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Purely political, coal is dying an inglorious death that trump is trying his hardest to extend it.
It depends on which part of the supply curve the utility lives in... in some cases, coal is more competitive if in running in steady state. From a new plant perspective, probably not, and from a total social cost perspective, almost certainly not (emissions, health, etc.)
@EY1 That's a load of BS. We can be independent using solar and wind energy, which is infinitely cleaner than coal.
Clean coal is not clean; it only eliminates sulfur and NOx, not GHG emissions. CCS technology may make it truly clean but we are a way off that still. It also doesn't support energy independence as it is a finite resource.
The land area argument is nonsensical because there's plenty of it, wind can also be installed offshore and coal mining also consumes a lot of land --> http://www.mine-engineer.com/mining/images/Magma-Pit_Panorama1small.jpg. Current size of solar and wind doesn't tell you much, but the rate of uptake does (doubling y-on-y - Moore's law rate of growth). Renewables will have a technical limit to what fraction of the grid they can supply (unless you build a SO-called smart grid) because of the need for despatchability from base load plants, but they can be 40% of the grid at least.
Need to go back to nuclear.
There's a difference between coal and clean coal
Point being, there's no need for coal.
Wow, two people in one post have said that a S& consultant is right. That is truly "unpresidented!"
Another thing to consider is the lead time for a utility to get off the ground - it could be as long as 15-20 years from start to finish. For a utilities executive or municipality beginning the planning cycle, he or she has to project out fuel prices and regulatory trends over that cycle and throughout the lifespan of the facility itself, which could be several decades. And, because utilities are the biggest end user of coal in the United States, deregulating environmental controls around coal won't necessarily kick-off demand for coal - not to mention all the aforementioned trends on mining automation.
In short? A political gesture to a large part of his voting base, but economically lacks the punch of other, more meaningful pieces of legislation that could in theory pass through his desk.
We can still strive towards energy independence and explore natural gas options.
S1 is right. Also, this is pure charlatan-ism....taking advantage of people who don't understand that Trump can't make coal economical by decree. Nor can he force mining companies to revert to labor intensive operating models in lieu of automation. Same people who don't realize that regulation isn't the reason oil companies idled rigs. Sad!
The people that voted for trump are coal miners. Thus he's trying his best to bring coal back
The political aspiration is energy independence. Trump wants to move away from depending on other countries for energy. That's why he's pushing coal. Good idea, poor execution.
Calm down D1 I'm just explaining it the rationale behind it. Also his energy plan includes clean energy options as well. It just ramps up coal production which everyone is focused on
@d1 - that's going to take a really long time - you'll be worm food by then - solar currently supplies 0.5% of US demand, wind supplies 1.9%. Ever seen how much land it takes for solar and wind installations? Their contributions may increase but there are lots of non-political barriers to prevent them from being dominant any time soon - http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/topics/encyclopedia/solar/
S&1 is absolutely on point - efficiency can vary a lot at the margins. However, coal was dying long before democrats were in power. It's filthy, and with increased access to cleaner shale gas, coal has been uneconomical - natural gas is much cheaper. Total political con to believe coal is coming back, or that plot is and regulation killed it.
Regardless of what happens here, the uphill battle for reduction of coal usage is in China which produces 47% of global total yield, fueling 80% of its electricity production.
Yep, but they are making good progress in closing or aborting 100 coal power plants totaling 54GW, they're using less energy per unit of GDP and are going gangbusters into solar. We'd better catch up