It's something that should have happened a decade ago, if not 3 decades ago,
but Coal is now starting it's death throes. I don't think Coal consumption will drop to zero,
but i think it will drop some 70-90%. As a feedstock for certain chemical industries and
steel production, that part will continue for a long time, but, the last chapter will be a lot smaller then this one.
http://espresso.economist.com/...
In China, which burns half the world’s coal, consumption in the first four months of 2015 was down by 8% year-on-year; imports by a stonking 38%. The market capitalisation of America’s four largest coal companies is $1.2 billion, down from $22 billion in 2010. America will shut 12.8GW of coal power-generating capacity in 2015, triple the 2014 figure
In two years, the price index of coal has fallen 50%... The Stock Market which all the republicans worship has slashed Coal companies down to penny stocks.
Why, what, and what it means, comes next.
Fundamentally the coal business is sold into Electricity Production 90%, Steam Production5%
and Steel production 5%. Now what's happening is that the Electrical sector is
walking away from Coal.
It's been three years since we built new coal powerplants in the US, and we have
decommissioned Gigawatts of coal plants and converted tens of Gigawatts of coal
over to Natural Gas. Tens of Gigawatts of renewables are entering the grid, and
the grid needs fast response plants not slow response plants.
(Now I know people trapped in the 50's will be screaming about Baseload, vs Peakload,
but debating Baseload is rather like debating Punch cards vs Paper Tape, it's an
obsolete concept)...
The system is evolving as two huge things happen
1) The LED Lightbulb is out there, destroying demand, it's like a plague on power consumption. a 60 watt equivalent LED lightbulb is $23.99 for a 6 pack. It pulls 8.5 watts.
6 lights is enough to provide general area lighting in my house. 2 in the kitchen fixture, 3 in the living room, One on the porch light, one in my reading light. Now, used to be,
I had 360 watts of lights going, and I had 300 watts of heat getting generated,
and that meant in Summer, I needed another 800 watts to run the A/C to keep the house cool just to offset lighting energy. Well, Now, I need 40 watts to light the house and i need 100 watts to dump that heat. That's a big change. I went from 1100 watts down to 100.
90% reduction on the lighting side, just like the stock value of coal companies...
2) I'm about to install 4 KW of Solar PV on my house. (Diary to come)
That means for 4-6 hours a day, i stop using electricity and produce electricity.
So for 5 hours a night 90% of my lighting demands went away, and during the day 50% of my demand went away.
That means electricity markets went from easy to predict to volatile and stochastic.
In the short term, it's really killing coal power plants. They are looking now for subsidies to stick around ( We call these capacity payments)...
The people who ruined the mountains of west virginia are now demanding money to stay around.
now that Coal is dying, the Obama administration is starting to kick in CO2 regs
http://www.tomdispatch.com/...
On August 5th, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey banded together with 15 other state attorneys general to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suspend the implementation of new rules devised by the Obama administration to slow the pace of climate change. The regulations, announced just two days earlier, sought to reduce power plant emissions of carbon dioxide -- a major cause of global warming -- by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. Because the rules are likely to fall most heavily on coal-fired power plants, which emit more carbon than other forms of electricity generation, states that produce and burn coal (mostly led by Republicans) are adamantly opposed to them.
But it doesn't really matter, the Market is wrecking their model.
In the first half of this year, at least six domestic coal companies filed for bankruptcy. In February, West Virginia’s Covington Coal fell, followed by Xinergy and Grass Creek Coal in April, Patriot and Birmingham Coal & Coke in May, and A&M Coal in June. In August came the biggest announcement of all: the $10-billion coal giant Alpha Natural Resources had entered the bankruptcy sweepstakes, too.
Only four years earlier, Alpha had secured its position as one of the world’s largest coal outfits by purchasing the Appalachian company Massey Energy for $7 billion and expanding its operations to 60 mines, many in Appalachia. But its reign would prove short-lived.
,,,
By late July, the New York Stock Exchange announced that it had suspended trading of Alpha Natural Resources’ stock because it was worth next to nothing.
I did a blog a few weeks ago on this,
http://www.dailykos.com/...
but the NY Times even said God Coal is dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In April 2005, President George W. Bush hailed “clean coal” as a key to “greater energy independence,” pledging $2 billion in research funds that promised a new golden age for America’s most abundant energy resource.
But a decade later, the United States coal industry is reeling as never before in its history, the victim of new environmental regulations, intensifying attacks by activists, collapsing coal prices, and — above all — the rise of cheap alternative fuels, especially natural gas.
So much for the Bush vision
“This has been a storm gathering for a very long time,” said Jeff Goodell, author of the 2006 book “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.” “When I wrote my book, coal looked indomitable. But below the surface you could see all these issues coming at them. You can only hold off the larger forces of progress and science for so long. The bottom line is that it’s a 19th-century fuel very badly suited for the 21st century. There’s no way you can wash or scrub coal to make that essential fact go away.”
Market forces have accomplished in just a few years what environmentalists and social advocates have struggled for decades to achieve. Coal prices have plunged about 70 percent in the last four years. This year the number of underground and surface coal miners in the United States dropped more than 10 percent, to just over 80,000 workers. There are now more than twice as many workers in the fast-growing solar power industry than there are coal miners.
With Billion dollar mines selling for a dollar they are in trouble.
Now if these were nice guys itd be sad but these are scumbags...
Massey Energy, https://en.wikipedia.org/....
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
Now do you kick them while they are down?
1) swap every lightbulb in your house for LED...
2) get a small PV installation at your residence.
https://www.anapode.com/...
or go to a solar leasing company
like Solar City.
EDIT[UPDATE]
http://www.utilitydive.com/...
United States' coal use continues to decline and in the first half of this year saw a more than 14% drop relative to 2014, due to lower gas prices and the retirement of older, inefficient units.
According to SNL, that puts coal burn on par with use in the early 1980s, though it still produces the largest share of utilities' power needs.
h/t user wisper for the above