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Clean coal… clean, clean coal… said the Orange Goblin…

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: March 30, 2017, 09:33:55 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Trump's attack on environmental laws won't save coal miners' jobs

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PDT - Wednesday, March 29, 2017



I PITY the poor coal miners who allowed themselves to be used as props by Donald Trump. On Tuesday, a group of them stood with the president as he signed his executive order gutting Obama-era climate change regulations. After signing the document with his flamboyant flourish, Trump turned to them and said, “You know what this is? You know what this says? You're going back to work.”

Well, maybe not.

Trump has repeatedly promised to bring jobs back to Coal Country, blaming federal regulations for the industry's decades-long decline. That promise is akin to a politician 100 years ago pledging to restore the economic fortunes of blacksmiths and buggy whip makers. That politician would have been a fool or a liar. Trump may be both.

Coal is as dirty as coal mining is dangerous. There are compelling reasons why the government has imposed rules to address the serious problems coal has created in public health, worker safety and environmental protection. Those rules probably did crimp the style of careless and callous coal company bosses and cut into their profits. But the real reason coal is in a slump is economic. Other fuels — natural gas, in particular — are cleaner and cheaper. The market for coal has shrunk and is destined to grow even smaller.

There are now about 70,000 jobs left in the coal industry. That compares with 650,000 jobs in the burgeoning renewable energy field. Trump's actions may temporarily save the jobs of a few coal miners in West Virginia and Kentucky, but many workers in other states could be endangered by what he is trying to do. Bob Keefe, executive director of Environmental Entrepreneurs, a national advocacy group for renewable energy businesses, told the Los Angeles Times that the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, the plan Trump is revoking, would have been “a huge economic catalyst.”

“President Trump is basically telling California's more than 40,000 clean-energy businesses and the 500,000 workers they employ that they don't matter to him,” he said.

Of course, as was the case with healthcare, the future of energy is a complex subject that is beyond the comprehension of the non-studious Trump. He is a man who prefers to follow his instincts and those instincts seem to invariably lead him to side with the business executives and billionaires who value profits, private jets and primo golf courses as much as he does.

Chief among those plutocratic cronies is Robert Mercer, a fabulously wealthy hedge fund tycoon who funds Breitbart News and was a strong supporter of Trump's presidential campaign. Mercer does not believe climate change is a problem, but government is. He has been quoted as saying he wants to see the federal government “shrunk to the size of a pinhead.” For him, getting rid of Obama's climate change rules is a no-brainer.

Having surrounded himself with people like Mercer, it is no surprise that Trump is so eager to abandon the leadership role the United States has taken in reducing carbon emissions. That is obviously a horrible idea if humanity is, indeed, facing future calamity caused by rising global temperatures, as most of the world's scientists say is the case. Even short of that, though, it is a pretty dumb idea to side with coal companies and oil men while ceding the renewable energy field to China and India and Germany. That is not the way to maintain American economic preeminence.

If we are lucky, Trump's executive order will be tied up in courts for years to come; not all environmental laws can be quickly erased with the stroke of a president's pen. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has announced he will join with his counterparts in several other states to aggressively oppose Trump's attack on the Clean Power Plan. Meanwhile, in a joint statement, California Governor Jerry Brown and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to keep their states working toward ambitious benchmarks to reduce greenhouse gases.

“Dismantling the Clean Power Plan and other critical climate programs is profoundly misguided and shockingly ignores basic science,” the governors said in their statement. “With this move, the administration will endanger public health, our environment and our economic prosperity.”

And, they might have added, this will not prevent jobs in the coal mines from fading away.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-coal-jobs-20170328-story.html
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« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2017, 10:45:52 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Coal no longer fuels America. But the legacy — and the myth — remain.

Coal country still clings to the industry that was long its chief source of revenue and a way of life.

By KAREN HELLER | 7:38PM EDT - Sunday, July 09, 2017

A statue honoring miners stands in front of the Boone County Courthouse in Madison, West Virginia. The memorial flame stays lit for the duration of the town's week-long Coal Festival. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
A statue honoring miners stands in front of the Boone County Courthouse in Madison, West Virginia. The memorial flame stays lit for the duration
of the town's week-long Coal Festival. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


BOON COUNTY claims to be the birthplace of America's coal industry, the rich and abundant black rock discovered in these verdant hills almost three centuries ago. Coal gives name to nearly everything in these parts — the Big and Little Coal rivers, the weekly Coal Valley News, the wondrous Bituminous Coal Heritage Foundation Museum and the West Virginia Coal Festival, celebrating, as we arrive in town, its 24th year.

The festival is more state fair than true celebration of coal. There's a carnival, a talent competition, seven beauty queens (from Little Miss Coal Festival to Forever West Virginia Coal Queen).

Late in the afternoon of the second day, high on a hill graced with the statue of a miner, there's a small memorial service for the West Virginia men who died on the job over the previous year. The most recent was 32-year-old Rodney Osborne, pinned by mining equipment on June 14th. The total deaths are five, fewer than the number of Miss Coal Festivals who wilt in the heat on the steps of the neo-classical courthouse, draped in charcoal-black sashes. No coal executives bother to show up, nor any reps from the once-robust union.

Coal mining, celebrated with rhinestones and pageantry, is an enduring legacy rather than a thriving enterprise. Which is coal country's problem, and the challenge for its boosters. We're stuck on the idea of coal, its potent history and Walker Evans imagery, although much of the world has moved on.

But not Boone County. Not yet.

“We're keeping our heritage alive. We don't want it to be a dying industry,” says Delores W. Cook, titularly the festival's vice president/treasurer/assistant director but in fact its true sovereign. “This has been a way of life for people in West Virginia, keeping the lights on for all of the United States, for many, many years.”

Cook adjusts her meringue of hair. She's a coal miner’s daughter, a distinction residents declare in introductions, akin to being the child of a veteran with a proud chest of medals.

Her late husband, Dennis “De” Cook — every miner seems to sport a diminutive — worked coal “42 and a half years,” she says, making sure every last month is honored. De's hard hat, plastered with union and company stickers, adorns a cross at the courthouse event, removed from its customary place atop a museum mannequin.


Delores Cook is vice president of the coal festival. Her late husband, Dennis, worked in the mines for more than 42 years. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
Delores Cook is vice president of the coal festival. Her late husband, Dennis, worked in the mines for more than 42 years.
 — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


Boone's fortunes rose and subsequently plummeted along with the industry. But coal's grip holds hard, a source of revenue that the state has been slow to replace. Fewer than 700 county residents worked the mines last year. The school district is Boone's largest employer, but it was forced to lay off 150 workers when income from the severance tax on coal extraction last year dropped to a fifth of what it was less than a decade ago.

Decades past its heyday, and despite the availability of cleaner and more widely used energy resources, coal is enjoying its moment in politics, culture and the environmental debate. It has assumed a prominence in our national conversation far greater than its current consumption: 15 percent of America's energy resources, producing about a third of all electricity. It's as though we had revived a discussion about locomotives. Fracking, recently a constant in the news, has been relegated to the back burner. Oil, too.

Coal dominated the energy debate during the presidential campaign, embraced by Donald Trump and dismissed as obsolete by Hillary Clinton.

“We've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels,” said the Democratic candidate, promptly rendering her a pariah here.

Coal is an idea some Americans can't quit, although it employed fewer than 66,000 miners in 2015. The Kohl's department store chain has more than twice as many workers.

But retail doesn't play as powerfully in the American imagination, launching stories, inspiring music, forging identity. “Entire communities were formed to mine” coal, says Barbara Freese, author of Coal: A Human History. “Coal created its own geographical area and culture.”

The mountainous sweep of Appalachia seized the spotlight, mined for gold by journalists who had miscalculated Trump's ascendancy and the region's pivotal role in his election. J.D. Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy, viewed as a decoder of Appalachian culture, has spent nearly a year crowning the bestseller list.

“I happen to love the coal miners,” declared President Trump in June, announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. Trump has welcomed coal miners and executives to the White House for a photo op, the first in ages, and declared “an end to the war on coal” — a term minted by an industry association — at a time when even the Kentucky Coal Museum is switching to solar energy.


Jayla Cottrell, 14, left, the festival's “Forever Queen” and Miah Brown, 16, the “Teen Queen”, at the Bituminous Coal Heritage Foundation Museum. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
Jayla Cottrell, 14, left, the festival's “Forever Queen” and Miah Brown, 16, the “Teen Queen”, at the Bituminous Coal Heritage
Foundation Museum. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


Southern West Virginia is a place of both startling beauty and hardship, a juxtaposition that became all the more pronounced when companies started blowing off mountaintops to harvest fuel using fewer men, wrecking the state's grand scenery in the quest for coal.

“We're learning we can't have all our eggs in one basket. We need to grow and diversify,” says state Senator Ron Stollings (Democrat) at the festival opening, reading from Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin III's address.

But in this region, coal is a tradition that continues to haunt.

“It's not only an industry that's lost, but a way of life, one filled with terrible hardships,” says composer Julia Wolfe, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio, Anthracite Fields, commemorates Pennsylvania’s miners. “The trick is not to romanticize the life. There are very beautiful things about the community's dependence on each other, but there’s also terrible abuse and negligence.”

The industry was long marked by excessive volatility: all in during boom times — then neglect, with companies decamping under the cloak of bankruptcy, threatening pensions, wrecking the security of proud men. Jobs evaporated. But the mountains remained.

“There's still a lot of coal in these hills,” says Cook, a former state representative and the steward of perpetual optimism. The fuel never dried up, only its viability, which profoundly affected the community.

The companies often cared less about the men than the commodity, a story the museum subtly reveals through its artifacts, without rancor or editorializing.

Miners were required to purchase work tools from company stores. Security was an afterthought. “We didn't have reflective gear when I worked in the mines,” says former miner (fourth-generation) Tim Spratt, visiting the museum with his grandson, gesturing toward a vitrine. “That was only for supervisors.”


This 24-hour coal operation is one of many such facilities along the Kanawha River just south of Charleston, West Virginia. Coal “will come back,” says one state resident, “but never the way that it was.” — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
This 24-hour coal operation is one of many such facilities along the Kanawha River just south of Charleston, West Virginia.
Coal “will come back,” says one state resident, “but never the way that it was.”
 — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


Spratt, who sang at the memorial service, once worked “low coal” in a hole less than three feet high. “Which is a hard job for a fat man,” he says.

“I liked the camaraderie with my fellow miners,” adds resident Rickey Woodrum, who spent a decade underground before he turned to operating auto-body shops. “I liked the money. It was tough. It will make you tough. But it put your kids through college.”

So they wouldn't ever have to work the mines.

Mining is, was, the rare job where a man — invariably, a man — could provide for his family, making $80,000 or $90,000 in a good year, with just a high school degree, often less, rising up by working below.

The industry's declining fortunes contributed to the death of opportunity for many men to be their families' top wage-earner, another conversation of our times.

“Coal's been going downhill since World War II,” says former miner Jim Chaney. “In Boone County, it used to be you mined the coal or you moved the coal.”

Now, he believes, “it will come back, but never the way that it was.” It's a coda you hear constantly in coal country.

West Virginia, seceding from Confederate Virginia in 1863, is the only state created by the Civil War. (Yet plenty of Confederate flags are on display, including several affixed to a carnival stand.) Instead of battlefields, the state produced a landscape of mining conflicts and disasters: Matewan, the Battle of Blair Mountain (the town is now little more than a commemorative plaque), Upper Big Branch.


The Upper Big Branch Miners Memorial near Whitesville, West Virginia, honors 29 miners who were killed in a mine accident in 2010. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
The Upper Big Branch Miners Memorial near Whitesville, West Virginia, honors 29 miners who were killed in a mine accident in 2010.
 — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


The industry's dirty, dramatic and violent history was dominated by outsize union leaders and predatory companies that removed the coal and the wealth and left behind towns that resemble Depression-era movie sets and became visual catnip for documentary filmmakers and photographers.

Six decades ago, McDowell was a county of 100,000. Today, it's a fifth the size, and West Virginia's poorest county. In 2015, it garnered national attention for all the wrong reasons: as home to the nation's highest rate of opioid-induced deaths.

Outside Welch, one of McDowell's many poor towns, Johnny Bishop, 65, his skin tanned oak, is folded inside a white van on an empty road selling apparel, including mining gear with bands of reflective tape.

Bishop labored for 16 years in the mines, two years picking on his knees in holes 28 inches high. On his worst day, he was shocked by 480 volts from a live wire. Fourth-generation in the mines, he returned to work two days later.

“If you're a miner, your crew is like your brothers in the mines,” he says.

But business got bad. Bishop's health got worse. Prescribed opioids for the pain, he took them but says he never got hooked, then quit them cold.

Ultimately, he left the holler, worked on construction in Virginia, urged his five children not to become fifth-generation, and ultimately moved back to where the living was less taxing.

The coal companies and the nation's leaders “didn't pay attention to us,” he says. “We used to have so much here. We got coal. We got natural gas. We got timber. There used to be no poor people in McDowell County.”


Ex-coal miner Johnny Bishop sells miner gear and other apparel in Welch, one of the poorest towns in West Virginia. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
Ex-coal miner Johnny Bishop sells miner gear and other apparel in Welch, one of the poorest towns in West Virginia.
 — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


Now, that's almost all McDowell has.

How much for the miner's shirt? Two dollars. We tip him three.

Wednesday is mariachi night at the Hacienda restaurant, where three employees were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in May for having improper papers. Everyone was thrilled when two of them came back.

While the beauty queens hold court at the festival memorial service, miners coming off their most recent shift choose to relax here with fajitas and beer.

Trains used to pass through Boone County eight times a day, sometimes more. Residents in housing yards from the tracks cursed the constant racket, others the frustration of driving behind a slow coal truck on two-lane roads over the hills.

No more. Those trains and trucks are now like Christmas.

At 7 p.m., as the carnival lights brighten narrow Main Street, a train plows through Madison, scores of cars loaded with peaks of coal.

“Yoo-hoo! Hear that?” gasps Cook. “The coal train!” She almost breaks into a jig.


Pro-coal signage is found all over West Virginia, where the coal industry has been a way of life for more than a century. — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.
Pro-coal signage is found all over West Virginia, where the coal industry has been a way of life for more than a century.
 — Photograph: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post.


• Karen Heller is national general features writer for Style at The Washington Post. She was previously a metro columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she also reported on popular culture, politics and social issues.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/coal-no-longer-fuels-america-but-the-legacy--and-the-myth--remain/2017/07/07/d8a8bcb4-582b-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html
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« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2017, 11:06:58 pm »

Well I guess as part of the Paris Climate deal India and China are able to build  new coal mines every month for years to come...we should all be into it🙄
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« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2017, 03:56:28 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Rick Perry just proposed sweeping new steps
to help struggling coal and nuclear plants


The Energy Department announced new loan guarantees for a
struggling nuclear plant — and a controversial new policy that
could pay coal and nuclear plants for keeping the grid stable.


By CHRIS MOONEY and STEVEN MUFSON | 5:00AM EDT - Friday, September 29, 2017

In this 2015 photo, a plume of steam billows from the coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, New Hampshire. — Photograph: Jim Cole/Associated Press.
In this 2015 photo, a plume of steam billows from the coal-fired Merrimack Station in Bow, New Hampshire.
 — Photograph: Jim Cole/Associated Press.


ENERGY SECRETARY Rick Perry took sweeping steps on Friday to buttress a pair of financially-strapped nuclear plants under construction and redefine how coal and nuclear plants are compensated for the electricity they provide — a move that, if agreed to by independent federal energy regulators, could tilt some of the nation's complex power markets away from renewables and natural gas.

Perry announced the Energy Department would provide $3.7 billion in loan guarantees to three Georgia utilities struggling to complete a pair of nuclear reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle generating plant. These loan guarantees come on top of $8.3 billion in loans the department has already given to the project, but they still might fall short of what will be required to complete the costly reactors.

The nuclear project has been running far over-budget and behind schedule, and the utilities have been scrambling to come up with financing after the main engineering company, Westinghouse, declared bankruptcy earlier this year.

The nuclear industry has urged the federal government to help, saying the AP1000 reactors are part of a new generation of nuclear plants. “I believe the future of nuclear energy in the United States is bright and look forward to expanding American leadership in innovative nuclear technologies,” Perry said. He noted the project had created approximately 6,000 construction jobs and, if completed, would create about 800 permanent jobs.

The aid for Vogtle partners would be issued by the Energy Department's loan guarantee program, which President Trump's 2018 budget proposal would abolish.

“They certainly have courage to contradict their convictions,” said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center and a longtime critic of federal energy loan guarantees.

Many Republicans have criticized the Energy Department's loan guarantees, often citing a loan given to Solyndra, a photovoltaic panel manufacturer that went bankrupt. Defenders of the program say the loan guarantee program's failure rate is well below the level Congress anticipated when it created the program.

“First it's losing solar programs. Now it's losing nuclear programs. When are we going to stop subsidizing losers?” Sokolski said.

The new loan guarantees would provide $1.67 billion to Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company; $1.6 billion to Oglethorpe Power Corporation; and $415 million to three subsidiaries of the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia.

Critics of the loan guarantees say the construction of the Vogtle reactors is risky and there is a strong possibility the loans will not be repaid. The Georgia Public Service Commission must review the utilities' financial plans and construction progress regularly because the utilities have already been passing along costs to consumers.

“Department of Energy officials should be exercising more caution now, with billions of taxpayer dollars already on the line for the ill-fated nuclear reactor project. Instead, they've doubled down on a bad decision,” said Ryan Alexander, the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, in a statement.

Perry also moved on Friday to help nuclear and coal plants competing in regional electricity markets. Citing his department's recent, contested study about the workings of the electric grid, Perry asked the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to adopt new regulations that would ensure coal and nuclear plants that add to the grid's reliability can “[recover] fully allocated costs and thereby continue to provide the energy security on which our nation relies.”

Perry's letter to FERC, and the proposed regulation, argue these so-called “baseload” plants provide critical stability and reliability to the electric grid and should be compensated accordingly. They cite not only the department's recent grid study, but also the recent hurricane disasters afflicting the United States and power outages during the 2014 Polar Vortex event.

“What's most significant about this is that we've been working on these issues for the better part of the last 3-plus years, even longer — and what the Secretary has done is said, enough talk, we need to actually act,” said Matt Crozat, the senior director for policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute, which hailed both of Perry's moves on Friday. “And so what this is going to do is drive to some conclusion what a policy action is going to be.”

FERC has 60 days to decide what action to take, and there is no guarantee the independent agency will go along with Perry's request. Trump has recently appointed people to key posts at the agency — and the commission's new chairman, Neil Chatterjee, has already signaled he could be receptive to the move.

“I believe baseload power should be recognized as an essential part of the fuel mix,” Chatterjee said in an August FERC podcast. “I believe that generation, including our existing coal and nuclear fleet, need to be properly compensated to recognize the value they provide to the system.”

“For years, FERC has been relatively fuel-neutral, instead focusing on broader and successful approaches to reliability,” said Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford, and former chief of staff and an assistant secretary in the Department of Energy. “The question is whether that era has ended and we'll now see different commissioners representing different fuel camps.”

If FERC agrees with Perry, and if it decides coal and nuclear are more reliable, the result could potentially mean reducing the use of solar, wind and natural gas by key grid operators in favor of coal and nuclear — which would be compensated in a way that would help prevent more plant closures. Half a dozen reactors have shut down since 2007 and half a dozen more are scheduled to close in the next nine years, according to the Energy Information Administration. The number of operating reactors has dropped from 104 to 99.

Some environmental groups and defenders of renewable energy quickly attacked the proposed regulation as a way of imposing government mandates on the working of energy markets and reducing competition.

“I think this is the most significant electricity policy action in 20 years,” said Rob Gramlich, who works for renewable energy clients through his consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC, and previously served as an adviser to FERC commissioner Pat Wood.

Gramlich argued if FERC goes in this direction, then grid operators are “going to pay for resources they don't necessarily need. So they're going to charge homes and businesses more than they otherwise would. And they're going to use relatively more coal and nuclear relative to gas, wind and solar.”

Mark Kresowik, a deputy regional director for the northeast with the Sierra Club, said he thought that if FERC actually adopted the proposed policy, it would lead to lawsuits or even states dropping out of certain regional electricity markets that would be affected, which primarily lie in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

“Instead of coal and nuclear plants having to compete against cheaper, cleaner sources, customers would be forced to pay for unnecessary plants,” Kresowik said. “Frankly, I think that states that currently compete and use the markets would leave. I certainly would expect states to walk away from organized markets. It would be the end of competitive markets in the United States of America. That's not even an exaggeration.”

However, Richard Powell, who runs the conservative ClearPath Foundation and praised Perry's request, said “if you do allow a lot of these generators to go down, rates are also going to go up, because we're going to take a lot of capacity offline, which is going to mean power supply is scarcer.” ClearPath is backed by wealthy North Carolina businessman Jay Faison.

Other groups, such as those representing the nuclear and coal industries, also hailed the move on Friday.

“We commend Secretary Perry for initiating a rulemaking by FERC that will finally value the on-site fuel security provided by the coal fleet,” said Paul Bailey, the president and chief executive of the American Council for Clean Coal Electricity, whose members include the nation’s largest coal mining companies, coal-intensive utilities and coal-carrying railroads. “The coal fleet has large stockpiles of coal that help to ensure grid resilience and reliability.  We look forward to working with FERC and grid operators to quickly adopt long overdue market reforms that value the coal fleet.”


Dino Grandoni contributed to this report.

• Chris Mooney writes about energy and the environment at The Washington Post. He previously worked at Mother Jones, where he wrote about science and the environment and hosted a weekly podcast. Chris spent a decade prior to that as a freelance writer, podcaster and speaker, with his work appearing in Wired, Harper's, Slate, Legal Affairs, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, to name a few. Chris also has published four books about science and climate change.

• Steven Mufson covers energy and other financial matters for The Washington Post. Since joining The Post, he has covered the White House, China, economic policy and diplomacy. He has worked at The Post since 1989 and has been its chief economic policy writer, Beijing correspondent, diplomatic correspondent and deputy editor of the weekly Outlook section. Earlier, he spent six years working for The Wall Street Journal in New York, London and Johannesburg and wrote a book about the 1980s uprisings in South Africa's black townships.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • Here’s the bottom line on the Energy Department's grid study


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/29/rick-perry-proposes-sweeping-new-moves-to-support-coal-and-nuclear-plants
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« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2017, 03:56:50 pm »



“Corporate Welfare”
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« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2017, 04:14:51 pm »

Actually..glad you bought that up..in your expert opinion....how can I do my part to increase global warming🙄
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« Reply #6 on: October 02, 2017, 09:19:35 am »

Meanwhile obsessive wind and solar zealots keep telling us these feeble attempts at city-scale power generation are affordable. Not when you factor in maintenance, land use, grid modification, and... drum roll... storage.
Wishful thinking idiots are going to destroy their own economies. Trump has decided not to be one of those idiots.
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« Reply #7 on: October 02, 2017, 09:37:01 am »

Speaking of wishful thinking... That pretty much sums up the loony left.
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« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2017, 10:35:43 pm »



Yep ..... Donald J. Trump is “full-of-shit” alright!!  (SNIGGER)




from the Los Angeles Times....

Coal country is finding little relief in Trump's climate actions

“Reality has triumphed over wishful thinking.”

By EVAN HALPER | 11:05AM PDT - Sunday, October 15 2017

David Osikowicz, age 66, is owner of Original Fuels, a coal brokerage and four affiliated coal mines in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Five years ago this whole lot would be piled high with coal, but demand has fallen sharply. — Photograph: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times.
David Osikowicz, age 66, is owner of Original Fuels, a coal brokerage and four affiliated coal mines in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Five years
ago this whole lot would be piled high with coal, but demand has fallen sharply. — Photograph: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times.


EVERY MORNING is filled with anxiety in this hardscrabble town so intertwined with the fortunes of its hulking coal power plant that a drawing of the facility is emblazoned on the community's police force emblem.

Locals look out their windows to see if there are clouds drifting from its massive smokestacks, indicating the plant is still running. If they don't see any, they wonder if plant owners have thrown in the towel for good.

“Everyone gets concerned when they wake up and don't see smoke coming out,” said Rob Nymick, manager of the 1,700-resident borough that he says will be economically “crushed” if the plant goes dark.

As the Trump administration dismantles one of the world's most aggressive programs to confront climate change, it is invoking the suffering of communities like this one, where the brawny coal power plant that anchors the local economy teeters on insolvency.

Yet as the Trump administration declares an end to what it calls the “war on coal,” Homer City isn't any less under siege.

The plant remains an albatross to investors, and a source of increasing anxiety to the hundreds of Pennsylvanians who rely on it for their livelihood. It is likely to remain a loser financially no matter how far Trump goes in rolling back regulations.

“I'm not sold on the fact that the war on coal is putting that power plant out of business,” said Nymick, pointing to struggles to compete with cheaper natural gas, solar and wind energy. “You don't know what to believe or who to believe.”

Other coal facilities throughout the country are also finding no salvation in the elimination of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which the Trump administration promised would reinvigorate them.

A fresh round of closures expected to cost at least 850 jobs was announced by Vistra Energy in Texas this week, even as the administration launched its repeal of landmark regulations on plant greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Clean Power Plan is not what hurt coal,” said Michael Wara, a professor of energy law at Stanford University. “It is hard to hurt someone more when they were already mortally wounded.”

That's put the Trump administration in an awkward place. Even after straining to show the repeal of the Obama-era rules would boost the economy by baking into their plan financial assumptions that many experts dispute, their plan as written still doesn't do much for the sagging coal industry.

A coal revival requires more than a Clean Power Plan repeal. It requires an outright bailout, an even less politically popular option, that the administration is also pushing. The Energy Department's plan to force regional electricity grids to purchase large amounts of coal, unveiled days before the Clean Power Plan repeal was made public, is getting a hostile reception. Oil and gas companies are joining solar and wind advocates in working aggressively against it.

“The entire energy economics and energy law community thinks it is a crazy proposal,” Wara said of the subsidy plan. “I have not met anyone who does not have serious problems with it.”

It all leaves communities like Homer City in the lurch. At its peak, the Homer City Generating Station provided enough electricity to power 2 million homes daily on a power grid extending throughout the Northeast and deep into the Midwest. The plant generates hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity each year.

Now it has just emerged from its second bankruptcy, and many days it is running well below half capacity. Layoffs are underway, and the consortium of bondholders saddled with the asset are scrambling to find someone — anyone — to buy it. A plant valued at $1.8 billion two decades ago might not fetch a quarter of that price now. The energy it produces just can't compete with cheaper, abundant natural gas and renewable power.


An open coal pit leased by David Osikowicz, who only started digging recently in this leased area and has not yet reached the coal, but should very soon. — Photograph: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times.
An open coal pit leased by David Osikowicz, who only started digging recently in this leased area and has not yet reached the coal,
but should very soon. — Photograph: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times.


Coal broker David Osikowicz applauds the Trump administration's enthusiasm for his industry, but even he questions what the demise of the Clean Power Plan will do to save it.

“When President Obama said five years ago that you can keep burning coal but you will go broke doing it, my instinct was to liquidate,” said Osikowicz, standing in his eerily quiet coal yard in Punxsutawney, where most of the staff has been laid off. “Unfortunately, I didn't do that. Now reality has triumphed over wishful thinking.”

Like many others in coal country, Osikowicz feels strongly that mounting government regulations over the years sunk the region, creating burdens on coal that ultimately became insurmountable when the prices of natural gas plunged. But he also says Trump has over-promised.

“I think he meant well when he said we are gong to bring back coal, we are going to bring back the steel mines in Pittsburgh,” Osikowicz said. “Do I think that is going to happen? No.”

His brother Mark, who works loading coal in the yard, tries to take a more optimistic view. “We've had 24 years of presidents working against us,” he said. “It will take more than four years to bail us out.”

Five or six years ago, chatting on the bustling yard would have been impossible amid the giant trucks lined up to fill orders. It would have been too busy, loud and dangerous to stand around talking, both men say.

Now the workforce is down to a third of what it was at the coal yard and four nearby strip mines that David Osikowicz owns. The business that came from the Homer City plant, once accounting for half of all sales, is completely gone. The value of his capital investment has plummeted. Osikowicz pointed to one of the $1.5-million bulldozers he owns. The same model recently sold at a local auction for $125,000, he said.

Osikowicz is left hoping the long-shot subsidy plan the administration is proposing will prevail. He argues, like Energy Secretary Rick Perry, that regulators have favored the expansion of natural gas at the cost of national security and electricity grid resiliency.

It's a popular view in coal country but has little support outside of it. There's also a lot of skepticism about the effects of repealing the Clean Power Plan.

“In order to justify this, they do serious violence to established economics,” Richard Revesz, dean emeritus at New York University School of Law, said of the repeal. “The level of contortions and the attacks on standard economic principles are unprecedented.”

Revesz runs through what he sees as the absurdities — and possible legal vulnerabilities — with the Trump administration plan.

First, it assumes no benefit from the problems avoided outside of America's borders when the U.S. pumps less greenhouse gas into the atmosphere — such as the floods, droughts and other humanitarian crises intensified by global warming worldwide, which ultimately affect the U.S. economy and national security.

The value it places on stopping warming in America is well below what most mainstream climate economists would place it at.

And the thousands of lives saved and tens of thousands of chronic illnesses averted by exceeding national air quality standards are disregarded, he notes.

The Trump administration has its own view, alleging it was the Obama administration that cooked the books to justify the climate action in the first place.

All the noise is bringing little comfort to Nymick in Homer City. He has lost faith in Washington to do anything meaningful to help his community deal with an economic crisis that is threatening to get substantially worse if the smoke stops rising from the hulking coal plant for good.

Trump's pledges during a visit to central Pennsylvania last week that he would revive the region's economy haven't stopped locals from anxiously looking out their windows each morning for those plumes.


Evan Halper reported from Homer City, Pennsylvania.

• Evan Halper writes about a broad range of policy issues out of Washington D.C., with particular emphasis on how Washington regulates, agitates and very often miscalculates in its dealings with California. Before heading east, he was the Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Sacramento, where he spent a decade untangling California's epic budget mess and political dysfunction.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-coal-climate-201710-htmlstory.html
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« Reply #9 on: October 16, 2017, 10:59:23 pm »

Trump Derangement Syndrome...
You know you're soaking in it? 😁
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« Reply #10 on: October 17, 2017, 10:29:25 am »



Yep ..... KTJ is a total “nutter” alright!!  (STUPID WIGGER)
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« Reply #11 on: October 17, 2017, 10:32:56 am »

Clean coal technology - Wikipedia Grin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal_technology
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« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2017, 09:31:46 pm »


Whatever.....the energy companies don't want to use coal, because natural gas, solar energy and wind energy is CHEAPER.

So I guess Trump is full-of-shit and pissing into the wind, eh?

Nobody wants to buy his clean, clean coal.

Hilarious!!

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« Reply #13 on: October 17, 2017, 10:35:42 pm »

The energy companies are troughing on govt subsidies and are afraid of silly bullshit in the courts from green religionists.
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« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2017, 11:55:47 am »



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« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2018, 01:52:02 pm »


Yep....I totally agree with the Energy Commission, including Trump's appointees (who hold the majority in the commission)....

Donald J. Trump and Rick Perry are both FULL-OF-SHIT!!




from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times....

Trump appointees reject pro-coal plan

Energy commission says no to Rick Perry's push to prop up fossil fuel, nuclear power.

By EVAN HALPER | Tuesday, January 09, 2018

WASHINGTON — A Trump administration plan to force utilities to purchase more coal and nuclear power was rejected on Monday by federal regulators, undermining the president's energy agenda and his promise to revive the coal industry.

The five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is dominated by Trump appointees, unanimously rejected the proposal.

Its members were not persuaded by arguments from Energy Secretary Rick Perry that solar, wind and other forms of renewable power were destabilizing the nation's power grid and needed to be backstopped with more coal and nuclear power at a considerable cost to consumers.

The contentious plan to prop up the coal and nuclear markets has been atop Perry's agenda for months. The secretary had warned the proliferation of what he characterizes as less reliable renewables is undermining national security by destabilizing the grid.

The market forces that are precipitating the closure of coal and nuclear plants, Perry argued to the commission, needed to be confronted with government intervention that would keep the fossil fuel plants online.

But the commission reached the same conclusion as many independent energy experts who reviewed the Trump administration proposal, finding no justification for what could amount to multibillion-dollar price supports for the struggling coal and nuclear industries. The commissioners wrote in their decision that the considerable evidence provided by grid operators does “not point to any past or planned generator retirements that may be a threat to grid resilience.”

They concluded that Perry's plan to force ratepayers to pay coal and nuclear generators a premium for their energy to keep them from closing would amount to the government unjustifiably choosing winners and losers in the marketplace.

“The record … does not demonstrate that such an outcome would be just and reasonable,” the commission decision said.

Although the commission has vowed to continue studying the grid resiliency issues Perry raised, its action underscores the challenge the Trump administration faces in its bid to revive struggling sectors of the U.S. energy economy. Perry's proposal laid out in stark relief the lengths the federal government would have to go to keep coal competitive.

Although Trump had long argued that coal would flourish in the absence of Obama-era climate action and other environmental regulations, the Department of Energy plan was an acknowledgment that propping up the industry would require its own extraordinary government intervention and come at a hefty taxpayer cost.

The lone Democrat Trump appointed to the commission, Richard Glick, characterized the proposal as a “multibillion-dollar bailout targeted at coal and nuclear.”

“There is no evidence in the record to suggest that temporarily delaying the retirement of uncompetitive coal and nuclear generators would meaningfully improve the resilience of the grid,” Glick wrote in an addendum to the opinion.

There was irony in Perry's approach, as the secretary has longed railed against government supports for renewable energy. But he had argued forcefully that the grid was showing signs of strain after the polar vortex and various hurricanes and superstorms that had hit the country — and that committing ratepayers to bankrolling coal and nuclear power was the appropriate response.

“Much more needs to be done to preserve these fuel-secure generation resources that have the essential reliability and resiliency to keep the lights on for all Americans in times of crisis,” Perry wrote to the commission in making his case for the plan.

The Department of Energy's own findings, however, had highlighted shortcomings with Perry's approach, raising questions about whether coal and nuclear could actually deliver the superior reliability that Perry claimed.

The Perry proposal had little support outside the industries that would have benefited from it. Even the American Petroleum Institute, usually a reliable Perry ally, opposed it.

The blueprint was met with deep skepticism by independent energy experts, who had warned it would impede economic growth and distort the power market.

Environmentalists and green-energy advocates fought it bitterly.

The ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, said the Trump administration plan was a “sham made evident this week as the grid performed well under the stress of severe cold weather throughout large portions of the country.”


__________________________________________________________________________

• Evan Halper writes about a broad range of policy issues out of Washington D.C. for the Los Angeles Times, with particular emphasis on how Washington regulates, agitates and very often miscalculates in its dealings with California. Before heading east, he was the L.A. Times bureau chief in Sacramento, where he spent a decade untangling California's epic budget mess and political dysfunction.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=7e0ea474-2784-41cd-bbd9-deb4cf9b194c
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« Reply #16 on: January 10, 2018, 03:17:47 pm »

4U  Grin

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« Reply #17 on: January 10, 2018, 03:53:35 pm »


Hahaha....all those stupid coal miners voted for Trump so they could get their jobs back.

Except that the lackeys appointed by Trump have come out AGAINST coal.

Hilarious, don't you think?   
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« Reply #18 on: January 30, 2018, 11:11:40 am »

Proof that the "orange goblin" is right is the enormous roll out in china of "clean coal" plants. They scrub out the vast majority of the troublesome pollutants of archaic plants. But hey keep following the dumb narrative of the watermelon media.
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« Reply #19 on: October 16, 2018, 12:17:24 pm »


from The Seattle Times…

West Coast military installations eyed for US fuel exports

The administration is interested in partnering with private entities to ship coal or liquefied natural
gas through naval installations or other federal facilities, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said.


By MATTHEW BROWN | 6:16AM PDT — Monday, October 15, 2018

In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a mining dumper truck hauls coal at Cloud Peak Energy's Spring Creek strip mine near Decker, Montana. The Trump administration is considering using West Coast military bases or other federal properties as transit points for shipments of U.S. coal and natural gas to Asia. — Photograph: Matthew Brown/Associated Press.
In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a mining dumper truck hauls coal at Cloud Peak Energy's Spring Creek strip mine near Decker, Montana.
The Trump administration is considering using West Coast military bases or other federal properties as transit points for shipments
of U.S. coal and natural gas to Asia. — Photograph: Matthew Brown/Associated Press.


BILLINGS, MONTANA — The Trump administration is considering using West Coast military installations or other federal properties to open the way for more U.S. fossil fuel exports to Asia in the name of national security and despite opposition from coastal states.

The proposal was described to the Associated Press by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and two Republican lawmakers.

“I respect the state of Washington and Oregon and California,” Zinke said in an interview with Associated Press. “But also, it's in our interest for national security and our allies to make sure that they have access to affordable energy commodities.”

Accomplishing that, Zinke said, may require the use of “some of our naval facilities, some of our federal facilities on the West Coast.” He only identified one prospect, a mostly abandoned Alaska military base.

The idea generated a quick backlash on Monday from some Democrats and environmentalists. It's tantamount to an end-run around West Coast officials who have rejected private-sector efforts to build new coal ports in their states.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, called the proposal a “hare-brained idea,” and said President Donald Trump should instead consider that climate change represents a national security threat.

Boosting coal and gas exports would advance the administration's agenda to establish U.S. “energy dominance” on the world stage. The potential use of government properties for exports underscores a willingness to intervene in markets to make that happen.

The administration in recent months has cited national security as justification for keeping domestic coal-burning power plants online to prevent disruptions of electricity supplies.

Zinke said the administration was interested in partnering with private entities in the use of federal facilities designated to help handle exports and cautioned that the idea is still in its early stages.

He specified only one site, for natural gas: the former Adak Naval Air Facility in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, which he suggested could receive fuel by barge from the North Slope. The base closed in 1997 and has been largely abandoned. Roughly 300 people live in the town of Adak, the westernmost community in the U.S.

Zinke did not name government properties that could serve as potential coal ports or which states they are in.




In this May 22, 2014, file photo, sunlight reflects off of a chunk of coal at Dominion Terminal Associates' coal terminal in Newport News, Virginia. — Photograph: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press.
In this May 22, 2014, file photo, sunlight reflects off of a chunk of coal at Dominion Terminal Associates'
coal terminal in Newport News, Virginia. — Photograph: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press.


In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a dragline excavator moves rocks above a coal seam at the Spring Creek Mine in Decker, Montana. — Photograph: Matthew Brown/Associated Press.
In this April 4, 2013, file photo, a dragline excavator moves rocks above a coal seam at the Spring Creek Mine
in Decker, Montana. — Photograph: Matthew Brown/Associated Press.


In this February 1997 file photo, hundreds of houses, which over 6,000 military personnel and dependents called home, along with schools, warehouses, hangars, and other structures sit empty on the Adak Naval Air Facility in Alaska, which closed that year. — Photograph: Al Grillo/Associated Press.
In this February 1997 file photo, hundreds of houses, which over 6,000 military personnel and dependents called
home, along with schools, warehouses, hangars, and other structures sit empty on the Adak Naval Air Facility
in Alaska, which closed that year. — Photograph: Al Grillo/Associated Press.


Inslee responded to the proposal in a statement that Washington state officials had been left in the dark on any planning by the Trump administration. Another Democrat, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said the proposal shows the Trump administration was “disregarding the realities around climate change.”

Republican U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana said Zinke was looking at all possibilities for export terminals, including West Coast military installations. Six proposed coal ports in Washington and Oregon have been rejected or shelved due to worries about air and water pollution and rail safety, combined with changing market conditions.

“As a Montanan, he's looking for ways here to help these Rocky Mountain states like Montana and Wyoming get access to Asian markets,” Daines said.

Jan Hasselman, an attorney for opponents of coal ports in Washington state, said using federal property for exports would get around some local land use restrictions, but not the need for state and federal clean water permits.

Asian exports have been held up as a lifeline for struggling U.S. coal miners as demand from the domestic power sector has plummeted and utilities switch to cheaper, cleaner fuels. The West Coast offers the most economical route because of its relative proximity to the largest coal-producing region in the U.S.: the Powder River Basin, which straddles the Montana-Wyoming border.

Any export site needs access to deep waters to accommodate large ships and enough land to store fuel awaiting shipment. Few such locations can be found on the West Coast, said Joe Aldina, a coal industry analyst with S&P Global Platts Analytics.

U.S. coal exports lately have been growing but are expected to fall over the long-term, particularly in Europe. Aldina expressed skepticism that government intervention could make much difference.

“Like everything else the Trump administration has tried to do, it's a long shot whether some of these things will work, and it's questionable whether they will really help the market,” he said.


The buildings of the former Adak Naval Air Facility sit vacant in Alaska in 2015. — Photograph: Julia O’Malley/Alaska Daily News/via Associated Press.
The buildings of the former Adak Naval Air Facility sit vacant in Alaska in 2015.
 — Photograph: Julia O’Malley/Alaska Daily News/via Associated Press.


In this April 2015 photo, the buildings of the former Adak Naval Air Facility sit vacant in Alaska. The Trump administration is considering using West Coast military bases or other federal properties as transit points for shipments of U.S. coal and natural gas to Asia. — Photograph: Julia O’Malley/Alaska Daily News/via Associated Press.
In this April 2015 photo, the buildings of the former Adak Naval Air Facility sit vacant in Alaska.
The Trump administration is considering using West Coast military bases or other federal
properties as transit points for shipments of U.S. coal and natural gas to Asia.
 — Photograph: Julia O’Malley/Alaska Daily News/via Associated Press.


In this March 29, 2017, photo, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, accompanied by Republican members of Congress, signs an order lifting a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands and a related order on coal royalties, at the Interior Department in Washington. From left are Senator Steve Daines (Republican-Montana), Senator John Hoeven, Republican-North Dakota), Senator Lisa Murkowski (Republican-Alaska), Zinke's wife, Lolita, Representative Scott Tipton (Republican-Colorado), Representative Rob Bishop (Republican-Utah) and Representative Liz Cheney (Republican-Wyoming). — Photograph: Molly Riley/Associated Press.
In this March 29, 2017, photo, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, accompanied by Republican members of Congress,
signs an order lifting a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands and a related order on coal royalties,
at the Interior Department in Washington. From left are Senator Steve Daines (Republican-Montana),
Senator John Hoeven (Republican-North Dakota), Senator Lisa Murkowski (Republican-Alaska),
Zinke's wife, Lolita, Representative Scott Tipton (Republican-Colorado), Representative
Rob Bishop (Republican-Utah) and Representative Liz Cheney (Republican-Wyoming).
 — Photograph: Molly Riley/Associated Press.


.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announces on October 18, 2018, a ban on mining claims north of Yellowstone National Park as K.C. Walsh, left, president of Simms Fishing Products, listens near Emigrant, Montana. — Photograph: Matthew Brown/Associated Press.
.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announces on October 18, 2018, a ban on mining claims north of Yellowstone
National Park as K.C. Walsh, left, president of Simms Fishing Products, listens near Emigrant, Montana.
 — Photograph: Matthew Brown/Associated Press.


A $680 million project in Longview, Washington, was denied a key permit last year by state regulators who said it would increase greenhouse gas emissions and cause “significant and unavoidable harm to the environment.”

That brought a backlash from elected officials in coal-producing states. They argue the rejection of the Longview port, sponsored by Utah-based Lighthouse Resources, violated the commerce clause in the Constitution that says only Congress has the power to regulate international and interstate trade.

Montana, Wyoming and four other states joined Lighthouse Resources in a lawsuit challenging the rejection of the company's Millennium Bulk Terminals port, which could handle up to 48.5 million tons (44 million metric tons) of coal a year.

Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said she's spoken with Zinke and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry about how to break through the bottleneck of port capacity that now exists.

“That might be, for example, retired military facilities or other places where we would be able to use those for exports — frankly, to get around some of the unreasonable obstacles that have been thrown up,” Cheney said.

Prior to joining Trump's cabinet, Zinke was a Montana congressman and Perry was governor of Texas. Both states are among the top U.S. coal producers.

Coal exports to Asia more than doubled in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The rise continued in the first half of 2018 with almost 23 million tons (21 million metric tons) of U.S. coal exported to Asian nations through June. South Korea, Japan and China were among the biggest recipients.


__________________________________________________________________________

The story is from the Associated Press and was updated at 4:13PM EDT on Monday, October 15, 2018.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/apnewsbreak-us-eyes-military-bases-for-coal-gas-exports
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« Reply #20 on: October 17, 2018, 10:27:55 pm »


from The Seattle Times…

Corps of Engineers moving forward with review of
Longview coal terminal despite state objections


The move is opposed by state Ecology Director Maia Bellon, who
wrote a September 10 letter of protest to Colonel Mark Geraldi,
the Corp's Seattle district commander.


By HAL BERNTON | 6:00AM PDT — Tuesday, October 16, 2018

This May 12, 2005, file photo, shows the port of Longview on the Columbia River at Longview, Washington. A judge says Washington state's Department of Natural Resources acted arbitrarily when it blocked a sublease sought by developers of a proposed coal-export terminal near Longview. — Photograph: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press.
This May 12, 2005, file photo, shows the port of Longview on the Columbia River at Longview, Washington.
A judge says Washington state's Department of Natural Resources acted arbitrarily when it blocked
a sublease sought by developers of a proposed coal-export terminal near Longview.
 — Photograph: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press.


THE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will move forward with an environmental review of a proposed Longview coal-export terminal that already has been rejected by the state Department of Ecology for failing to meet water-quality standards.

The Corps' continued involvement has been sought by developers who want the Trump administration to help keep alive the Millennium Bulk Terminals project, which would offer a new outlet to export up to 48½ million tons of western coal to Asian markets.

The Corps plans to oversee the preparation of a final environmental-impact statement by a yet-to-be-selected independent contractor, according to a statement released Monday by the Corps' Seattle district office.

The move is opposed by state Ecology Director Maia Bellon, who wrote a September 10 letter of protest to Colonel Mark Geraldi, the Corps' Seattle district commander.

“We do not understand the Corps' decision to restart work on this proposal. … Our decision to deny the certification is final,”  Bellon wrote. “… I urge you to follow long-standing Corps procedure and precedent by respecting Washington’s decision under the Clean Water Act.”

A Millennium official, Wendy Hutchinson, said that the Corps' “ongoing permit and design work demonstrates the project is still moving forward … We are committed to building our coal-export terminal in accordance with all state and federal standards.”

The Corps' review comes amid a broader push by the Trump administration to bolster the U.S. coal industry, which has been buffeted by long-term declines in demand as power-generation shifts to greater use of natural gas and renewable energy.

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed that U.S. military installations or other federal sites could possibly serve as export sites for sending coal to Asia.

International markets have improved during the past two years after a sharp slump that wiped out the profitability of shipping western coal to Asia for use in power plants, according to Clark Williams-Derry, of the Seattle-based Sightline Institute.

The Longview coal-export terminal, proposed by Millennium Bulk Terminals, has sparked a years-long battle that has pitted the coal industry against opponents, many of them environmentalists seeking to prevent the Northwest from becoming an export hub for coal and other fossil fuels that release  greenhouse gases spurring climate change.

In September 2017, the state Ecology Department ruled against the project, citing impacts that included destruction of 24 acres of wetlands, an  increase of 1,680 vessel trips a year on the Columbia and harm to aquatic habitat.  The Department of Natural Resources also has rejected a sublease sought by project developers.

Millennium is challenging adverse decisions in state court, and also in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma that accuses Bellon, Governor Jay Inslee and Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz of having “unreasonably delayed and denied a number of permits and approvals” because they oppose the project on policy grounds.

The Corps issued a draft environmental-impact statement about the project in 2016. Work then slowed as the project ran into roadblocks in the state and local permitting process.

With the agency short on staff, there were higher priority projects to pursue, according to Patricia Graesser, a Seattle District office spokeswoman for the Corps.

The  agency has filled some vacant staff positions, and now decided to move forward with finishing the project review.

A  federal permit could not actually be issued so long as the state certification continues to be denied.

But the developer wants the Corps to declare the state has waived its rights under the Clean Water Act because it took too long to make a decision and the denial was not based on  factors outlined in federal law, according to an August 17 letter sent to the Corps' Seattle district commander by Beth Ginsberg, an attorney representing Millennium.

“We look forward to discussing these issues more fully and will contact you to arrange a time to do in the immediate future,” Ginsberg wrote to the Corps' Geraldi.

The Corps has not provided a response to that letter, according to Graesser, the Corps' spokeswoman.


https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/corps-of-engineers-moving-forward-with-review-of-longview-coal-terminal-despite-state-objections
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