromatics, the National Development and Reform Commission said yesterday.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/12/16/300009/Shenhua_approval.htm
Coal-to-liquid fuel gets a lift in China
Fu Chenghao
Created: 2006-12-14 CST, Updated: 2006-12-14 CST
CHINA plans to spend one trillion yuan (US$128 billion) through 2020 to develop its coal-to-liquid-fuel and chemical industry as it works to reduce reliance on oil imports and cut pollution. The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top industrial policy planner, said on Wednesday that it has mostly completed an opinion-gathering process for a long-term industry blueprint that will be sent soon to authorities for approval. The Shanghai Securities News said yesterday the total proposed budget for the 2006-2020 period is more than one trillion yuan, half of which will be used for equipment supply and 10 percent for technological knowhow. The country plans to increase annual capacity for turning coal into liquid fuel from a very small amount now to 1.5 million metric tons by 2010, 10 million tons by 2015 and 30 million tons by 2020. As a result, the fuel could make up four percent of the country's total refined oil products by 2015 and 10 percent by 2020. China also wants to build the capacity for making dimethyl ether to five million tons, 12 million tons and 20 million tons by 2010, 2015 and 2020. DME, produced from methanol made by gasifying coal, is a clean-burning fuel alternative that can be blended with other fuels. On the other hand, the government plans to add only limited production capacity for traditional coal-to-chemical products such as coke and fertilizer. "China is rich in coal, but the coal conversion industry could be hurt by risks such as falling crude prices, rising coal costs and environmental protection issues," said China Jianyin Investment Securities analyst Ye Zhijun. Building a DME plant, for example, will cost much more than a crude oil refinery with comparable capacity, and the DME production process also consumes more water, industry analysts pointed out. To avoid investment in uneconomic projects, the government has said it will approve only new coal-to-chemicals plants that meet specified production capacities.
Copyright © 2001-2005 Shanghai Daily Company
Shenhua approval
2006-12-16
SHENHUA Group Corp, China's biggest coal company, and partner Shanghai Huayi Group have won state approval to build a 12 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) plant that will convert coal into chemicals to tap rising demand. The plant in Baotou, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is designed to produce 1.8 million metric tons a year of methanol and convert 600,000 tons a year into aromatics, the National Development and Reform Commission said yesterday.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/12/16/300009/Shenhua_approval.htm
Dear Texas! The eyes of America are upon you
Milam County residents believe coal-fired power plants will be beneficial Watch Video
Updated: Dec 14, 2006 7:12pm
Proposed coal-fired power plants in McLennan and Robertson counties have been hotly debated issues recently.
Some supporters said the extra energy is needed, while critics argue pollution from the plants hurts the environment.
However, some people in Milam County believe a proposed T.X.U. plant there could mean a big economic boost.
T.X.U. wants to put a second power plant at the Alcoa Rockdale operations site.
Right now, plans are on hold until the federal courts give the go ahead for T.X.U. to use Alcoa’s existing air quality permit.
Several businesses in the Milam county town of Rockdale, said the proposed 600 megawatt facility, named Sandow 5, could generate more money for the local economy.
Denice Doss with the Rockdale Chamber said, "Anytime we can get more sales tax that means improvements will be made in town. And also for each business case by case, that's going to be a good thing.”
T.X.U. estimates an additional economic impact of $299 million annually for Milam County.
If the Sandow 5 facility is fully functional, T.X.U. estimates 750 more people will be employed.
Patsy Rogers, owner of the Kountry Inn Restaurant, said if those jobs are filled, more of the restaurant’s seats will be filled as well.
Rogers expects sales to double if the new unit is built, "Hopefully they'll do whatever they have to do out there, the plant will be here, and it will secure our jobs and theirs out there."
"That’s going to be such a boom for Rockdale for the next two to three years and that's very exciting. Any person in the business area will be excited about that."
A hearing to decide the future of the proposed Sandow 5 unit is set for February 2, 2007 in Austin.
If approved, T.X.U. plans to finish the plant by August 31st, 2009.
Updated: Dec 14, 2006 7:12pm
Proposed coal-fired power plants in McLennan and Robertson counties have been hotly debated issues recently.
Some supporters said the extra energy is needed, while critics argue pollution from the plants hurts the environment.
However, some people in Milam County believe a proposed T.X.U. plant there could mean a big economic boost.
T.X.U. wants to put a second power plant at the Alcoa Rockdale operations site.
Right now, plans are on hold until the federal courts give the go ahead for T.X.U. to use Alcoa’s existing air quality permit.
Several businesses in the Milam county town of Rockdale, said the proposed 600 megawatt facility, named Sandow 5, could generate more money for the local economy.
Denice Doss with the Rockdale Chamber said, "Anytime we can get more sales tax that means improvements will be made in town. And also for each business case by case, that's going to be a good thing.”
T.X.U. estimates an additional economic impact of $299 million annually for Milam County.
If the Sandow 5 facility is fully functional, T.X.U. estimates 750 more people will be employed.
Patsy Rogers, owner of the Kountry Inn Restaurant, said if those jobs are filled, more of the restaurant’s seats will be filled as well.
Rogers expects sales to double if the new unit is built, "Hopefully they'll do whatever they have to do out there, the plant will be here, and it will secure our jobs and theirs out there."
"That’s going to be such a boom for Rockdale for the next two to three years and that's very exciting. Any person in the business area will be excited about that."
A hearing to decide the future of the proposed Sandow 5 unit is set for February 2, 2007 in Austin.
If approved, T.X.U. plans to finish the plant by August 31st, 2009.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Get the mercury out of here!
Illinois Coal Plants Have to Clean Up Its Coal Burning of Mercury
WTOW T V-news
( Air Date: 12/13/2006 )
Coal burning power plants in Illinois are going to have to become very clean very quickly. A legislative panel has okayed new rules requiring a 90% cut in mercury emissions in three years. Governor Rod Blagojevich pushed the plan as part of his clean air initiative. His office blames mercury emissions from coal burning power plants for warnings about fish and other seafood. Most coal fired power plants in the state will have to either shut down or install million dollar-plus scrubbers to their smokestacks to comply with the new rules. Illinois` 90% mercury rules are now the toughest in the nation, even tougher than federal clean air standards.
WTOW T V-news
( Air Date: 12/13/2006 )
Coal burning power plants in Illinois are going to have to become very clean very quickly. A legislative panel has okayed new rules requiring a 90% cut in mercury emissions in three years. Governor Rod Blagojevich pushed the plan as part of his clean air initiative. His office blames mercury emissions from coal burning power plants for warnings about fish and other seafood. Most coal fired power plants in the state will have to either shut down or install million dollar-plus scrubbers to their smokestacks to comply with the new rules. Illinois` 90% mercury rules are now the toughest in the nation, even tougher than federal clean air standards.
Nuclear ?
Power company considers another nuclear plant on Gulf Coast
The Associated PressDecember 13, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG · Progress Energy Florida may build a nuclear power plant on the Gulf Coast a few miles north of its Crystal River plant, the company said Tuesday.Progress, the state's second-largest electric company, said last year that it is considering building another nuclear plant to meet Florida's growing power needs.Company officials said in a statement released Tuesday that the decision to move forward with the plant hasn't been finalized but that if the company decides to build, it would use a site in Levy County. The location is about seven miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico and eight miles north of the company's Crystal River nuclear and coal-fueled power plants.Progress serves more than 1.6 million Florida customers, mostly in the St. Petersburg area and the Orlando suburbs.Progress CEO Jeff Lyash said the final decision wouldn't be made for at least a year, but said that the company expects demand in its service area to grow by more than 25 percent over the next 10 years.The state's largest electric company, Florida Power & Light Co., has notified government regulators of its intent to build another nuclear plant.A new plant would be the first in Florida since 1983, when FPL opened a second reactor at its St. Lucie nuclear complex near Fort Pierce.
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
The Associated PressDecember 13, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG · Progress Energy Florida may build a nuclear power plant on the Gulf Coast a few miles north of its Crystal River plant, the company said Tuesday.Progress, the state's second-largest electric company, said last year that it is considering building another nuclear plant to meet Florida's growing power needs.Company officials said in a statement released Tuesday that the decision to move forward with the plant hasn't been finalized but that if the company decides to build, it would use a site in Levy County. The location is about seven miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico and eight miles north of the company's Crystal River nuclear and coal-fueled power plants.Progress serves more than 1.6 million Florida customers, mostly in the St. Petersburg area and the Orlando suburbs.Progress CEO Jeff Lyash said the final decision wouldn't be made for at least a year, but said that the company expects demand in its service area to grow by more than 25 percent over the next 10 years.The state's largest electric company, Florida Power & Light Co., has notified government regulators of its intent to build another nuclear plant.A new plant would be the first in Florida since 1983, when FPL opened a second reactor at its St. Lucie nuclear complex near Fort Pierce.
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
How wacky do you have to be to get elected in California? Pretty wacky I would say.
L.A. to pay $28 million to settle port suit
Dec 14, 2006
Los Angeles Times
Patrick McGreevy
The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $27.7 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the city of improperly blocking expansion and changes in the site of a now-defunct petroleum coke operation at the port.
In addition, the council agreed to waive $46 million in rent it said was overdue from two firms that had sued the city in a dispute over the site on Terminal Island.
Oxbow Carbon & Mineral Inc. and Los Angeles Export Terminal Inc. had filed $400 million in legal claims against the city, alleging city officials, led by Councilwoman Janice Hahn, had unfairly blocked proposals for alternative uses of the site when the market for coal exports soured.
As part of the settlement, the operator agreed to relinquish a permit and lease that had given it control of the 117-acre, city-owned site until 2032.
The settlement is one of several controversial deals the council has approved in recent months, but is by no means the largest.
Councilman Tony Cardenas said the deal will allow the city to put the site to a profitable use, eventually recovering the settlement cost.
"On the surface it sounds like it's a bad deal, but when you think about it -- for that particular piece of land we could be getting $20 million per year or more," Cardenas said.
Harbor-area activists were disappointed that so much public money was being spent to get the city out of what was a controversial and troubled deal from the beginning.
"The port has proven that it consistently gets in these kinds of messes and takes actions that are not very bright," said Janet Schaaf-Gunter, treasurer of the San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners Coalition. "I just hate to see our money being spent like this."
The Port of Los Angeles has had a 13% interest in Los Angeles Export Terminal Inc., which was created in 1993 by the Harbor Department and 36 U.S. and Japanese coal, energy and shipping companies to establish a coal and petroleum-coke export operation.
When the market for coal soured, the other shareholders sought permission to use part of the property to import crude oil, liquid natural gas and other energy products, but alleged that the city refused to consider the proposals.
Gerald Swan, president and chief executive of Los Angeles Export Terminals Inc., said the firm had invested in developing the site and had a legitimate claim. He noted that the costly dispute had dragged out in court for more than a year.
"We are satisfied with the settlement," said Swan, who, Hahn noted, is a former assistant city attorney who helped negotiate creation of the partnership.
In voting 10 to 0 to approve the settlement, without public debate, council members said the money would come from Harbor Department funds provided by fees and leases.
The claims filed against the city alleged that Hahn led efforts to close the terminal and block alternative proposals while receiving $8,000 in political contributions from executives and advisors of a firm that operated a competing terminal.
The terminal operator also suggested that former Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. had violated city ethics laws by lobbying the city for the competing terminal after voting a dozen times on Los Angeles Export Terminal matters.
The Ethics Commission has not filed complaints against Hahn or Svorinich in the two years since the allegations were made, and neither side in the lawsuit admitted wrongdoing.
Hahn, who represents the harbor area, called the assertions that she was influenced by political contributions "ridiculous," adding that she had been intent from before she took office to get rid of the operation, which she deemed a nuisance.
"This is good for the city because it gets rid of a polluting business and returns 117 acres to the port so it can turn it into better use," Hahn said.
As part of the settlement, the terminal firm agreed to provide "limited environmental remediation" of the site, which has significant potential contamination because of its use for coal storage.
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com
Settlements
The $27.7-million payment approved by the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday to settle a lawsuit with Los Angeles Export Terminal Inc. is not the largest for the city. Other sizable settlements include:
* 1999: $39 million to settle with police officers who accused the city of not properly compensating them for overtime work.
* 2000: $19 million to Carol Adkins, a Florida woman severely disabled in a traffic accident involving a city truck driver.
* 2000: $15 million to Javier Francisco Ovando in connection with police misconduct during the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division scandal.
* 2003: $60 million to mitigate air pollution at the Port of Los Angeles, an agreement reached with environmental and community groups
Regulators move to curb coal plants Rules could ban state utilities from buying their electricity
Dec 14, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
David R. Baker
California utilities would be prohibited from buying electricity from most coal-burning power plants in neighboring states under far-reaching regulations proposed by state energy regulators Wednesday.
The rules, which would impose one of California's landmark laws to curb global warming, also would limit the amount of carbon dioxide new power plants in the state could emit. Most climate scientists blame the gas for raising temperatures around the globe.
The rules proposed by the California Public Utilities Commission could have profound long-term implications.
Coal is cheap and abundant. But it produces significantly more carbon dioxide when burned than does natural gas, which fuels most California power plants.
Almost no power plants in California burn coal. But the state imports energy from coal plants located elsewhere. That power accounts for about 20 percent of California's electricity supply. And more coal plants have been proposed throughout the West, some of them designed to ship their electricity to California.
The new rules are intended as a stop-gap measure to prevent a rash of coal plant development before California adopts specific limits on statewide greenhouse gas emissions, possibly by 2010.
Under the rules, the state's investor-owned utilities would not be allowed to buy power from any source that spews more carbon dioxide than does a modern natural gas power plant. Specifically, the source could not emit more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt hour of electricity produced. That's enough energy to light 750 homes for one hour.
"This is really aimed at encouraging new investment, new generation and new power contracts to be clean," said Julie Fitch, director of strategic planning for the utilities commission.
The rules would follow a state law passed earlier this year designed to make sure that California's crackdown on greenhouse gases doesn't foul the air in neighboring states.
As California prepares to limit carbon dioxide emissions within its borders, legislators feared that utilities might rely more on out-of-state generators, many of them using coal.
"We didn't want to have a situation where people had an incentive to sign up dirty resources right now to get in under the wire," Fitch said.
The commission is scheduled to vote on the rules in January. If approved, the regulations would take effect immediately. Existing power-supply contracts would not be affected. Nor would existing power plants within the state.
The commission's rules will not apply to municipal utilities, including those that serve Los Angeles and Sacramento. A separate government agency, the California Energy Commission, is drafting similar rules for municipal utilities.
The financial impact, at least at first, will probably be limited.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co., for example, gets about 2 percent of its power from coal, said spokesman Jon Tremayne. That electricity, however, comes from long-range contracts signed by the state's Department of Water Resources. The utility, which serves most of Northern and Central California, does not contract directly with any coal-fired plants, Tremayne said.
PG&E spokeswoman Darlene Chiu said the utility's executives had not yet seen the proposed regulations and could not comment on them. She noted, however, that the company supported the legislation behind the new rules.
Southern California municipal utilities have been far more dependent on coal than the rest of the state. But, as a result of the new law, several municipal utilities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, recently decided not to renew their contracts with a major coal-fired plant in Utah.
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
Dec 14, 2006
Los Angeles Times
Patrick McGreevy
The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $27.7 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the city of improperly blocking expansion and changes in the site of a now-defunct petroleum coke operation at the port.
In addition, the council agreed to waive $46 million in rent it said was overdue from two firms that had sued the city in a dispute over the site on Terminal Island.
Oxbow Carbon & Mineral Inc. and Los Angeles Export Terminal Inc. had filed $400 million in legal claims against the city, alleging city officials, led by Councilwoman Janice Hahn, had unfairly blocked proposals for alternative uses of the site when the market for coal exports soured.
As part of the settlement, the operator agreed to relinquish a permit and lease that had given it control of the 117-acre, city-owned site until 2032.
The settlement is one of several controversial deals the council has approved in recent months, but is by no means the largest.
Councilman Tony Cardenas said the deal will allow the city to put the site to a profitable use, eventually recovering the settlement cost.
"On the surface it sounds like it's a bad deal, but when you think about it -- for that particular piece of land we could be getting $20 million per year or more," Cardenas said.
Harbor-area activists were disappointed that so much public money was being spent to get the city out of what was a controversial and troubled deal from the beginning.
"The port has proven that it consistently gets in these kinds of messes and takes actions that are not very bright," said Janet Schaaf-Gunter, treasurer of the San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners Coalition. "I just hate to see our money being spent like this."
The Port of Los Angeles has had a 13% interest in Los Angeles Export Terminal Inc., which was created in 1993 by the Harbor Department and 36 U.S. and Japanese coal, energy and shipping companies to establish a coal and petroleum-coke export operation.
When the market for coal soured, the other shareholders sought permission to use part of the property to import crude oil, liquid natural gas and other energy products, but alleged that the city refused to consider the proposals.
Gerald Swan, president and chief executive of Los Angeles Export Terminals Inc., said the firm had invested in developing the site and had a legitimate claim. He noted that the costly dispute had dragged out in court for more than a year.
"We are satisfied with the settlement," said Swan, who, Hahn noted, is a former assistant city attorney who helped negotiate creation of the partnership.
In voting 10 to 0 to approve the settlement, without public debate, council members said the money would come from Harbor Department funds provided by fees and leases.
The claims filed against the city alleged that Hahn led efforts to close the terminal and block alternative proposals while receiving $8,000 in political contributions from executives and advisors of a firm that operated a competing terminal.
The terminal operator also suggested that former Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. had violated city ethics laws by lobbying the city for the competing terminal after voting a dozen times on Los Angeles Export Terminal matters.
The Ethics Commission has not filed complaints against Hahn or Svorinich in the two years since the allegations were made, and neither side in the lawsuit admitted wrongdoing.
Hahn, who represents the harbor area, called the assertions that she was influenced by political contributions "ridiculous," adding that she had been intent from before she took office to get rid of the operation, which she deemed a nuisance.
"This is good for the city because it gets rid of a polluting business and returns 117 acres to the port so it can turn it into better use," Hahn said.
As part of the settlement, the terminal firm agreed to provide "limited environmental remediation" of the site, which has significant potential contamination because of its use for coal storage.
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com
Settlements
The $27.7-million payment approved by the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday to settle a lawsuit with Los Angeles Export Terminal Inc. is not the largest for the city. Other sizable settlements include:
* 1999: $39 million to settle with police officers who accused the city of not properly compensating them for overtime work.
* 2000: $19 million to Carol Adkins, a Florida woman severely disabled in a traffic accident involving a city truck driver.
* 2000: $15 million to Javier Francisco Ovando in connection with police misconduct during the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division scandal.
* 2003: $60 million to mitigate air pollution at the Port of Los Angeles, an agreement reached with environmental and community groups
Regulators move to curb coal plants Rules could ban state utilities from buying their electricity
Dec 14, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
David R. Baker
California utilities would be prohibited from buying electricity from most coal-burning power plants in neighboring states under far-reaching regulations proposed by state energy regulators Wednesday.
The rules, which would impose one of California's landmark laws to curb global warming, also would limit the amount of carbon dioxide new power plants in the state could emit. Most climate scientists blame the gas for raising temperatures around the globe.
The rules proposed by the California Public Utilities Commission could have profound long-term implications.
Coal is cheap and abundant. But it produces significantly more carbon dioxide when burned than does natural gas, which fuels most California power plants.
Almost no power plants in California burn coal. But the state imports energy from coal plants located elsewhere. That power accounts for about 20 percent of California's electricity supply. And more coal plants have been proposed throughout the West, some of them designed to ship their electricity to California.
The new rules are intended as a stop-gap measure to prevent a rash of coal plant development before California adopts specific limits on statewide greenhouse gas emissions, possibly by 2010.
Under the rules, the state's investor-owned utilities would not be allowed to buy power from any source that spews more carbon dioxide than does a modern natural gas power plant. Specifically, the source could not emit more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt hour of electricity produced. That's enough energy to light 750 homes for one hour.
"This is really aimed at encouraging new investment, new generation and new power contracts to be clean," said Julie Fitch, director of strategic planning for the utilities commission.
The rules would follow a state law passed earlier this year designed to make sure that California's crackdown on greenhouse gases doesn't foul the air in neighboring states.
As California prepares to limit carbon dioxide emissions within its borders, legislators feared that utilities might rely more on out-of-state generators, many of them using coal.
"We didn't want to have a situation where people had an incentive to sign up dirty resources right now to get in under the wire," Fitch said.
The commission is scheduled to vote on the rules in January. If approved, the regulations would take effect immediately. Existing power-supply contracts would not be affected. Nor would existing power plants within the state.
The commission's rules will not apply to municipal utilities, including those that serve Los Angeles and Sacramento. A separate government agency, the California Energy Commission, is drafting similar rules for municipal utilities.
The financial impact, at least at first, will probably be limited.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co., for example, gets about 2 percent of its power from coal, said spokesman Jon Tremayne. That electricity, however, comes from long-range contracts signed by the state's Department of Water Resources. The utility, which serves most of Northern and Central California, does not contract directly with any coal-fired plants, Tremayne said.
PG&E spokeswoman Darlene Chiu said the utility's executives had not yet seen the proposed regulations and could not comment on them. She noted, however, that the company supported the legislation behind the new rules.
Southern California municipal utilities have been far more dependent on coal than the rest of the state. But, as a result of the new law, several municipal utilities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, recently decided not to renew their contracts with a major coal-fired plant in Utah.
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
Letters to the WSJ and freedom of the press! Ayn Rand where are you?
More Atlas Shrugged ????
"ATLAS SHRUGGED" author Ayn Rand who also wrote "THE FOUNTAINHEAD" would love these letters.
Are the wheels falling off the warming wagon??? Just let someone go 2 days without electric power because of brown outs and power shortages and see how long the elected Senators and House members of Congress stay in office past the next election date? I really suggest you read Atlas Shrugged. Ayn is up there somewhere right now laughing her wings off. May her words last forever. Let freedom ring.
Senators' 'Chill Out' Letter to Exxon Creates a Heated Reaction December 13, 2006; Page A19
Dec 13, 2006
From the: Wall Street Journal, Print Edition
In regard to your Dec. 4 editorial "Global Warming Gag Order":
Sens. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D., W.Va.) are threatening Exxon Mobil with congressional censure if it keeps encouraging the scientific skeptics who doubt that humans caused the earth's recent warming trend.
But more than 70% of the warming observed since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. The senators are apparently unaware of the broad and impressive evidence from hundreds of recent scientific studies that document a better explanation for the modern warming -- a moderate, natural 1,500-year global climate cycle.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming had already been created when researchers retrieved the first long ice cores from Greenland and Antarctic in the 1980s. The ice cores revealed 400,000 years of the planet's temperature history -- and a 1,500-year cycle that was too long and moderate to be discerned by Celtic tribes or Viking seamen. Physical evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle has also been found by more than 100 recent peer-reviewed studies by leading research institutes -- in the bottom sediments of six oceans and hundreds of lakes, in ancient relict tree rings from around the northern hemisphere, and in the cave stalagmites and glacier movements of every continent plus New Zealand. The North American Pollen Data Base shows nine complete reorganizations of our trees and plants in the past 14,000 years, or one every 1,650 years.
Science outranks senators. Galileo was a consensus of one.
Dennis T. Avery
S. Fred Singer
Arlington, Va.
Regarding your lead editorial about the letter to Exxon Mobil regarding global warming's "obvious" consequences, I suggest citing the article by Kenneth Green on page 94 in the November/December 2006 issue of The American magazine. It addresses our current knowledge about the 12 significant phenonmena identified by the U.N. Climate Panel in 2000. Of the 12 we have significant knowledge on only one. We have little or no scientific knowledge on the other 11. But on that basis we are expected to subscribe to half-baked global warming "solutions" such as the Kyoto Protocol, which promises a fraction of a degree atmospheric temperature reduction half a century in the future at the cost of perhaps a 30% reduction in current national GNP.
While we should continue to define the problem, if it exists, solutions are still sometime in the future, if they are ever needed.
Bill Allen Sr.
Placentia, Calif.
(Messrs. Avery and Singer co-authored "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.)
Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe defied every tenet of democracy when they suggested in an open letter to Exxon Mobil that it should refrain from exercising its right of free speech in supporting scientists who dare to question how much the increase in atmospheric CO2 may warm the world. The disastrous duo should withdraw their letter and apologize to Exxon Mobil. The senators say climate change is "a matter of urgency for all mankind." It is not. The U.N. is about to cut its high-end estimate of sea-level rise ino 2100 from three feet to just 17 inches. The panic is over. The senators are jumping on the climate-change bandwagon just as the wheels are falling off.
The U.K. foreign secretary recently said climate skeptics were like supporters of Islamic terror and should be denied access to the media. After a decade of socialism, freedom of speech does not figure in the U.K. constitution. But let me cite the First Amendment to yours:
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I call upon the two senators to live by those noble words.
Christopher Monckton
London
(Lord Monckton was science and technical adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.)
"ATLAS SHRUGGED" author Ayn Rand who also wrote "THE FOUNTAINHEAD" would love these letters.
Are the wheels falling off the warming wagon??? Just let someone go 2 days without electric power because of brown outs and power shortages and see how long the elected Senators and House members of Congress stay in office past the next election date? I really suggest you read Atlas Shrugged. Ayn is up there somewhere right now laughing her wings off. May her words last forever. Let freedom ring.
Senators' 'Chill Out' Letter to Exxon Creates a Heated Reaction December 13, 2006; Page A19
Dec 13, 2006
From the: Wall Street Journal, Print Edition
In regard to your Dec. 4 editorial "Global Warming Gag Order":
Sens. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D., W.Va.) are threatening Exxon Mobil with congressional censure if it keeps encouraging the scientific skeptics who doubt that humans caused the earth's recent warming trend.
But more than 70% of the warming observed since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. The senators are apparently unaware of the broad and impressive evidence from hundreds of recent scientific studies that document a better explanation for the modern warming -- a moderate, natural 1,500-year global climate cycle.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming had already been created when researchers retrieved the first long ice cores from Greenland and Antarctic in the 1980s. The ice cores revealed 400,000 years of the planet's temperature history -- and a 1,500-year cycle that was too long and moderate to be discerned by Celtic tribes or Viking seamen. Physical evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle has also been found by more than 100 recent peer-reviewed studies by leading research institutes -- in the bottom sediments of six oceans and hundreds of lakes, in ancient relict tree rings from around the northern hemisphere, and in the cave stalagmites and glacier movements of every continent plus New Zealand. The North American Pollen Data Base shows nine complete reorganizations of our trees and plants in the past 14,000 years, or one every 1,650 years.
Science outranks senators. Galileo was a consensus of one.
Dennis T. Avery
S. Fred Singer
Arlington, Va.
Regarding your lead editorial about the letter to Exxon Mobil regarding global warming's "obvious" consequences, I suggest citing the article by Kenneth Green on page 94 in the November/December 2006 issue of The American magazine. It addresses our current knowledge about the 12 significant phenonmena identified by the U.N. Climate Panel in 2000. Of the 12 we have significant knowledge on only one. We have little or no scientific knowledge on the other 11. But on that basis we are expected to subscribe to half-baked global warming "solutions" such as the Kyoto Protocol, which promises a fraction of a degree atmospheric temperature reduction half a century in the future at the cost of perhaps a 30% reduction in current national GNP.
While we should continue to define the problem, if it exists, solutions are still sometime in the future, if they are ever needed.
Bill Allen Sr.
Placentia, Calif.
(Messrs. Avery and Singer co-authored "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.)
Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe defied every tenet of democracy when they suggested in an open letter to Exxon Mobil that it should refrain from exercising its right of free speech in supporting scientists who dare to question how much the increase in atmospheric CO2 may warm the world. The disastrous duo should withdraw their letter and apologize to Exxon Mobil. The senators say climate change is "a matter of urgency for all mankind." It is not. The U.N. is about to cut its high-end estimate of sea-level rise ino 2100 from three feet to just 17 inches. The panic is over. The senators are jumping on the climate-change bandwagon just as the wheels are falling off.
The U.K. foreign secretary recently said climate skeptics were like supporters of Islamic terror and should be denied access to the media. After a decade of socialism, freedom of speech does not figure in the U.K. constitution. But let me cite the First Amendment to yours:
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I call upon the two senators to live by those noble words.
Christopher Monckton
London
(Lord Monckton was science and technical adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.)
What some big money is doing!
Kleiner's Green Investment Machine
Dec 14, 2006
Wall Street Journal, Print Edition
JIM CARLTON
Why the Fledgling Clean-Tech Industry Is Gaining
Interest Among Venture-Capital Firms
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers rose to fame by backing high-tech success stories like Google, Amazon and Netscape. Now, the Silicon Valley venture-capital giant is hoping to cash in on another trend: The demand for renewable energy and other clean-tech ventures.
After dabbling in green investments beginning five years ago, Kleiner in April set aside $100 million for clean-tech start-ups, and has increased that amount since with total backing of 14 clean tech ventures.
Kleiner isn't alone. Clean-tech investments world-wide soared 51% in the first three quarters this year to $761.4 million from $504.1 million at the same period last year, according to an analysis by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young.
But Kleiner has taken a particularly prominent role in the fledgling industry. Last week, it hosted the second Greentech Innovation Network conference in Berkeley, Calif., where former Vice President Al Gore -- who has crusaded against global warming -- addressed Silicon Valley executives about environmental issues.
In an interview afterward, two Kleiner partners -- former Intel Corp. salesman John Doerr and Ray Lane, former president and chief operating officer of Oracle Corp. -- said clean tech represents fully half the firm's investments excluding special funds, and its participation will only continue to grow. Some excerpts:
WSJ: Why is there so much interest in clean tech now?
Mr. Lane: We have always said that we do well by focusing on sectors, not companies. So when we saw changes happening in the semiconductor and microprocessor industry, and when we saw changes happening around the Internet, [we knew] these were major sectoral changes that occurred that would essentially displace the economics that were in place at the time.
The Internet is an example. Billions were made, billions were lost. You take that cataclysmic change that occurred over the last 10 years and you say, 'This looks like it could occur in energy.' Now we are dealing not with a sector of billions, but we're dealing with a sector of trillions. The venture business does well if it gets involved early because we're willing to take the risk.
It's a natural thing for Silicon Valley. We like very large markets. It doesn't make sense to go into small markets. It is huge sectoral change in one of the biggest industries on Earth, if not the biggest, and then it's being driven by technology, hot technology change.
WSJ: Does this look to be bigger than the Internet or as big?
Mr. Lane: This is bigger than the Internet, I think by an order of magnitude. Maybe two. I'm taking the entire energy industry. You can boil it down to two simple contributors.
One is transportation fuels. Transportation fuels represent a fairly low amount of use of oil...but a huge amount of the emission problems. And the other is electricity generation.
In one market -- which is basically oil refined for use in transportation and then the emission problems that occur -- we also have a national security issue in that we do not control the price of oil. In coal, we're the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have lots of it, but if we could find a way to use coal -- gasify it, sequester the CO2 from it -- that is a huge answer.
The risk capital is here to basically put large amounts of money [into renewable-energy start-ups]. What's different for us is this is a lot of money. Normally you start a software company on $20 million. [But] starting up a lot of these companies is hundreds of millions of dollars to get them to scale.
WSJ: As of last spring, Kleiner said it planned to set aside $100 million for clean-tech investments. Where does that stand now?
Mr. Lane: We've doubled it. The way we think of it half of our resources [mainstream investments, not including special funds] are going to green tech right now. You have some [Kleiner] partners that are spending part time [on clean tech], others are spending full time on it.
Mr. Doerr: For example, Bill Joy [who co-founded Sun Microsystems Inc., and recently joined Kleiner as a partner].... When he joined us, everybody thought he would be doing new architectures in chips and software. He's not. He's working on green sustainable innovations.
We have been at this as a partnership for over five years now in investing in innovations in clean water, clean power and clean transportation... This is very, very important to Kleiner.
WSJ: What is the single most attractive area to you for VC investment? Would it be solar, biofuels or what?
Mr. Lane: It's hard to pick one. I'll tell you what we've done and that will give you an indication. We have done three solar investments. We've done three or four biofuels investments. We've done one in biomass gasification, which is coal gasification to make natural gas. We have done three storage, which is batteries, essentially. We haven't done anything in wind, and we want to. And we haven't done anything in geothermal. We want to.
WSJ: You guys have had a lot of successes, but also failures. Is it possible the [clean tech] craze could implode at some point and people lose a lot of money?
Mr. Lane: We are going to see tremendous demands [for more energy] placed by growing, emerging economies like China and India and others as well as continued growth in the United States. So the energy demand will not go away. So we think this is permanent. But I call it risk capital, and it has risks. We've got to be smarter than the next guy down the street on what money we put into.
Mr. Doerr: A fair question is, why now, what's changed and then why Silicon Valley? Bill Joy helped in my reasoning about this when he identified the three structural changes that make it [clean tech] different now compared to four or five years ago.
First, is price at the pump. The second is advances in the small, in the nanosciences. I think it's fair to say every one of the green innovations we have made investments in involves some change at the material, physical level in the product or service that wouldn't have been possible or economic five years ago.
And the third point -- and this is often missed -- is what has happened because of Moore's Law [the axiom by Intel Corp. cofounder Gordon Moore that microchips double in capacity every two years. Clean tech scientists] don't have to discover a new process. They can in fact design them. They have supercomputers on their desktops or next to their desks.
WSJ: Where do you see your level of clean tech investing five years from now?
Mr. Doerr: I think it will stay at this level, but I am notoriously bad for forecasts, on the upside or downside.
Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com
Dec 14, 2006
Wall Street Journal, Print Edition
JIM CARLTON
Why the Fledgling Clean-Tech Industry Is Gaining
Interest Among Venture-Capital Firms
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers rose to fame by backing high-tech success stories like Google, Amazon and Netscape. Now, the Silicon Valley venture-capital giant is hoping to cash in on another trend: The demand for renewable energy and other clean-tech ventures.
After dabbling in green investments beginning five years ago, Kleiner in April set aside $100 million for clean-tech start-ups, and has increased that amount since with total backing of 14 clean tech ventures.
Kleiner isn't alone. Clean-tech investments world-wide soared 51% in the first three quarters this year to $761.4 million from $504.1 million at the same period last year, according to an analysis by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young.
But Kleiner has taken a particularly prominent role in the fledgling industry. Last week, it hosted the second Greentech Innovation Network conference in Berkeley, Calif., where former Vice President Al Gore -- who has crusaded against global warming -- addressed Silicon Valley executives about environmental issues.
In an interview afterward, two Kleiner partners -- former Intel Corp. salesman John Doerr and Ray Lane, former president and chief operating officer of Oracle Corp. -- said clean tech represents fully half the firm's investments excluding special funds, and its participation will only continue to grow. Some excerpts:
WSJ: Why is there so much interest in clean tech now?
Mr. Lane: We have always said that we do well by focusing on sectors, not companies. So when we saw changes happening in the semiconductor and microprocessor industry, and when we saw changes happening around the Internet, [we knew] these were major sectoral changes that occurred that would essentially displace the economics that were in place at the time.
The Internet is an example. Billions were made, billions were lost. You take that cataclysmic change that occurred over the last 10 years and you say, 'This looks like it could occur in energy.' Now we are dealing not with a sector of billions, but we're dealing with a sector of trillions. The venture business does well if it gets involved early because we're willing to take the risk.
It's a natural thing for Silicon Valley. We like very large markets. It doesn't make sense to go into small markets. It is huge sectoral change in one of the biggest industries on Earth, if not the biggest, and then it's being driven by technology, hot technology change.
WSJ: Does this look to be bigger than the Internet or as big?
Mr. Lane: This is bigger than the Internet, I think by an order of magnitude. Maybe two. I'm taking the entire energy industry. You can boil it down to two simple contributors.
One is transportation fuels. Transportation fuels represent a fairly low amount of use of oil...but a huge amount of the emission problems. And the other is electricity generation.
In one market -- which is basically oil refined for use in transportation and then the emission problems that occur -- we also have a national security issue in that we do not control the price of oil. In coal, we're the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have lots of it, but if we could find a way to use coal -- gasify it, sequester the CO2 from it -- that is a huge answer.
The risk capital is here to basically put large amounts of money [into renewable-energy start-ups]. What's different for us is this is a lot of money. Normally you start a software company on $20 million. [But] starting up a lot of these companies is hundreds of millions of dollars to get them to scale.
WSJ: As of last spring, Kleiner said it planned to set aside $100 million for clean-tech investments. Where does that stand now?
Mr. Lane: We've doubled it. The way we think of it half of our resources [mainstream investments, not including special funds] are going to green tech right now. You have some [Kleiner] partners that are spending part time [on clean tech], others are spending full time on it.
Mr. Doerr: For example, Bill Joy [who co-founded Sun Microsystems Inc., and recently joined Kleiner as a partner].... When he joined us, everybody thought he would be doing new architectures in chips and software. He's not. He's working on green sustainable innovations.
We have been at this as a partnership for over five years now in investing in innovations in clean water, clean power and clean transportation... This is very, very important to Kleiner.
WSJ: What is the single most attractive area to you for VC investment? Would it be solar, biofuels or what?
Mr. Lane: It's hard to pick one. I'll tell you what we've done and that will give you an indication. We have done three solar investments. We've done three or four biofuels investments. We've done one in biomass gasification, which is coal gasification to make natural gas. We have done three storage, which is batteries, essentially. We haven't done anything in wind, and we want to. And we haven't done anything in geothermal. We want to.
WSJ: You guys have had a lot of successes, but also failures. Is it possible the [clean tech] craze could implode at some point and people lose a lot of money?
Mr. Lane: We are going to see tremendous demands [for more energy] placed by growing, emerging economies like China and India and others as well as continued growth in the United States. So the energy demand will not go away. So we think this is permanent. But I call it risk capital, and it has risks. We've got to be smarter than the next guy down the street on what money we put into.
Mr. Doerr: A fair question is, why now, what's changed and then why Silicon Valley? Bill Joy helped in my reasoning about this when he identified the three structural changes that make it [clean tech] different now compared to four or five years ago.
First, is price at the pump. The second is advances in the small, in the nanosciences. I think it's fair to say every one of the green innovations we have made investments in involves some change at the material, physical level in the product or service that wouldn't have been possible or economic five years ago.
And the third point -- and this is often missed -- is what has happened because of Moore's Law [the axiom by Intel Corp. cofounder Gordon Moore that microchips double in capacity every two years. Clean tech scientists] don't have to discover a new process. They can in fact design them. They have supercomputers on their desktops or next to their desks.
WSJ: Where do you see your level of clean tech investing five years from now?
Mr. Doerr: I think it will stay at this level, but I am notoriously bad for forecasts, on the upside or downside.
Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Coal and the "New Congress"
Coal production and the new Congress
Not long after Democrats swept into Congress last month, President Bush received a letter from three incoming Senate committee chairs that may one day prove important to people working in Campbell County's coal mines.
“We seek your commitment to work with the new Congress to pass meaningful climate change legislation in 2007,” the trio wrote in a letter dated Nov. 15.
“The U.S. must move quickly to adopt economy-wide constraints on domestic (greenhouse gas) emissions and then work with the international community to forge an effective and equitable global agreement.”
With those words, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Joe Liebermann, I-Conn., struck a much different course than that of their predecessors, particularly James Inhofe, R-Okla., who Boxer will replace on the Environmental and Public Works Committee.
Inhofe has repeatedly denounced global warming as an unproved theory while Boxer has pledged to hold hearings on the subject soon after she takes over the post.
As one Washington, D.C.-based coal lobbyist said last week: “Coal would not have had the resurgence it had over the last six years if (former vice president) Al Gore got elected. We probably would have seen a carbon tax or something like that, I think there's a fair chance you'll see it or see some progress toward it.”
Any greenhouse gas regulation could have potentially severe effects on Wyoming's economy and tax base if it results in reduced coal production, said Arch Coal spokesman Greg Schaefer. But short of raising red flags, he and other industry officials pledged to work with those in office.
“You would anticipate that those senators from coal-producing states would be supportive. The makeup of Congress is what it is,” Schaefer said. “We've worked with a Democratic Congress before.”
Former U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., doesn't expect a drastic policy shift toward regulating greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are produced when fossil fuels burn and contribute to global warming.
“It's interesting, I really don't think the agenda for the coal industry changes with the leadership in Congress,” said Hutchinson, now a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, which owns three Campbell County mines. “If there's any differentiation, it's geographic and not partisan.”
But campaign contributions to congressional candidates suggest otherwise. Sixteen of the top 20 recipients of coal industry campaign contributions during the 2006 race were Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks political donations.
While those contributions made up small portions of their campaign coffers, the top three recipients - Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., George Allen, R-Va., and Jim Talent, R-Mo. - were all beaten in their Senate races. Each were reliable votes against environmental regulations.
Many officials said the November election increased chances for a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system that would set a limit or “cap” on emissions. Such caps could then be met through pollution controls or trading credits that allow polluters to exceed the limits.
Others hope Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat expected to take over the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will blunt efforts to regulate carbon caps in an attempt to shield the auto industry. Still others see support from Senate Democrats in coal-producing states like Illinois, Colorado, West Virginia and Montana.
“Frankly, I think the balance of what we're hearing on feedback is that the Democrats, in an effort to kind of warm up Republicans, would like to move further ahead on energy security than the Republicans on energy security, so that would involve coal if we do that,” Rick Navarre, chief financial officer for Peabody Energy, said during an energy conference in Florida.
Energy security is generally code for coal-to-liquid projects, in which coal is converted to gasoline, and cleaner coal power plants, which have gained support from producers, electric utilities and some environmental groups. There's hope those from coal-producing states will support tax breaks and loans on such projects.
“I'm not sure it's a net win or a net loss. I think some of the knee-jerk reaction that Republicans are good and Democrats are bad is not founded,” said Robert Hickmott, who headed congressional affairs for the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration.
He now lobbies for several utility companies, as well as Rio Tinto Energy America, which operates three Campbell County area mines.
“I think what you're going to see is a lot of oversight and criticism of George Bush and the energy policy because an energy policy has not emerged,” Hickmott said. “What you might see is the beginnings of some voluntary measures and perhaps cap incentives for voluntary compliance.”
Stringent carbon dioxide limits or a mass replacement of coal plants with renewable resources both seem unlikely.
Hutchinson sees another angle.
No matter what Boxer or others might hope to do in Congress, legislation still has to make it across the president's desk and he has stood firm on climate change to this point.
“I think it's really too early to tell,” he said. “The White House has been opposed to a carbon cap-and-trade in the past and there's no reason to think that would change,” Hutchinson said.
“Even the advocates of the cap-and-trade program are saying it's a couple years off. You've got to build a political consensus ... this would be a pretty big change.”
- By PETER GARTRELL, News-Record Writer
Not long after Democrats swept into Congress last month, President Bush received a letter from three incoming Senate committee chairs that may one day prove important to people working in Campbell County's coal mines.
“We seek your commitment to work with the new Congress to pass meaningful climate change legislation in 2007,” the trio wrote in a letter dated Nov. 15.
“The U.S. must move quickly to adopt economy-wide constraints on domestic (greenhouse gas) emissions and then work with the international community to forge an effective and equitable global agreement.”
With those words, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Joe Liebermann, I-Conn., struck a much different course than that of their predecessors, particularly James Inhofe, R-Okla., who Boxer will replace on the Environmental and Public Works Committee.
Inhofe has repeatedly denounced global warming as an unproved theory while Boxer has pledged to hold hearings on the subject soon after she takes over the post.
As one Washington, D.C.-based coal lobbyist said last week: “Coal would not have had the resurgence it had over the last six years if (former vice president) Al Gore got elected. We probably would have seen a carbon tax or something like that, I think there's a fair chance you'll see it or see some progress toward it.”
Any greenhouse gas regulation could have potentially severe effects on Wyoming's economy and tax base if it results in reduced coal production, said Arch Coal spokesman Greg Schaefer. But short of raising red flags, he and other industry officials pledged to work with those in office.
“You would anticipate that those senators from coal-producing states would be supportive. The makeup of Congress is what it is,” Schaefer said. “We've worked with a Democratic Congress before.”
Former U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., doesn't expect a drastic policy shift toward regulating greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are produced when fossil fuels burn and contribute to global warming.
“It's interesting, I really don't think the agenda for the coal industry changes with the leadership in Congress,” said Hutchinson, now a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, which owns three Campbell County mines. “If there's any differentiation, it's geographic and not partisan.”
But campaign contributions to congressional candidates suggest otherwise. Sixteen of the top 20 recipients of coal industry campaign contributions during the 2006 race were Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks political donations.
While those contributions made up small portions of their campaign coffers, the top three recipients - Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., George Allen, R-Va., and Jim Talent, R-Mo. - were all beaten in their Senate races. Each were reliable votes against environmental regulations.
Many officials said the November election increased chances for a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system that would set a limit or “cap” on emissions. Such caps could then be met through pollution controls or trading credits that allow polluters to exceed the limits.
Others hope Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat expected to take over the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will blunt efforts to regulate carbon caps in an attempt to shield the auto industry. Still others see support from Senate Democrats in coal-producing states like Illinois, Colorado, West Virginia and Montana.
“Frankly, I think the balance of what we're hearing on feedback is that the Democrats, in an effort to kind of warm up Republicans, would like to move further ahead on energy security than the Republicans on energy security, so that would involve coal if we do that,” Rick Navarre, chief financial officer for Peabody Energy, said during an energy conference in Florida.
Energy security is generally code for coal-to-liquid projects, in which coal is converted to gasoline, and cleaner coal power plants, which have gained support from producers, electric utilities and some environmental groups. There's hope those from coal-producing states will support tax breaks and loans on such projects.
“I'm not sure it's a net win or a net loss. I think some of the knee-jerk reaction that Republicans are good and Democrats are bad is not founded,” said Robert Hickmott, who headed congressional affairs for the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration.
He now lobbies for several utility companies, as well as Rio Tinto Energy America, which operates three Campbell County area mines.
“I think what you're going to see is a lot of oversight and criticism of George Bush and the energy policy because an energy policy has not emerged,” Hickmott said. “What you might see is the beginnings of some voluntary measures and perhaps cap incentives for voluntary compliance.”
Stringent carbon dioxide limits or a mass replacement of coal plants with renewable resources both seem unlikely.
Hutchinson sees another angle.
No matter what Boxer or others might hope to do in Congress, legislation still has to make it across the president's desk and he has stood firm on climate change to this point.
“I think it's really too early to tell,” he said. “The White House has been opposed to a carbon cap-and-trade in the past and there's no reason to think that would change,” Hutchinson said.
“Even the advocates of the cap-and-trade program are saying it's a couple years off. You've got to build a political consensus ... this would be a pretty big change.”
- By PETER GARTRELL, News-Record Writer
Monday, December 11, 2006
Lighting 5 times stronger than seals prepared for at Sago
Deadly Blast Too Big for Sago Mine Seals
By TIM HUBERThe Associated PressMonday, December 11, 2006; 11:23 AM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The methane gas explosion that led to the deaths of 12 men inside the Sago Mine last January was nearly five times more powerful than the mine's underground seals were able to withstand, a state report says.
The explosion was in an abandoned section of the mine that had been sealed less than a month earlier. The seals were designed by federal standards to withstand forces of 20 pounds per square inch, but state investigators found 10 seals were blown apart by forces at least 95 pounds per square inch.
"At this writing, there is reason to suspect that explosion pressures in excess of 100 psi may have been developed," the state Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training says in the report, obtained by The Associated Press.
Six months after the deadly blast, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration ordered that all seals must now withstand 50 psi _ still less than the force of the Sago blast.
The report was to be released Monday, but in response to requests from the families for additional information, the state postponed a Monday afternoon meeting with the Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety.
The cause of the explosion is clearly related to lightning, the report says, but "how the electricity from the lightning entered the sealed area is still under investigation, and in that regard this report is not complete."
The explosion occurred about 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 2, trapping 13 miners who had gone underground to resume production at the International Coal Group-owned mine after the holiday.
Only one miner survived. One was killed in the explosion and 11 died of carbon monoxide poisoning while awaiting rescue for more than 40 hours.
The report also faulted the emergency air packs miners carry with them, saying the packs "did not perform in the manner expected."
The state investigators suggested more answers might be forthcoming from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. MSHA has hired Sandia National Laboratories to determine if electricity can travel through equipment such as the metal conveyer belt or simply move through solid ground. Test results are expected next year.
© 2006 The Associated Press
By TIM HUBERThe Associated PressMonday, December 11, 2006; 11:23 AM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The methane gas explosion that led to the deaths of 12 men inside the Sago Mine last January was nearly five times more powerful than the mine's underground seals were able to withstand, a state report says.
The explosion was in an abandoned section of the mine that had been sealed less than a month earlier. The seals were designed by federal standards to withstand forces of 20 pounds per square inch, but state investigators found 10 seals were blown apart by forces at least 95 pounds per square inch.
"At this writing, there is reason to suspect that explosion pressures in excess of 100 psi may have been developed," the state Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training says in the report, obtained by The Associated Press.
Six months after the deadly blast, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration ordered that all seals must now withstand 50 psi _ still less than the force of the Sago blast.
The report was to be released Monday, but in response to requests from the families for additional information, the state postponed a Monday afternoon meeting with the Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety.
The cause of the explosion is clearly related to lightning, the report says, but "how the electricity from the lightning entered the sealed area is still under investigation, and in that regard this report is not complete."
The explosion occurred about 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 2, trapping 13 miners who had gone underground to resume production at the International Coal Group-owned mine after the holiday.
Only one miner survived. One was killed in the explosion and 11 died of carbon monoxide poisoning while awaiting rescue for more than 40 hours.
The report also faulted the emergency air packs miners carry with them, saying the packs "did not perform in the manner expected."
The state investigators suggested more answers might be forthcoming from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. MSHA has hired Sandia National Laboratories to determine if electricity can travel through equipment such as the metal conveyer belt or simply move through solid ground. Test results are expected next year.
© 2006 The Associated Press
Killer Cows ?
Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 10 December 2006
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.
The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.
Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.
The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.
The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.
The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.
Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.
The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.
The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 10 December 2006
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.
The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.
Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.
The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.
The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.
Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.
A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.
The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.
Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.
The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.
The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.
Climate McCartyism Eco -Inquisitions
Climate McCarthyism and Eco-Inquisitions Censoring news and views to advance ideologies and legislation (Townhall.com)
By Paul DriessenSunday, December 10, 2006
Two centuries years ago, Voltaire proclaimed, “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today, our free speech traditions are under assault.
Colleges prohibit “offensive” or “politically incorrect” speech. Radical Islamists threaten to kill scholars, artists and even popes who “disrespect” the Prophet. And when we desperately need unfettered scientific debate, intolerant eco-activists have ushered in an era of climate McCarthyism and eco-Inquisitions.
Al Gore wants to muzzle anyone who raises inconvenient truths about climate alarmism. Greenpeace wants “climate criminals” pilloried and silenced. Grist magazine wants “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials” for climate disaster skeptics, followed by hanging, one assumes, since burning at the stake would release greenhouse gases.
Climate catastrophist Ross Gelbspan told a DC audience: “Not only do journalists not have a responsibility to report what skeptical scientists have to say about global warming. They have a responsibility NOT to report what those scientists say.” Reuters, Time, 60 Minutes and the Discovery Channel appear to have taken his views to heart. UK alarmist George Monbiot says the airlines contribute to climate change – so “every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.”
During a congressional hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer treated physician-scientist-author Michael Crichton like a child molester, for suggesting that claims about climate chaos should be reviewed by double-blind studies and evidentiary standards akin to what FDA uses for new drugs. And on October 27, Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller issued what the Wall Street Journal aptly called a “gag order” against ExxonMobil. “Its message: Start toeing the Senators’ line on climate change, or else,” said the Journal.
The Catholic Church’s dogmatic Earth-centered-universe theology has been replaced by an equally intolerant Church of Gaia catechism of cataclysm. But the problem goes well beyond that, well beyond constitutional rights and traditions of open, robust debate being trampled by newspapers and politicians duty-bound to uphold them.
It is, above all, an unprecedented power grab by activists, politicians and bureaucrats who want to be the final arbiters of every energy and economic decision.
Yes, Earth’s climate is changing – again, though far less than it has repeatedly throughout our planet’s history. Yes, people are influencing our weather and climate – to some degree. But few scientists have joined astronomer James Hansen in saying that humans have replaced the sun and other natural forces as the primary cause, Climate Armageddon is nigh, and drastic action must be taken immediately.
Cataclysm theorists point to computer models. But models are not evidence. Neither are headlines, hype or Hollywood special effects – nor incessant claims that every storm, drought, heat wave or cold snap is due to fossil fuels. Moreover, even perfect compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would do virtually nothing to stop hypothetical human-induced climate change. And the true costs of imposing Draconian measures would be astronomical.
Carbon taxes, carbon caps, greenhouse gas targets and timetables would send already high energy prices into the stratosphere, raise the cost of every consumer product and service, reduce profits, impair productivity, stifle innovation – and drive numerous jobs overseas, to countries where energy is still available and priced lower. Simply put, no juice – no jobs.
In the coming decade, according to energy analysts, Colorado alone will need 5,000 megawatts of new electrical generation; Texas, over 25,000; the USA, hundreds of thousands. Most will have to come from fossil fuels. Will policy makers enable or prevent us from meeting these needs?
If it takes 13,000 wind turbines (on 105,000 acres) to generate the electrical output of one 500-mW gas-fired power plant, how many turbines will it take to produce 50,000 mW? How much scenic acreage will they despoil? How many birds and bats will they kill?
If we emphasize intermittent, unreliable wind and solar power, will utility companies be reduced to promising they can ensure 12 hours of power a day, as we fire up assembly lines or head into surgery? If utilities have to sequester CO2 at $40-50 a ton, will they follow Britain’s lead, and tell parents who can no longer afford to heat their homes adequately: just send your children to bed with hats, mittens, sox – and bags of rice warmed in microwaves?
To reduce electricity demand, will Mr. Gore tell kids they can’t have Sony Playstations or computers? Will he seek a ban on plasma televisions, which use five times the electricity of conventional TVs? Will he stop flying all over the planet, to lecture lesser mortals about climate apocalypse?
Will the Senate Inquisitors – and their fear-mongering Greenpeace and NRDC shock troopers – now run their offices only on whatever electricity they can get from wind and solar power? What will they tell families of elderly folks who die in summer heat waves, because they can’t afford air conditioning – or AC has been banned as “polluting and unnecessary”?
How much will California really preserve our environment by having its future electricity generated by power plants sited in Montana, Idaho and Utah – and sent to LA via 2000-mile-long transmission lines – so that its legislators can claim to have reduced Golden State carbon emissions?
How many Third World families will remain impoverished and threatened with death from lung and intestinal diseases, because eco-imperialist agitators, politicians and bureaucrats continue to pressure banks and companies not to build power plants in poor countries?
These are just a few of the inconvenient questions and truths that alarmists want silenced. That’s why companies, legislators, scientists and citizens need to raise them, despite threats of Maoist show trials.
Raising these issues – and defending open, robust, civil debate about them – is the essence of ethics, social responsibility, citizenship, and now courage. Our forebears risked their lives to speak the truth. Surely we can risk a little public browbeating from Senate neo-McCarthyites, to ensure that our nation is not stampeded into enacting state and federal laws that will be economically and ethically disastrous.
We do not face looming climate chaos. We have time to respond rationally and responsibly, evaluate competing claims, demand real science and evidence, devise sensible laws and policies, and develop new energy generation technologies that will meet growing demand for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity – while improving efficiency, reducing pollution, and protecting the health and economic vitality of families, companies and communities.
Let’s hope the march toward totalitarian government ends, wisdom prevails, and we again place our faith in American optimism, creativity, innovation and true social responsibility. Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. CORE will host a November 29 program at the United Nations on how climate change programs and policies might affect industrialization, families and communities in developing nations. Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
By Paul DriessenSunday, December 10, 2006
Two centuries years ago, Voltaire proclaimed, “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today, our free speech traditions are under assault.
Colleges prohibit “offensive” or “politically incorrect” speech. Radical Islamists threaten to kill scholars, artists and even popes who “disrespect” the Prophet. And when we desperately need unfettered scientific debate, intolerant eco-activists have ushered in an era of climate McCarthyism and eco-Inquisitions.
Al Gore wants to muzzle anyone who raises inconvenient truths about climate alarmism. Greenpeace wants “climate criminals” pilloried and silenced. Grist magazine wants “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials” for climate disaster skeptics, followed by hanging, one assumes, since burning at the stake would release greenhouse gases.
Climate catastrophist Ross Gelbspan told a DC audience: “Not only do journalists not have a responsibility to report what skeptical scientists have to say about global warming. They have a responsibility NOT to report what those scientists say.” Reuters, Time, 60 Minutes and the Discovery Channel appear to have taken his views to heart. UK alarmist George Monbiot says the airlines contribute to climate change – so “every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.”
During a congressional hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer treated physician-scientist-author Michael Crichton like a child molester, for suggesting that claims about climate chaos should be reviewed by double-blind studies and evidentiary standards akin to what FDA uses for new drugs. And on October 27, Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller issued what the Wall Street Journal aptly called a “gag order” against ExxonMobil. “Its message: Start toeing the Senators’ line on climate change, or else,” said the Journal.
The Catholic Church’s dogmatic Earth-centered-universe theology has been replaced by an equally intolerant Church of Gaia catechism of cataclysm. But the problem goes well beyond that, well beyond constitutional rights and traditions of open, robust debate being trampled by newspapers and politicians duty-bound to uphold them.
It is, above all, an unprecedented power grab by activists, politicians and bureaucrats who want to be the final arbiters of every energy and economic decision.
Yes, Earth’s climate is changing – again, though far less than it has repeatedly throughout our planet’s history. Yes, people are influencing our weather and climate – to some degree. But few scientists have joined astronomer James Hansen in saying that humans have replaced the sun and other natural forces as the primary cause, Climate Armageddon is nigh, and drastic action must be taken immediately.
Cataclysm theorists point to computer models. But models are not evidence. Neither are headlines, hype or Hollywood special effects – nor incessant claims that every storm, drought, heat wave or cold snap is due to fossil fuels. Moreover, even perfect compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would do virtually nothing to stop hypothetical human-induced climate change. And the true costs of imposing Draconian measures would be astronomical.
Carbon taxes, carbon caps, greenhouse gas targets and timetables would send already high energy prices into the stratosphere, raise the cost of every consumer product and service, reduce profits, impair productivity, stifle innovation – and drive numerous jobs overseas, to countries where energy is still available and priced lower. Simply put, no juice – no jobs.
In the coming decade, according to energy analysts, Colorado alone will need 5,000 megawatts of new electrical generation; Texas, over 25,000; the USA, hundreds of thousands. Most will have to come from fossil fuels. Will policy makers enable or prevent us from meeting these needs?
If it takes 13,000 wind turbines (on 105,000 acres) to generate the electrical output of one 500-mW gas-fired power plant, how many turbines will it take to produce 50,000 mW? How much scenic acreage will they despoil? How many birds and bats will they kill?
If we emphasize intermittent, unreliable wind and solar power, will utility companies be reduced to promising they can ensure 12 hours of power a day, as we fire up assembly lines or head into surgery? If utilities have to sequester CO2 at $40-50 a ton, will they follow Britain’s lead, and tell parents who can no longer afford to heat their homes adequately: just send your children to bed with hats, mittens, sox – and bags of rice warmed in microwaves?
To reduce electricity demand, will Mr. Gore tell kids they can’t have Sony Playstations or computers? Will he seek a ban on plasma televisions, which use five times the electricity of conventional TVs? Will he stop flying all over the planet, to lecture lesser mortals about climate apocalypse?
Will the Senate Inquisitors – and their fear-mongering Greenpeace and NRDC shock troopers – now run their offices only on whatever electricity they can get from wind and solar power? What will they tell families of elderly folks who die in summer heat waves, because they can’t afford air conditioning – or AC has been banned as “polluting and unnecessary”?
How much will California really preserve our environment by having its future electricity generated by power plants sited in Montana, Idaho and Utah – and sent to LA via 2000-mile-long transmission lines – so that its legislators can claim to have reduced Golden State carbon emissions?
How many Third World families will remain impoverished and threatened with death from lung and intestinal diseases, because eco-imperialist agitators, politicians and bureaucrats continue to pressure banks and companies not to build power plants in poor countries?
These are just a few of the inconvenient questions and truths that alarmists want silenced. That’s why companies, legislators, scientists and citizens need to raise them, despite threats of Maoist show trials.
Raising these issues – and defending open, robust, civil debate about them – is the essence of ethics, social responsibility, citizenship, and now courage. Our forebears risked their lives to speak the truth. Surely we can risk a little public browbeating from Senate neo-McCarthyites, to ensure that our nation is not stampeded into enacting state and federal laws that will be economically and ethically disastrous.
We do not face looming climate chaos. We have time to respond rationally and responsibly, evaluate competing claims, demand real science and evidence, devise sensible laws and policies, and develop new energy generation technologies that will meet growing demand for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity – while improving efficiency, reducing pollution, and protecting the health and economic vitality of families, companies and communities.
Let’s hope the march toward totalitarian government ends, wisdom prevails, and we again place our faith in American optimism, creativity, innovation and true social responsibility. Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. CORE will host a November 29 program at the United Nations on how climate change programs and policies might affect industrialization, families and communities in developing nations. Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Sago was struck by lighting!
Published on The Money Times (http://www.themoneytimes.com)
Joint Federal-state report links lightning to Sago explosion
Nearly a year after the explosion that occurred at the Sago Mine near Buckhannon, West Virginia on January 2, 2006, state investigators have concluded that the disaster was caused by a lightning bolt that ignited methane gas underground, a union official said.
Picture: Get original file (6KB) [1]
Full Article:
One miner was killed in the initial blast, and 12 others were trapped inside the caving caused by the detonation of the methane gas. It took the rescuers more than 40 hours to reach those trapped miners, but they could save only one man, the other 11 died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The victims of the Sago Mine tragedy were: Tom Anderson • Alva M. Bennett • James Bennett • Jerry Groves • George Hamner Jr. • Terry Helms • Jesse Jones • Dave Lewis • Martin Toler Jr. • Fred Ware • Jackie Weaver • Marshall Winans, while Randal McCloy Jr. was rescued in the rescue operation.
International Coal Group Inc. (ICG), the Sago Mine’s owner, has been claiming since March that the explosion which led to the death of 12 miners was ignited by the lightning and fueled by methane that naturally accumulated in an abundant area on the mine.
But the critics of the company have argued against the coal group’s lightening theory. Contrary to the critics, United Mine Workers officials who assisted in the investigation and briefed on the report's conclusions said Thursday the report will depict that the lightning caused the W.Va disaster.
Joint Federal-state report links lightning to Sago explosion - "I’m certainly convinced that lightning was involved,” said E. Philip Krider, a University of Arizona lightning expert who has assisted in the investigation and is one of the editors of the report.
In their report, which is to be published on Monday, the investigators have determined that a powerful “large" bolt of lightning struck a tree more than a mile from the mine's entrance at "almost the moment the methane" inside the shaft was ignited.
That unusual large lightning strike, together with another at the same moment on the other side of the mine, may have created an electromagnetic field that sparked the explosion. "We don’t have all the answers yet," Krider said.
However, the state is still waiting for test data on the electromagnetic fields in and around the mine, and is working to schedule more tests to try to pinpoint the lightning’s path into the mine, Krider said.
“We’ve identified a number of possible mechanisms and we’re planning further tests and perhaps even measurements during a lightning storm in that area to try to pin down the exact mechanism,” he said.
Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious [2] digg [3]
Source URL:http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20061209/joint_federal_state_report_links_lightning_to_sago_explosion-id-102350.html
Links:[1] http://www.themoneytimes.com/filess/lightningSago.jpg[2] http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20061209/joint_federal_state_report_links_lightning_to_sago_explosion-id-102350.html&title=Joint+Federal-state+report++links+lightning+to+Sago+explosion[3] http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20061209/joint_federal_state_report_links_lightning_to_sago_explosion-id-102350.html
Joint Federal-state report links lightning to Sago explosion
Nearly a year after the explosion that occurred at the Sago Mine near Buckhannon, West Virginia on January 2, 2006, state investigators have concluded that the disaster was caused by a lightning bolt that ignited methane gas underground, a union official said.
Picture: Get original file (6KB) [1]
Full Article:
One miner was killed in the initial blast, and 12 others were trapped inside the caving caused by the detonation of the methane gas. It took the rescuers more than 40 hours to reach those trapped miners, but they could save only one man, the other 11 died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The victims of the Sago Mine tragedy were: Tom Anderson • Alva M. Bennett • James Bennett • Jerry Groves • George Hamner Jr. • Terry Helms • Jesse Jones • Dave Lewis • Martin Toler Jr. • Fred Ware • Jackie Weaver • Marshall Winans, while Randal McCloy Jr. was rescued in the rescue operation.
International Coal Group Inc. (ICG), the Sago Mine’s owner, has been claiming since March that the explosion which led to the death of 12 miners was ignited by the lightning and fueled by methane that naturally accumulated in an abundant area on the mine.
But the critics of the company have argued against the coal group’s lightening theory. Contrary to the critics, United Mine Workers officials who assisted in the investigation and briefed on the report's conclusions said Thursday the report will depict that the lightning caused the W.Va disaster.
Joint Federal-state report links lightning to Sago explosion - "I’m certainly convinced that lightning was involved,” said E. Philip Krider, a University of Arizona lightning expert who has assisted in the investigation and is one of the editors of the report.
In their report, which is to be published on Monday, the investigators have determined that a powerful “large" bolt of lightning struck a tree more than a mile from the mine's entrance at "almost the moment the methane" inside the shaft was ignited.
That unusual large lightning strike, together with another at the same moment on the other side of the mine, may have created an electromagnetic field that sparked the explosion. "We don’t have all the answers yet," Krider said.
However, the state is still waiting for test data on the electromagnetic fields in and around the mine, and is working to schedule more tests to try to pinpoint the lightning’s path into the mine, Krider said.
“We’ve identified a number of possible mechanisms and we’re planning further tests and perhaps even measurements during a lightning storm in that area to try to pin down the exact mechanism,” he said.
Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious [2] digg [3]
Source URL:http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20061209/joint_federal_state_report_links_lightning_to_sago_explosion-id-102350.html
Links:[1] http://www.themoneytimes.com/filess/lightningSago.jpg[2] http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20061209/joint_federal_state_report_links_lightning_to_sago_explosion-id-102350.html&title=Joint+Federal-state+report++links+lightning+to+Sago+explosion[3] http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20061209/joint_federal_state_report_links_lightning_to_sago_explosion-id-102350.html
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Strong demand for coal in China expected
China Coal expects high coal price on strong demand
Tue Dec 5, 2006 6:12 AM ET
By Kennix Chim
HONG KONG, Dec 5 (Reuters) - China's second-biggest coal group by revenue, China Coal Energy Co., expects coal prices to remain high, driven by strong domestic demand, the firm's chairman said on Tuesday.
China Coal is looking to raise up to US$1.7 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering in order to raise funds for expansion in a country where coal accounted for 69.6 percent of energy consumption in 2005.
Industry production has strained to keep pace with voracious demand from a rapidly growing economy.
"China is the world's top coal producer and consumer, with the continuing growth in the domestic economy, coal prices will remain stable at a high level," Jing Tianliang, the company's chairman and executive director, told reporters via video while on the marketing roadshow for his firm's IPO.
China Coal, which kicks off the retail portion of its Hong Kong public offering on Wednesday, forecast its 2006 net profit would be at least 3.1 billion yuan (US$396 million), a 5.9 percent decrease, due in part to foreign exchange losses.
The company will begin trading on Dec. 19, under the stock symbol "1898" <1898.hk>.
China is the world's largest coal user, accounting for 36.9 percent of global consumption, according to BP Statistical Review 2006. The Chinese government estimates that domestic demand for coal will increase to 2.5 billion tonnes by 2010, from 2.14 billion tonnes in 2005.
Citigroup, one of China Coal's underwriters, forecast that thermal coal prices will peak in 2007 because of easing domestic supply-side constraints, increased investment in the coal sector, reduced exports and an appreciating yuan currency.
"The key driver for the company should be volume growth and not pricing power," Citigroup wrote, predicting a decline in prices in 2008.
State-controlled China Coal is selling 3.25 billion shares, or 28.9 percent of its enlarged share capital, in a range of HK$3.20 to HK$4.05, or 11.5 times to 14.6 times forecast 2006 earnings.
By comparison, top Chinese coal producer Shenhua Energy Co. <1088.hk> trades at 15.6 times 2006 earnings, while Yanzhou Coal Mining Co. Ltd. <1171.hk> trades at 10.2 times.
Coal reserves in China are abundant but the mining sector is fragmented and notoriously unsafe. China ranks third in terms of proven coal reserves, following the United States and Russia.
China Coal's unit mining cost stood at 255.3 yuan per tonne in 2005, higher than its peers. Shenhua has a cost advantage because most of its mines are open-cut mines, meaning its unit cost was only 66.7 yuan per tonne in 2005, while Yanzhou's cost was 162.8 yuan per tonne.
Jing said the company will adopt cost control measures by increasing production without adding personnel.
China Coal plans to distribute 20 percent to 30 percent of its profit as dividends after its listing.
The deal is being sponsored by China International Capital Corp., Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.
(US$1=7.823 yuan)
(For expanded IPO diary, please click)
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world
Tue Dec 5, 2006 6:12 AM ET
By Kennix Chim
HONG KONG, Dec 5 (Reuters) - China's second-biggest coal group by revenue, China Coal Energy Co., expects coal prices to remain high, driven by strong domestic demand, the firm's chairman said on Tuesday.
China Coal is looking to raise up to US$1.7 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering in order to raise funds for expansion in a country where coal accounted for 69.6 percent of energy consumption in 2005.
Industry production has strained to keep pace with voracious demand from a rapidly growing economy.
"China is the world's top coal producer and consumer, with the continuing growth in the domestic economy, coal prices will remain stable at a high level," Jing Tianliang, the company's chairman and executive director, told reporters via video while on the marketing roadshow for his firm's IPO.
China Coal, which kicks off the retail portion of its Hong Kong public offering on Wednesday, forecast its 2006 net profit would be at least 3.1 billion yuan (US$396 million), a 5.9 percent decrease, due in part to foreign exchange losses.
The company will begin trading on Dec. 19, under the stock symbol "1898" <1898.hk>.
China is the world's largest coal user, accounting for 36.9 percent of global consumption, according to BP Statistical Review 2006. The Chinese government estimates that domestic demand for coal will increase to 2.5 billion tonnes by 2010, from 2.14 billion tonnes in 2005.
Citigroup
"The key driver for the company should be volume growth and not pricing power," Citigroup wrote, predicting a decline in prices in 2008.
State-controlled China Coal is selling 3.25 billion shares, or 28.9 percent of its enlarged share capital, in a range of HK$3.20 to HK$4.05, or 11.5 times to 14.6 times forecast 2006 earnings.
By comparison, top Chinese coal producer Shenhua Energy Co. <1088.hk> trades at 15.6 times 2006 earnings, while Yanzhou Coal Mining Co. Ltd. <1171.hk> trades at 10.2 times.
Coal reserves in China are abundant but the mining sector is fragmented and notoriously unsafe. China ranks third in terms of proven coal reserves, following the United States and Russia.
China Coal's unit mining cost stood at 255.3 yuan per tonne in 2005, higher than its peers. Shenhua has a cost advantage because most of its mines are open-cut mines, meaning its unit cost was only 66.7 yuan per tonne in 2005, while Yanzhou's cost was 162.8 yuan per tonne.
Jing said the company will adopt cost control measures by increasing production without adding personnel.
China Coal plans to distribute 20 percent to 30 percent of its profit as dividends after its listing.
The deal is being sponsored by China International Capital Corp., Citigroup and Morgan Stanley
(US$1=7.823 yuan)
(For expanded IPO diary, please click
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Energy Boom Lifts Small-Town Hope On Northern Plains
Dec 1, 2006
Wall Street Journal
WASHBURN, N.D. -- When the coal-fired power plant near this river town was being built in the 1970s, Mayor Al Christianson recalls how construction workers lined up every afternoon to buy beer from the Hi-Way Bar. "There was car after car after car," he says. "It was amazing."
Once the plant was complete, most of the workers vacated the trailers they'd been living in and left Washburn. The city's population gradually fell from 2,000 or so to its current total of about 1,300. "We really missed the boat," Mr. Christianson says.
Now, a new energy boom is reviving hopes that the good times might be back. Across North Dakota, little towns like Washburn see a golden opportunity to stem the population decline that has long bedeviled Washburn and all of North Dakota -- and they're determined not to blow it this time.
"We've got the best future we've ever had," Mr. Christianson says.
But the promise of new jobs may not be enough to attract people to cold, remote towns that lack sufficient housing, day-care, entertainment and other vital services. And not everyone in these towns is ready to make changes for growth's sake.
It's clear that new jobs are coming to Washburn. Next to the power plant north of town, a colossus of pipes and towering grain bins is rising from the prairie: an ethanol plant scheduled to begin turning corn into fuel in January. That has brought more than 400 construction and 40 permanent jobs. The companies running the plant are considering building another facility to convert coal to liquid fuels, which could bring more than 500 permanent jobs.
Optimism is spreading throughout North Dakota, which is in far better position than most states to exploit surging demand for both fossil fuels and fuels made from corn and other renewable resources. As oil prices have soared in recent years, alternatives like ethanol have grown increasingly economical. At the same time, exploration in difficult-to-tap oil fields -- such as the Bakken formation in western North Dakota -- has become more attractive.
Over the past two years, renewable energy projects that will cost more than $1 billion have been announced in the state, including five ethanol plants, three biodiesel plants and five wind farms. Oil taxes have helped to generate a $500 million state budget surplus. Watford City, an oil town of 1,357, hopes a new movie theater and steakhouse will draw young families. A new biodiesel plant in Velva, population 966, has the town hustling to find builders to meet housing demand.
But boom has turned to bust here before. The state's population peaked at nearly 681,000 during the Great Depression, then gradually declined as North Dakota bounced through the ups and downs of agriculture and oil, and young people left the state for better jobs and warmer weather. Today, with just 637,000 people, the state is so sparsely populated that it still has a single area code. Smaller towns have been hit hardest over the years as people migrated to Bismarck, Fargo and other larger cities.
In Washburn, Rachel Retterath is struggling to reverse that tide. As the city's economic development director, she's been trying for a year to bring a day-care center to town so workers with families will locate here. Day-care center operators have told her they need at least 65 children to make a center profitable, "but here you're only likely to get 18 to 20 kids," she says. "People are willing to move to small towns because they like the quality of life, but they don't want to give up anything."
Washburn perches on a slope overlooking a picturesque bend in the Missouri River about 40 miles north of Bismarck. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made winter camp just up the river in 1804-05. Along the city's quiet streets sit five churches, three bars, elementary and high schools, and the ornate McLean County Courthouse. Hunters flock here for the pheasant, anglers for the walleye, tourists for the Lewis & Clark museum. One recent day, geese honked as a truck hauled wind-turbine blades over a river bridge.
Washburn relied heavily on farming until work began on the power plant and a lignite coal mine in the mid-1970s. Trailer parks popped up for the 1,000-plus workers who helped build the plant over about six years. A local bank hired extra tellers on Fridays to cash paychecks.
By the time the plant was done in the early 1980s, new homes were going up, but the exodus had begun. Over the years, as its population dwindled, Washburn lost a car dealership, clothing stores, farm-implement dealers and the Roxy movie theater. Home construction nearly came to a halt. The city wound up owning some of the undeveloped lots where homes were supposed to go.
Much of the same was happening across North Dakota. High interest rates devastated farmers who had borrowed heavily to capitalize on high grain prices. Dickinson, Watford City and other western North Dakota towns reeled from the 1980s oil-patch bust.
Mr. Christianson, 54 years old, whose parents closed the Roxy after running it for 42 years, watched Washburn decline while working at the power plant. Known around town as "Big Al," he ran for the Washburn city commission in 1996 because, he says, "nothing was going on." During his first term, "we spent at least two months talking about whether we were going to buy a pickup truck. One whole meeting was to decide whether it was going to be GM or Ford."
Over the next several years, Mr. Christianson and others pushed for change. Scores of locals, including many in their 20s and 30s, showed up for meetings at the American Legion hall where city officials wrote a strategic plan. "People came in and said we're tired of the potholes in the streets" and junk cars on unmowed lawns, Mr. Christianson says. In 2000, residents voted to levy a 1% sales tax for economic development and infrastructure projects like street paving.
Still, it was hard to get much going. The economic-development association, a public-private body, hired Washburn's first economic-development director in 2002, but she left after two years amid town officials' dissatisfaction that she hadn't attracted more businesses.
Her replacement, Ms. Retterath, is unusual for North Dakota -- a young person who never left the state. After growing up on a dairy farm in tiny Edgeley, Ms. Retterath, 32, graduated from the University of Mary in Bismarck and almost went to Washington to work for a senator. When the staffer who had hired her died, she says, "it was kind of my sign not to go."
She came to Washburn after marrying her college sweetheart, Justin, 33, who grows corn, wheat and beans and raises cattle nearby. For a while she commuted to Bismarck, where she worked at the state tourism department. But after having her second child, she decided she wanted to be closer to home.
Working out of a cramped City Hall office, she redid Washburn's Web site, spruced up a town brochure and spent weeks interviewing dozens of local business people. Some were leery of development, telling her: "I made my money. I don't need to be throwing it out the door to bring new people in," she recalls.
At the same time, ethanol plants were sprouting across the Great Plains. With oil prices climbing and the federal government creating new incentives to produce the gasoline substitute, farmers and private companies poured billions of dollars into building plants.
One coal-fired ethanol plant in the works elsewhere in the state asked to buy coal from the mine near Washburn. That prompted the power plant's owner, Great River Energy of Elk River, Minn., to consider building its own ethanol plant. It sounded like a great idea to Mr. Christianson, who helps develop new businesses for Great River and by then was Washburn's mayor too.
Great River and a partner, Headwaters Inc. of South Jordan, Utah, announced plans in August 2005 for the $90 million Blue Flint Ethanol plant. The companies think they have a competitive advantage because their ethanol plant will be powered by steam generated when coal is converted into electricity -- steam that normally goes to waste. Also, Great River has largely locked in its coal costs for many years to come thanks to a long-term contract with the mine.
Success isn't guaranteed. More than 100 ethanol plants are running or are under construction in the U.S. As corn prices have risen and the price of oil has moderated, ethanol's profitability has narrowed. But Great River officials say the plant could be an incubator for future energy projects. Great River, Headwaters and the coal mine's owner, North American Coal Corp., are conducting an engineering study on how to build a coal-to-liquids plant. That facility could generate electricity and produce ultraclean diesel, jet or other fuels. Investment in the plant, if it's ever built, could exceed $3 billion, company officials say. And the companies are considering two other North Dakota sites.
At the moment, what's most important to Mayor Christianson and Ms. Retterath is the ethanol plant's ability to draw families to Washburn. Two of the plant's top managers are North Dakotans who returned from other states, and many new hires came from elsewhere in the state.
Already, one got away. The plant's chief financial officer, Michael Grosz, 41, a native of Dickinson, N.D., was living in Boise, Idaho, when he hired on. "There was a distinct pull to come back to North Dakota," says Mr. Grosz, who is married with two boys. "Our parents were getting older and we wanted to be near to help." The Groszes hoped to live in Washburn but couldn't find a suitable house and wound up buying in Bismarck.
The town's housing stock doesn't turn over much. No new apartments have been built in years, and the few new homes put up in the past decade were quickly purchased. Now most builders are too swamped building in the bigger towns. Last spring, Ms. Retterath organized a meeting of builders in Bismarck "to basically tell them, we're here and we need houses."
One builder was Kyle Bergquist, owner of Elite Homes Inc. He was already talking with Washburn officials about buying city-owned lots that had lain vacant since the 1980s. The city sold him 30 lots for the cut-rate price of about $1,000 apiece, and he's turning them into Heritage Heights, a 30-home development on a hill with a view of the river valley.
Curbs and sewers are in place, and Mr. Bergquist has sold two four-bedroom homes that will have big front porches and three-car garages, for $150,000 and $180,000. One buyer is moving from Bismarck to help run a Washburn lumber yard that just sold to a Bismarck company.
The prospect of the coal-to-liquids plant has generated speculative investment, even though the plant won't happen for years, if ever. "I'm now in competition with a ton of out-of-state buyers that are buying huge chunks of land without even seeing it," Mr. Bergquist says. Two other local developers have begun projects designed to add another 50 homes.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Washburn's population dropped to an estimated 1,264 last year from 1,389 in 2000. Evidence that it might be moving in the other direction is so far just anecdotal.
In the past year, three couples have come from out-of-state, bringing eight children. After falling for many years, enrollment at the elementary and high schools edged up this year by one student, to 303, says Superintendent Robert Tollefson, who attributes it to the ethanol plant.
The city is building a new water plant, and some area investors are working to bring a hotel. On a strip of land that once was crammed with trailers, a farm lender is building a new office that will employ two to three people. Next door are a new branch of a Watford City credit union and new offices for two medical clinics.
Nurse practitioner Michele Leidholm, owner of one of the clinics, says, "I've lived here half my life, and on any given day I can look at the schedule and say I don't know half these people."
But growth in Washburn still faces hurdles, including some thrown up by people in town. Late last year, Bismarck businessman Scott Jorgenson bought a lot in Washburn where he hoped to build a smoke-free family restaurant serving alcohol. Ms. Retterath, Mr. Christianson and other local boosters welcomed it because the town's bars tend to be smoky and the two family restaurants don't serve alcohol.
To accommodate Mr. Jorgenson, the city commission had to consider changing the town's liquor ordinance to provide additional licenses. Owners of the local bars argued that new licenses weren't needed and in any case should be put to a vote of the populace.
Owner Ron Possen of Captain's Cabin Bar & Grill, known for its prime-rib sandwiches on toast, says he didn't appreciate that the city was also considering granting the new restaurant an exemption on its property taxes that could have saved it $5,000 a year. "Nothing was handed to me when I bought my business," says Mr. Possen, 51. "My place is for sale. If you want a place, come and buy mine."
On Feb. 21, commissioners passed a revised liquor ordinance by a 3-2 vote. The bar owners gathered more than 130 signatures on petitions calling for a citywide vote. By the time voters approved the new ordinance, 238-156, in June, Mr. Jorgenson had opened a Bismarck restaurant and given up, for now, on Washburn.
"I said, well then, screw it, I'll just do this thing in Bismarck," Mr. Jorgenson says. But he still owns the Washburn site and says next summer he'll reconsider opening there.
Write to Bryan Gruley at bryan.gruley@wsj.com
Dec 1, 2006
Wall Street Journal
WASHBURN, N.D. -- When the coal-fired power plant near this river town was being built in the 1970s, Mayor Al Christianson recalls how construction workers lined up every afternoon to buy beer from the Hi-Way Bar. "There was car after car after car," he says. "It was amazing."
Once the plant was complete, most of the workers vacated the trailers they'd been living in and left Washburn. The city's population gradually fell from 2,000 or so to its current total of about 1,300. "We really missed the boat," Mr. Christianson says.
Now, a new energy boom is reviving hopes that the good times might be back. Across North Dakota, little towns like Washburn see a golden opportunity to stem the population decline that has long bedeviled Washburn and all of North Dakota -- and they're determined not to blow it this time.
"We've got the best future we've ever had," Mr. Christianson says.
But the promise of new jobs may not be enough to attract people to cold, remote towns that lack sufficient housing, day-care, entertainment and other vital services. And not everyone in these towns is ready to make changes for growth's sake.
It's clear that new jobs are coming to Washburn. Next to the power plant north of town, a colossus of pipes and towering grain bins is rising from the prairie: an ethanol plant scheduled to begin turning corn into fuel in January. That has brought more than 400 construction and 40 permanent jobs. The companies running the plant are considering building another facility to convert coal to liquid fuels, which could bring more than 500 permanent jobs.
Optimism is spreading throughout North Dakota, which is in far better position than most states to exploit surging demand for both fossil fuels and fuels made from corn and other renewable resources. As oil prices have soared in recent years, alternatives like ethanol have grown increasingly economical. At the same time, exploration in difficult-to-tap oil fields -- such as the Bakken formation in western North Dakota -- has become more attractive.
Over the past two years, renewable energy projects that will cost more than $1 billion have been announced in the state, including five ethanol plants, three biodiesel plants and five wind farms. Oil taxes have helped to generate a $500 million state budget surplus. Watford City, an oil town of 1,357, hopes a new movie theater and steakhouse will draw young families. A new biodiesel plant in Velva, population 966, has the town hustling to find builders to meet housing demand.
But boom has turned to bust here before. The state's population peaked at nearly 681,000 during the Great Depression, then gradually declined as North Dakota bounced through the ups and downs of agriculture and oil, and young people left the state for better jobs and warmer weather. Today, with just 637,000 people, the state is so sparsely populated that it still has a single area code. Smaller towns have been hit hardest over the years as people migrated to Bismarck, Fargo and other larger cities.
In Washburn, Rachel Retterath is struggling to reverse that tide. As the city's economic development director, she's been trying for a year to bring a day-care center to town so workers with families will locate here. Day-care center operators have told her they need at least 65 children to make a center profitable, "but here you're only likely to get 18 to 20 kids," she says. "People are willing to move to small towns because they like the quality of life, but they don't want to give up anything."
Washburn perches on a slope overlooking a picturesque bend in the Missouri River about 40 miles north of Bismarck. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made winter camp just up the river in 1804-05. Along the city's quiet streets sit five churches, three bars, elementary and high schools, and the ornate McLean County Courthouse. Hunters flock here for the pheasant, anglers for the walleye, tourists for the Lewis & Clark museum. One recent day, geese honked as a truck hauled wind-turbine blades over a river bridge.
Washburn relied heavily on farming until work began on the power plant and a lignite coal mine in the mid-1970s. Trailer parks popped up for the 1,000-plus workers who helped build the plant over about six years. A local bank hired extra tellers on Fridays to cash paychecks.
By the time the plant was done in the early 1980s, new homes were going up, but the exodus had begun. Over the years, as its population dwindled, Washburn lost a car dealership, clothing stores, farm-implement dealers and the Roxy movie theater. Home construction nearly came to a halt. The city wound up owning some of the undeveloped lots where homes were supposed to go.
Much of the same was happening across North Dakota. High interest rates devastated farmers who had borrowed heavily to capitalize on high grain prices. Dickinson, Watford City and other western North Dakota towns reeled from the 1980s oil-patch bust.
Mr. Christianson, 54 years old, whose parents closed the Roxy after running it for 42 years, watched Washburn decline while working at the power plant. Known around town as "Big Al," he ran for the Washburn city commission in 1996 because, he says, "nothing was going on." During his first term, "we spent at least two months talking about whether we were going to buy a pickup truck. One whole meeting was to decide whether it was going to be GM or Ford."
Over the next several years, Mr. Christianson and others pushed for change. Scores of locals, including many in their 20s and 30s, showed up for meetings at the American Legion hall where city officials wrote a strategic plan. "People came in and said we're tired of the potholes in the streets" and junk cars on unmowed lawns, Mr. Christianson says. In 2000, residents voted to levy a 1% sales tax for economic development and infrastructure projects like street paving.
Still, it was hard to get much going. The economic-development association, a public-private body, hired Washburn's first economic-development director in 2002, but she left after two years amid town officials' dissatisfaction that she hadn't attracted more businesses.
Her replacement, Ms. Retterath, is unusual for North Dakota -- a young person who never left the state. After growing up on a dairy farm in tiny Edgeley, Ms. Retterath, 32, graduated from the University of Mary in Bismarck and almost went to Washington to work for a senator. When the staffer who had hired her died, she says, "it was kind of my sign not to go."
She came to Washburn after marrying her college sweetheart, Justin, 33, who grows corn, wheat and beans and raises cattle nearby. For a while she commuted to Bismarck, where she worked at the state tourism department. But after having her second child, she decided she wanted to be closer to home.
Working out of a cramped City Hall office, she redid Washburn's Web site, spruced up a town brochure and spent weeks interviewing dozens of local business people. Some were leery of development, telling her: "I made my money. I don't need to be throwing it out the door to bring new people in," she recalls.
At the same time, ethanol plants were sprouting across the Great Plains. With oil prices climbing and the federal government creating new incentives to produce the gasoline substitute, farmers and private companies poured billions of dollars into building plants.
One coal-fired ethanol plant in the works elsewhere in the state asked to buy coal from the mine near Washburn. That prompted the power plant's owner, Great River Energy of Elk River, Minn., to consider building its own ethanol plant. It sounded like a great idea to Mr. Christianson, who helps develop new businesses for Great River and by then was Washburn's mayor too.
Great River and a partner, Headwaters Inc. of South Jordan, Utah, announced plans in August 2005 for the $90 million Blue Flint Ethanol plant. The companies think they have a competitive advantage because their ethanol plant will be powered by steam generated when coal is converted into electricity -- steam that normally goes to waste. Also, Great River has largely locked in its coal costs for many years to come thanks to a long-term contract with the mine.
Success isn't guaranteed. More than 100 ethanol plants are running or are under construction in the U.S. As corn prices have risen and the price of oil has moderated, ethanol's profitability has narrowed. But Great River officials say the plant could be an incubator for future energy projects. Great River, Headwaters and the coal mine's owner, North American Coal Corp., are conducting an engineering study on how to build a coal-to-liquids plant. That facility could generate electricity and produce ultraclean diesel, jet or other fuels. Investment in the plant, if it's ever built, could exceed $3 billion, company officials say. And the companies are considering two other North Dakota sites.
At the moment, what's most important to Mayor Christianson and Ms. Retterath is the ethanol plant's ability to draw families to Washburn. Two of the plant's top managers are North Dakotans who returned from other states, and many new hires came from elsewhere in the state.
Already, one got away. The plant's chief financial officer, Michael Grosz, 41, a native of Dickinson, N.D., was living in Boise, Idaho, when he hired on. "There was a distinct pull to come back to North Dakota," says Mr. Grosz, who is married with two boys. "Our parents were getting older and we wanted to be near to help." The Groszes hoped to live in Washburn but couldn't find a suitable house and wound up buying in Bismarck.
The town's housing stock doesn't turn over much. No new apartments have been built in years, and the few new homes put up in the past decade were quickly purchased. Now most builders are too swamped building in the bigger towns. Last spring, Ms. Retterath organized a meeting of builders in Bismarck "to basically tell them, we're here and we need houses."
One builder was Kyle Bergquist, owner of Elite Homes Inc. He was already talking with Washburn officials about buying city-owned lots that had lain vacant since the 1980s. The city sold him 30 lots for the cut-rate price of about $1,000 apiece, and he's turning them into Heritage Heights, a 30-home development on a hill with a view of the river valley.
Curbs and sewers are in place, and Mr. Bergquist has sold two four-bedroom homes that will have big front porches and three-car garages, for $150,000 and $180,000. One buyer is moving from Bismarck to help run a Washburn lumber yard that just sold to a Bismarck company.
The prospect of the coal-to-liquids plant has generated speculative investment, even though the plant won't happen for years, if ever. "I'm now in competition with a ton of out-of-state buyers that are buying huge chunks of land without even seeing it," Mr. Bergquist says. Two other local developers have begun projects designed to add another 50 homes.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Washburn's population dropped to an estimated 1,264 last year from 1,389 in 2000. Evidence that it might be moving in the other direction is so far just anecdotal.
In the past year, three couples have come from out-of-state, bringing eight children. After falling for many years, enrollment at the elementary and high schools edged up this year by one student, to 303, says Superintendent Robert Tollefson, who attributes it to the ethanol plant.
The city is building a new water plant, and some area investors are working to bring a hotel. On a strip of land that once was crammed with trailers, a farm lender is building a new office that will employ two to three people. Next door are a new branch of a Watford City credit union and new offices for two medical clinics.
Nurse practitioner Michele Leidholm, owner of one of the clinics, says, "I've lived here half my life, and on any given day I can look at the schedule and say I don't know half these people."
But growth in Washburn still faces hurdles, including some thrown up by people in town. Late last year, Bismarck businessman Scott Jorgenson bought a lot in Washburn where he hoped to build a smoke-free family restaurant serving alcohol. Ms. Retterath, Mr. Christianson and other local boosters welcomed it because the town's bars tend to be smoky and the two family restaurants don't serve alcohol.
To accommodate Mr. Jorgenson, the city commission had to consider changing the town's liquor ordinance to provide additional licenses. Owners of the local bars argued that new licenses weren't needed and in any case should be put to a vote of the populace.
Owner Ron Possen of Captain's Cabin Bar & Grill, known for its prime-rib sandwiches on toast, says he didn't appreciate that the city was also considering granting the new restaurant an exemption on its property taxes that could have saved it $5,000 a year. "Nothing was handed to me when I bought my business," says Mr. Possen, 51. "My place is for sale. If you want a place, come and buy mine."
On Feb. 21, commissioners passed a revised liquor ordinance by a 3-2 vote. The bar owners gathered more than 130 signatures on petitions calling for a citywide vote. By the time voters approved the new ordinance, 238-156, in June, Mr. Jorgenson had opened a Bismarck restaurant and given up, for now, on Washburn.
"I said, well then, screw it, I'll just do this thing in Bismarck," Mr. Jorgenson says. But he still owns the Washburn site and says next summer he'll reconsider opening there.
Write to Bryan Gruley at bryan.gruley@wsj.com
"Clean Coal" is one step closer
30 November 2006
United States Advances $1 Billion for Clean Coal Projects
Environmentally sound use of resources at stake, Energy Department says
By Andrzej Zwaniecki
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – The Bush administration has awarded $1 billion in federal tax credits to utility companies for clean-coal power generation as part of a broad U.S. strategy to move toward emission-free energy.
The tax credits, authorized by the energy law passed by Congress in 2005, were awarded November 30 to nine companies mostly for advanced coal and gasification projects using a process called integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). An additional $650 million in tax credits for similar projects will be available in 2007, according to an Energy Department fact sheet.
Briefing reporters the same day, James Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, called the action the largest step to broad commercialization of clean-coal technologies.
He said the United States is well on the way to meet its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of its economy by 18 percent by 2012 through the use of these and other clean-energy technologies as well as measures to increase energy efficiency. GHG intensity is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output.
About half the credits will help fund construction of IGCC plants. IGCC, based on a process in which coal is converted into a gaseous fuel through partial oxidation, is the most environmentally friendly technology for coal-fired power generation available today, according to the Cooperative Research Center for Coal in Sustainable Development. The center is part of an Australian public-private partnership.
Coal gasification offers the opportunity to generate power with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the pathways to a future hydrogen economy, the center said in its presentation of the technology.
The wide-scale commercialization of these and other clean-coal technologies can help slow down, stabilize and eventually reverse “atmospheric trends” caused by greenhouse gas emissions, according to an Energy Department fact sheet.
Many scientists believe that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming.
INCENTIVES PROMOTE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY USE OF COAL
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who made the announcement, said that the energy content of abundant U.S. coal resources is higher than that of “nearly all the oil in the world.”
“These tax credits will help us find ways to use coal in an environmentally sensitive way,” he said.
Because coal is both plentiful and relatively cheap in the United States and in some other countries such as China, it is expected to remain the main source of electricity generation for decades to come, the department said. The portion of power generated from coal in overall electricity production is projected to increase in the United States from the current 50 percent to 57 percent by 2030 as demand for electricity grows.
The department said it believes that incentives such as tax credits will accelerate the widespread use of advanced technologies that allow electricity to be generated from coal more efficiently and with fewer harmful environmental effects. IGCC and other advanced technologies are expected to extract 55 percent to 60 percent of coal’s energy content compared to 35 percent in existing, modern coal-fired plants, Connaughton said.
The president of Tampa Electric, one of the tax credit recipients, said that incentives also would bring “significant savings” to customers. Tampa Electric was the first U.S. utility company to commercialize IGCC technology in partnership with the department.
The Energy Department said the overall U.S. strategy to make the best and most efficient use of coal in power generation also includes investing in carbon sequestration (capturing and storing carbon dioxide); supporting further modernization of existing power plants; making sure that new plants have the most efficient and environmentally friendly equipment; and building the first virtually emission-free coal power plant known as FutureGen.
The FutureGen plant is intended to deliver electricity at competitive prices and with nearly no greenhouse gas or other emissions by combining a range of innovative technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The construction of the plant is expected to start in 2009 and conclude in 2012. The plant will be operated by an international consortium, which includes companies from Australia, China and the United Kingdom.
For additional information, see related articles on FutureGen and carbon sequestration, as well as the electronic journal Clean Energy Solutions.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=November&x=20061130172755SAikceinawz0
United States Advances $1 Billion for Clean Coal Projects
Environmentally sound use of resources at stake, Energy Department says
By Andrzej Zwaniecki
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – The Bush administration has awarded $1 billion in federal tax credits to utility companies for clean-coal power generation as part of a broad U.S. strategy to move toward emission-free energy.
The tax credits, authorized by the energy law passed by Congress in 2005, were awarded November 30 to nine companies mostly for advanced coal and gasification projects using a process called integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). An additional $650 million in tax credits for similar projects will be available in 2007, according to an Energy Department fact sheet.
Briefing reporters the same day, James Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, called the action the largest step to broad commercialization of clean-coal technologies.
He said the United States is well on the way to meet its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of its economy by 18 percent by 2012 through the use of these and other clean-energy technologies as well as measures to increase energy efficiency. GHG intensity is the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output.
About half the credits will help fund construction of IGCC plants. IGCC, based on a process in which coal is converted into a gaseous fuel through partial oxidation, is the most environmentally friendly technology for coal-fired power generation available today, according to the Cooperative Research Center for Coal in Sustainable Development. The center is part of an Australian public-private partnership.
Coal gasification offers the opportunity to generate power with near-zero greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the pathways to a future hydrogen economy, the center said in its presentation of the technology.
The wide-scale commercialization of these and other clean-coal technologies can help slow down, stabilize and eventually reverse “atmospheric trends” caused by greenhouse gas emissions, according to an Energy Department fact sheet.
Many scientists believe that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming.
INCENTIVES PROMOTE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY USE OF COAL
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who made the announcement, said that the energy content of abundant U.S. coal resources is higher than that of “nearly all the oil in the world.”
“These tax credits will help us find ways to use coal in an environmentally sensitive way,” he said.
Because coal is both plentiful and relatively cheap in the United States and in some other countries such as China, it is expected to remain the main source of electricity generation for decades to come, the department said. The portion of power generated from coal in overall electricity production is projected to increase in the United States from the current 50 percent to 57 percent by 2030 as demand for electricity grows.
The department said it believes that incentives such as tax credits will accelerate the widespread use of advanced technologies that allow electricity to be generated from coal more efficiently and with fewer harmful environmental effects. IGCC and other advanced technologies are expected to extract 55 percent to 60 percent of coal’s energy content compared to 35 percent in existing, modern coal-fired plants, Connaughton said.
The president of Tampa Electric, one of the tax credit recipients, said that incentives also would bring “significant savings” to customers. Tampa Electric was the first U.S. utility company to commercialize IGCC technology in partnership with the department.
The Energy Department said the overall U.S. strategy to make the best and most efficient use of coal in power generation also includes investing in carbon sequestration (capturing and storing carbon dioxide); supporting further modernization of existing power plants; making sure that new plants have the most efficient and environmentally friendly equipment; and building the first virtually emission-free coal power plant known as FutureGen.
The FutureGen plant is intended to deliver electricity at competitive prices and with nearly no greenhouse gas or other emissions by combining a range of innovative technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The construction of the plant is expected to start in 2009 and conclude in 2012. The plant will be operated by an international consortium, which includes companies from Australia, China and the United Kingdom.
For additional information, see related articles on FutureGen and carbon sequestration, as well as the electronic journal Clean Energy Solutions.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=November&x=20061130172755SAikceinawz0
Kentucky gets clean coal tax credit
Clean coal plants receive tax credits
The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal
LOUISVILLE, KY. — To cut pollution and boost U.S. sources of power, the Energy Department has started awarding tax credits to build clean-burning coal plants, including one in Trimble County, Ky.
Louisville Gas & Electric Co. and Kentucky Utilities were awarded a $125 million federal tax credit Thursday for building a 750-megawat plant that burns pulverized coal at higher temperatures and pressure than older units to create more electricity and less air pollution. The credit, part of $1 billion handed out to nine companies nationwide, effectively lowers the cost of the $1.2 billion Kentucky power plant by more than 10 percent.
"There is more energy available in U.S. coal than in nearly all of the oil in the world, and these tax credits will help us fund ways to use coal in an environmentally sensitive way," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
Coal-fired plants provide nearly half of U.S. electricity supplies but emit mercury, sulfur and carbon dioxide, which many blame for global warming. Last year, Congress approved $1.65 billion for tax credits for clean-coal technology. The remaining $650 million will be awarded next year, the Energy Department said.
The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal
LOUISVILLE, KY. — To cut pollution and boost U.S. sources of power, the Energy Department has started awarding tax credits to build clean-burning coal plants, including one in Trimble County, Ky.
Louisville Gas & Electric Co. and Kentucky Utilities were awarded a $125 million federal tax credit Thursday for building a 750-megawat plant that burns pulverized coal at higher temperatures and pressure than older units to create more electricity and less air pollution. The credit, part of $1 billion handed out to nine companies nationwide, effectively lowers the cost of the $1.2 billion Kentucky power plant by more than 10 percent.
"There is more energy available in U.S. coal than in nearly all of the oil in the world, and these tax credits will help us fund ways to use coal in an environmentally sensitive way," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
Coal-fired plants provide nearly half of U.S. electricity supplies but emit mercury, sulfur and carbon dioxide, which many blame for global warming. Last year, Congress approved $1.65 billion for tax credits for clean-coal technology. The remaining $650 million will be awarded next year, the Energy Department said.
Nine Clean Coal Projects Get $1 Billion In Tax Credits
Nine Clean Coal Projects Get $1 Billion In Tax Credits
By Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Nine clean coal and advanced gasification projects in the United States will share $1 billion in tax credits in 2007, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Thursday.
The bulk of those tax credits, $800 million, will go to supporting Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle projects, which convert coal to a synthetic gas that can be burned for generating electricity.
During the conversion process pollutants sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury are stripped out, preventing them from being released into the atmosphere when the gas is burned.
While coal companies have been developing technologies that eliminate emissions, the U.S. Department of Energy said it needed financial help to make those technologies widely used.
Duke Energy (DUK.N: Quote, Profile , Research) will receive tax breaks equaling $258.5 for its Edwardsport, Indiana, projects and its Cleveland, North Carolina, projects, Bodman said.
Tampa Electric (TE.N: Quote, Profile , Research) will be given credits equaling $133.5 million, while Mississippi Power Company will receive $133 million.
E.ON U.S. (EONG.DE: Quote, Profile , Research) and its partners on a Kentucky clean coal project, Kentucky Utilities Company and Louisville Gas and Electric, will receive $125 million.
Carson Hydrogen Power LLC, and TX Energy LLC will also receive credits, although the Energy Department did not disclose the amounts.
As the U.S. seeks out alternatives to oil for energy, it is turning repeatedly to its coal fields, which account for more than 27 percent of the world's coal reserves, according to the statistical arm of the department, the Energy Information Administration.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
By Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Nine clean coal and advanced gasification projects in the United States will share $1 billion in tax credits in 2007, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Thursday.
The bulk of those tax credits, $800 million, will go to supporting Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle projects, which convert coal to a synthetic gas that can be burned for generating electricity.
During the conversion process pollutants sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury are stripped out, preventing them from being released into the atmosphere when the gas is burned.
While coal companies have been developing technologies that eliminate emissions, the U.S. Department of Energy said it needed financial help to make those technologies widely used.
Duke Energy (DUK.N: Quote, Profile , Research) will receive tax breaks equaling $258.5 for its Edwardsport, Indiana, projects and its Cleveland, North Carolina, projects, Bodman said.
Tampa Electric (TE.N: Quote, Profile , Research) will be given credits equaling $133.5 million, while Mississippi Power Company will receive $133 million.
E.ON U.S. (EONG.DE: Quote, Profile , Research) and its partners on a Kentucky clean coal project, Kentucky Utilities Company and Louisville Gas and Electric, will receive $125 million.
Carson Hydrogen Power LLC, and TX Energy LLC will also receive credits, although the Energy Department did not disclose the amounts.
As the U.S. seeks out alternatives to oil for energy, it is turning repeatedly to its coal fields, which account for more than 27 percent of the world's coal reserves, according to the statistical arm of the department, the Energy Information Administration.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Rage against the machine young people.
Whatever you do dont look at the facts cause it will make you feel like an idiot. Dont look at the upcoming shortage in electricity or for ways to meet this demand that provides the USA people with the high quality of life we all enjoy. They want to destory this lets just face it they hate the modern American who lives 30 years longer than his parents. Yeh' that really shows we are all going to die alright now dont it!
Story quote ; "The Bush administration is using taxpayer dollars to accelerate global warming," said Chatham Olive, a member of the N.C. Sierra Club Executive Committee. "The proposed Cliffside plant is a global warming machine."
FEDERAL INCENTIVES
Duke gets share of `clean coal' tax creditsCompany awarded $125 million in breaks for Cliffside projectCHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICKmailto:KIRKPATRICKckirkpatrick@charlotteobserver.com
The federal government awarded $1 billion in "clean coal" tax credits Thursday, including $125 million for proposed Duke Energy power units that some opponents say shouldn't be built because of rising costs and air pollution.
The Charlotte-based company is seeking state approval for the 800-megawatt units at its Cliffside facility, 55 miles west of Charlotte. The company says the units would burn cleaner than other coal-fired units in its fleet.
Duke said the tax credits show the project is environmentally sound. It was one of only two traditional coal projects chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy.
"It validates the project as efficient, sound and clean," said Duke spokesman Tom Williams.
Authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the credits allow power companies to lessen their federal tax burdens, once the qualifying plants are built. Those tax savings are passed on to consumers, who ultimately cover the cost of power projects through rate increases.
As part of the program, the utility also received $133.5 million in tax credits for a proposed Indiana coal plant expected to cost up to $2.1 billion. That plant would burn gas from heated coal and might also include clean air technology that would capture carbon gas created at the plant and store it underground.
The company said Wednesday it still wanted permission from the N.C. Utilities Commission to build the Cliffside units, even though projected costs have increased from $2 billion to $3 billion. Hearings are scheduled in Raleigh for Jan. 17.
Jim Rogers, Duke's chief executive, said in written testimony that up to 50 percent of the cost might be shared with an investor. Duke officials won't identify the potential partners.
Duke wants to build several power plants over the next 15 years to meet increasing energy demand in the Carolinas, including a controversial nuclear project in Cherokee County, S.C.
For the proposed nuclear plant, the utility has asked the N.C. regulators to allow it to pass on up to $125 million in planning costs through future rate increases, even if a plant is never built.
To cover costs for its long-range plans -- which include billions in coal, natural gas and nuclear projects -- the company won't say by how much rates would increase.
Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, said Duke should champion conservation over new construction.
"For a fraction of the $3 billion, we could be ramping up the programs," he said.
Duke said Wednesday it would spend about $50 million annually on programs to save energy and decrease power demand.
The Sierra Club criticized the grant.
"The Bush administration is using taxpayer dollars to accelerate global warming," said Chatham Olive, a member of the N.C. Sierra Club Executive Committee. "The proposed Cliffside plant is a global warming machine."
© 2006 Charlotte Observer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.charlotte.com
Whatever you do dont look at the facts cause it will make you feel like an idiot. Dont look at the upcoming shortage in electricity or for ways to meet this demand that provides the USA people with the high quality of life we all enjoy. They want to destory this lets just face it they hate the modern American who lives 30 years longer than his parents. Yeh' that really shows we are all going to die alright now dont it!
Story quote ; "The Bush administration is using taxpayer dollars to accelerate global warming," said Chatham Olive, a member of the N.C. Sierra Club Executive Committee. "The proposed Cliffside plant is a global warming machine."
FEDERAL INCENTIVES
Duke gets share of `clean coal' tax creditsCompany awarded $125 million in breaks for Cliffside projectCHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICKmailto:KIRKPATRICKckirkpatrick@charlotteobserver.com
The federal government awarded $1 billion in "clean coal" tax credits Thursday, including $125 million for proposed Duke Energy power units that some opponents say shouldn't be built because of rising costs and air pollution.
The Charlotte-based company is seeking state approval for the 800-megawatt units at its Cliffside facility, 55 miles west of Charlotte. The company says the units would burn cleaner than other coal-fired units in its fleet.
Duke said the tax credits show the project is environmentally sound. It was one of only two traditional coal projects chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy.
"It validates the project as efficient, sound and clean," said Duke spokesman Tom Williams.
Authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the credits allow power companies to lessen their federal tax burdens, once the qualifying plants are built. Those tax savings are passed on to consumers, who ultimately cover the cost of power projects through rate increases.
As part of the program, the utility also received $133.5 million in tax credits for a proposed Indiana coal plant expected to cost up to $2.1 billion. That plant would burn gas from heated coal and might also include clean air technology that would capture carbon gas created at the plant and store it underground.
The company said Wednesday it still wanted permission from the N.C. Utilities Commission to build the Cliffside units, even though projected costs have increased from $2 billion to $3 billion. Hearings are scheduled in Raleigh for Jan. 17.
Jim Rogers, Duke's chief executive, said in written testimony that up to 50 percent of the cost might be shared with an investor. Duke officials won't identify the potential partners.
Duke wants to build several power plants over the next 15 years to meet increasing energy demand in the Carolinas, including a controversial nuclear project in Cherokee County, S.C.
For the proposed nuclear plant, the utility has asked the N.C. regulators to allow it to pass on up to $125 million in planning costs through future rate increases, even if a plant is never built.
To cover costs for its long-range plans -- which include billions in coal, natural gas and nuclear projects -- the company won't say by how much rates would increase.
Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, said Duke should champion conservation over new construction.
"For a fraction of the $3 billion, we could be ramping up the programs," he said.
Duke said Wednesday it would spend about $50 million annually on programs to save energy and decrease power demand.
The Sierra Club criticized the grant.
"The Bush administration is using taxpayer dollars to accelerate global warming," said Chatham Olive, a member of the N.C. Sierra Club Executive Committee. "The proposed Cliffside plant is a global warming machine."
© 2006 Charlotte Observer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.charlotte.com
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