Obama’s war on coal hits your electric bill
WaveCameCrashin
Posts: 2,929
:shock:
Obama’s War on Coal has already taken a remarkable toll on coal-fired power plants in America.
Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a shocking drop in power sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago.
It’s the result of an unprecedented regulatory assault on coal that will leave us all much poorer.
Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”
The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.
Why the massive price increases? Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious: “Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015.” Northern Ohio is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, hence the even higher price.
These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level.
House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) aptly explained: “The PJM auction forecasts a dim future where Americans will be paying more to keep the lights on. We are seeing more and more coal plants fall victim to EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda, and as a result, we are seeing more job losses and higher electricity prices.”
The only thing that can stop this massive price hike now is an all-out effort to end Obama’s War on Coal and repeal this destructive regulatory agenda.
The Senate will have a critical opportunity to do just that when it votes on stopping Obama’s most expensive anti-coal regulation sometime in the next couple of weeks. The vote is on the Inhofe Resolution, S.J. Res 37, to overturn the so-called Utility MACT rule, which the EPA itself acknowledges is its most expensive rule ever.
This vote is protected from filibuster, and it will take just 51 votes to send a clear message to Obama that his War on Coal must end.
Of course, Obama could veto the resolution and keep the rule intact, although that would force him to take full political responsibility for the massive impending jump in electricity prices.
I have a form set up at www.WarOnCoal.com to make it easy to contact your senators on this crucial issue.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/ ... z1vzPTSgA6
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/ ... z1vdHXPyja
Obama’s War on Coal has already taken a remarkable toll on coal-fired power plants in America.
Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a shocking drop in power sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago.
It’s the result of an unprecedented regulatory assault on coal that will leave us all much poorer.
Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”
The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.
Why the massive price increases? Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious: “Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015.” Northern Ohio is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, hence the even higher price.
These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level.
House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) aptly explained: “The PJM auction forecasts a dim future where Americans will be paying more to keep the lights on. We are seeing more and more coal plants fall victim to EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda, and as a result, we are seeing more job losses and higher electricity prices.”
The only thing that can stop this massive price hike now is an all-out effort to end Obama’s War on Coal and repeal this destructive regulatory agenda.
The Senate will have a critical opportunity to do just that when it votes on stopping Obama’s most expensive anti-coal regulation sometime in the next couple of weeks. The vote is on the Inhofe Resolution, S.J. Res 37, to overturn the so-called Utility MACT rule, which the EPA itself acknowledges is its most expensive rule ever.
This vote is protected from filibuster, and it will take just 51 votes to send a clear message to Obama that his War on Coal must end.
Of course, Obama could veto the resolution and keep the rule intact, although that would force him to take full political responsibility for the massive impending jump in electricity prices.
I have a form set up at www.WarOnCoal.com to make it easy to contact your senators on this crucial issue.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/ ... z1vzPTSgA6
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/ ... z1vdHXPyja
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
if anything, the oil lobby is waging a war on humans....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
it dosen't make sense to remove coal fired electrical plants unless you have an alturnitive in place and ready to go into working order, it just seems obama is doing everything he can to drive this country straight into the ground..either that or he is a stupid as a lot of people say he is, I stated in the beginning posts of obamas election that if he was elected this country would be very sorry, the fuckin moron is using hollywood actors to host dinners at their houses to gain donation moneys...he's a friggin pied pipper and it looks like he has plenty of fools ready to follow him straight into hell, hopefully the people that know better will vote his ass out and vote for the right man to un-fuck this mess obama has created, I remember hearing some folks during his run for president say "drop the drama and vote for obama".......what a bunch of blind fools.
Godfather.
Then we have links to fox news opinion pages for further reading.
Really?
"With our thoughts we make the world"
what does he have in place to take over the coal fire system ? I'm all for green energy but it needs to be ready and in place so the American familys and workers arn't shit on, and yes I agree the oil lobby is waging a war on humans but we can't pull the plug on our economy and our people like this right now at a critical time in this countrys economical future...we need an alturnitive in place ready to fill in before a move like this is made.
Godfather.
:roll:
so what are you trying to say its not true ? This isnt fear mogering. These are cold hard facts that are going to effect millions of people. I can finds dozens of other links that are not from fox news saying the same damn thing.
what about it?
you want to complain about wasted money on solar panels?
what has congress done to help obama do ANYTHING relating to green jobs and energy and researching them?
NOTHING. same as it has done with anything obama has suggested at all. any policy he suggests automatically gets 100% "no" votes from the gop... kind of like how the gop are now against things that they championed in 2008...
if your gripe is about money wasted, how about we talk about the 50x what was lost on solyndra wasted playing in iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, and now potentially iran.
at least obama is trying to do SOMETHING... under a republican it would be the same old same old, tax cuts for oil companies, deregulation, lax standards, and the speculators would continue to steal money from your wallet...
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/0 ... ?mobile=wp
Please continue your war on coal. You are increasing my nat gas royalty payment checks every day.
Thank You!!
We can carry on business as usual by extracting and burning more and more carbon based fuels which will continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere and continue to warm the planet. The end result may well be a major extinction event. One argument for the "carry on as usual" scenario is the hope that science will come up with some kind magic cure allowing us to skip along on our merry way. That could happen but the odds are bad and the penalty for losing is not good.
We can move toward more renewable energy sources. Doing so will not likely replace oil as a major energy source and probably will not eliminate global warming, but at least it will buy us more time to come up with better solution.
Or we can learn to live with less, live lighter on the planet, increase public transit (especially trains), drastically reduce our dependency on driving, build walkable communities and support and strengthen local economies. This option would at least give us a better chance to adapt to the changes we've already instigated in our environment.
What we chose will determine our fate and will depend on what we are willing to sacrifice.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Many of the things I see come down the pike are 5 - 10 years to come into full compliance.
Coal hasbeen on th eway outr for sometime now. I tell you its been a LONG time since we've heard our Canadian neighbors complaining about acid rain from the high sulpher coal being burned here in ohio. Hmm, I think the pres was still in college when THOSE regs came out.
heres a counter link with different way of looking at this "issue"
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/energy- ... -power/275
Coal is fading as the power generation fuel of choice in the U.S., but it’s not just because of the EPA.
Coal-burning utilities and their industry partners have mightily protested new EPA regulations, due to go into effect last weekend, that would curb emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and other metallic toxics such as arsenic from power plants. A federal appeals court delayed enforcement of the regulations on December 30 after hearing a challenge brought by power-plant operators and utilities, six states, the National Mining Association and the IBEW electrical union. Their arguments hardly need recitation: The regulations are expensive and “draconian.” They’re job-killing. They’ll raise the price of grid power. The EPA is overstepping its authority. Yadda yadda yadda.
Having had a long look at the data, however, I think the industry doth protest too much.
Price
There is no doubt that several decades ago, clean air regulations caused power generation to begin shifting away from coal and toward natural gas. But in recent years, the most significant pressure by far is price.
The chief reason for this was the explosion of shale gas production, which created a gas glut and drove the price of gas to under $3 per million BTU — an insanely low price, as my friend Gregor Macdonald showed this week. Natural gas now sells for 83 percent less than oil for the same amount of energy, an historically unheard-of discount. Even more remarkably, it’s now actually cheaper than low-sulfur bituminous coal from Central Appalachia. Only coal from the low-sulfur Powder River Basin of Wyoming is cheaper, at $0.71 per million BTU. Its price advantage has gradually pushed coals from the East Coast out of the market.
A detailed 2010 report on Central Applachian coal by researchers Rory McIlmoil and Evan Hansen showed that PRB coal began offsetting high-sulfur coals in the 1980s as clean air regulations favored lower sulfur dioxide emissions, but then began to offset low-sulfur coal from Central Appalachia as well by virtue of price:
Source: “The Decline of Central Appalachian Coal and the Need for Economic Diversification,” McIlmoil, Hansen, 2010
Central Appalachian coal has ceased to be competitive on price largely because those mining operations are much older. As with oil, we burned the best, cheapest, and most abundant coal deposits first, and the Appalachian mountains have simply become mined-out. The best coal reserves are depleted, and producers now must move on to thinner, less productive, more geologically challenging deposits with lower energy content. Overall, domestic U.S. coal now has 20 percent less energy per kilogram than it did in 1949, and the quality is still declining.
Shifting from underground mining to surface mining (mountaintop removal) improved productivity through the 1990s, the researchers note, until it maxed out in 2000. At that point, labor productivity fell by 25 percent, and the price of Central Appalachian coal began to rise. By 2008 it had doubled and lost its price competitiveness:
Source: ibid
Central Appalachian coal production peaked in 1997 at 290 million tons, then fell 20 percent to 235 million tons by 2008. On current trends, the researchers estimate, coal production from the region will fall another 58 percent by 2035 to 99 million tons.
Source: ibid
One coal industry response to this long decline was to optimize its supply chain, reducing inventories and moving to just-in-time shipping. But as we discovered in 2008, that came with a hidden price: The spare production capacity of coal fell to a thin enough margin that it couldn’t respond adequately to sharply rising demand from Asia, and invited opportunistic speculators. Now we have entered a new era of structurally higher prices for Central Appalachian coal.
Source: EIA
This has added some upward pressure on the average price that utilities have to pay for coal, which rose from $1.25 per million BTU in 1998 to $2.41 in 2011. At the same time, the utility price for natural gas exploded from $2.38 in 1998 to $8.32 per million BTU in 2005 as the depletion of conventional resources began to cut into supply. Then the arrival of significant volumes of shale gas around 2006 started to bring prices back down again. The explosion of commodity prices in 2008 interrupted the new trend, but then it resumed, taking gas prices gradually down to a 2011 average of $5.14 per million BTU through September (the latest month the EIA included in its 2011 average calculation), then sharply lower after that.
[Important note: Although the Henry Hub spot price of natural gas is lower than the price paid for by gas by utility operators, I have added the monthly spot data to the end of the operator price series offered by the EIA here simply to illustrate how quickly the price of gas has fallen over the past four months, because the EIA doesn't offer monthly operator price data for those months. The daily spot price of gas fell from $4.18 on September 1, 2011 to $2.96 on January 4, 2012 — an astonishing 29 percent decline. The EIA's 2011 average $5.14 cost to operators from January through September compares to a daily Henry Hub average of $4.22 over the same period.]
Now let’s think about the two fuels like a utility operator would. In 1998, the cost of gas for electric utilities was 1.9 times higher than coal. That ratio rose to 5.4 in 2005. It now stands at a mere 1.2, making gas just slightly more expensive than coal for power generation.
That calculus is precisely why Michigan’s Consumers Energy cancelled its plans for a $2 billion, 830-megawatt coal plant in December. It made the decision, a company spokesman said, because the economics didn’t pencil out — not because it was cowering in fear before regulatory uncertainty.
Regulatory uncertainty
To meet the requirements of the new EPA regulations, operators of legacy coal-fired plants would either have to retrofit them with scrubbers, or to switch to natural gas. (Burning natural gas in a power plant generates less than a third as much nitrogen oxide emissions, and about half the carbon dioxide emissions, as burning coal. Sulfur dioxide and mercury compound emissions from natural gas are negligible.) The estimated $11 billion price tag and three-year deadline to retrofit the nation’s coal-fired plants with scrubbers, while not hugely burdensome, might just be enough to persuade some operators to throw in the towel on coal.
Coal plants also face retrofit or replacement due to the need for storage and handling of coal ash, which fell under tighter restrictions after the catastrophic collapse of the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Plant’s coal ash pond in December 2008, a disaster with a cleanup cost of over $1 billion.
Yet another factor against coal plants is a potential requirement to switch to closed-loop systems for cooling water, to reduce their consumption of fresh water and their discharge of heated water into the environment. The states of New York and California have already issued rules requiring all power plants to switch to closed-loop systems, and the EPA is considering a similar national regulation. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that 252 gigawatts (GW) of existing fossil fuel power generation capacity would be affected by such a rule, of which I surmise at least half would be coal plants.
Age
The age of our coal-fired power plants is a final, key factor.
Over half of the nation’s generating capacity comes from plants that are at least 30 years old. Nearly three-quarters of our coal-fired capacity, contributing 46 percent of our electricity supply, is at least 30 years old. Many of the plants are using outdated, inefficient technology. Some need to be retired immediately, and within 20 years nearly all of them will need to be replaced.
Source: EIA
For plants that are close to retirement age, the decision is easy. The investment horizon of a new power plant is at least 35 years. In its Annual Energy Outlook 2011 report, the EIA estimated that the capital costs of building new coal and nuclear power plants had risen 25 to 37 percent from 2010, while the capital cost of combined-cycle natural gas plants had remained steady. Who would build a new coal plant in an environment of ever-tightening emissions limits, rising capital costs, rising coal prices, falling coal supply, rapidly falling gas prices and rapidly increasing gas supply? Particularly when carbon capture and sequestration technology has still not been proved to be commercially viable?
Transition already under way
The fact is that the transition from coal- to gas-fired plants been under way for decades, and has accelerated since coal prices started rising in 2004:
And for at least the next several years, gas will continue to be a preferred fuel for new plants:
[Note: The EIA's most recent available data for planned capacity changes is from the Electric Power Annual 2010 report, in which the 2011 data is "planned."]
In its AEO 2011, the EIA offered multiple scenarios for how electricity generation might evolve over time, depending on the price of gas, various potential regulations, and how quickly plant owners might expect to recover their capital investment. Without belaboring the details of these scenarios, I’ll just present one of those charts with the comment that in my view, the last column in this chart is the more likely of these scenarios. Under that scenario 72 GW, or 23 percent of the nation’s 313 GW of coal-fired plant capacity, will be retired.
Source: EIA
Various industry organizations have recently weighed in with their own estimates of coal plant retirements, and evidence of the transition to gas.
The Edison Electric Institute, an association of public electric companies, estimates that 48 GW of coal-fired capacity will be retired from 2010 to 2022.
A 559-page report issued in November 2011 by the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC), an independent, non-profit regulatory authority charged with evaluating and monitoring the reliability of the North American grid, suggests that net coal capacity will decline over at least the next 10 years. They cite 326 GW of total coal generation capacity in 2011, but project only 8 GW of it to be retired by 2021. In the same report, however, they identify 89 GW of coal-fired capacity that will need to install flue gas desulfurization units by 2015 to comply with the new EPA rules, and note that 29 GW of it is already designated for retirement, leaving 60 GW of coal capacity with an undecided fate. By 2021, they see 45 GW of planned new gas capacity, plus an additional 48 GW of “conceptual” capacity (which they define as “resources with less certainty,” according to a “confidence factor”). Noting that their last four assessments successively reduced their expectations for coal generation while increasing their outlooks for gas, they observed that “the evolution from coal to gas is evident,” and offered a chart showing gas and renewables dominating future capacity additions with net declines in coal capacity every year:
Source: NERC
While the news is almost universally bad for the coal-fired sector, the outlook for gas is excellent. Gas producers, manufacturers of modern, high-efficiency gas turbines, and gas pipeline providers are all looking at a decade of substantial growth. NERC reckons that replacing the 60 GW of coal-fired capacity whose fate is yet to be decided with equivalent gas-fired capacity would require an additional 1,200 miles of gas pipelines.
So in reply to the coal-fired power sector’s bleating about regulatory uncertainty, I say: The only uncertainty is how quickly, and how much, the noose tightens around your neck. While I have questioned both the economics of shale gas production and the claims about its reserves, there is no arguing about price. As long as the shale gas phenomenon can bring gas to market for under $4 per million BTU, the economics are tilting in its favor. The cost of renewables will continue to drop, while the cost of coal will continue to rise. That’s the hard reality of price, and it has nothing to do with regulatory uncertainty.
And even though regulatory uncertainty does pose a problem for coal plant owners, those regulations can only be good news for the health of the public and the environment. It’s cynical and shameful to pretend to a principled stand against overweening federal regulation when you’re really just trying to squeeze a little more life out of filthy old plants that are destined for retirement anyway. The public has gotten wise to your game, and your onslaught of glossy prime-time ads isn’t convincing anybody that you’re clean or green. Concerns about killing acid rains, billions of dollars in health destruction, and general environmental contamination have begun to weigh more heavily than adding a fraction of a penny to the cost of a kilowatt-hour. The public now knows that the price of power from renewables and gas is on the verge of being competitive with coal, and that if no externalities (like carbon emissions) are allowed into the calculation, coal is already a hands-down loser. Your “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra is wearing thin. We don’t just need any old jobs, but the right jobs, in order to become a more healthy, safe and sustainable society.
Photo: The George Washington Bridge in heavy smog, May 1973 (from The National Archives) . . . before the EPA began its fascist reign of terror (hat tip @bradplumer)
edit, the graphs didnt copy/paste, click the link for the graphs
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"With our thoughts we make the world"
Yeah, no shit it can cost more not to destroy the planet. If that weren't the case, no one would be destroying the planet. :?
So way way to go Obama! :thumbup:
is there a renewable energy sorce in place ?.....or did some dumbass just pull the plug on all these peoples lives with no respect to their livelyhoods and familys.....
Godfather.
Godfather.
Your a legend for doing this in my eyes
For far too long the lazy have had the right to cheaply poison our atmosphere.
Now your raising the price.
Higher prices means the lazy bludgers will complain and look elsewhere for their energy needs
We are introducing a big carbon tax in Australia as well
Great news for future generations that we finally are taking some responsibility in our actions
The united states can shut down every coal fired plant in the country and it wouldn't put a dent in reducing pollutions because no country in Asia follows any environmental emissions controls.
I am sitting in my companies coal yard right now and praying obama will leave it the hell alone. I like my job. I make a good living burning almost 30,000 tons of this black gold a day.
I hope your job is not affected by all this bullshit and I wish you good luck.
Godfather.
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-ene ... obama.html
fingers crossed to be up and running by december.
Anyone must concede that moving away from coal will be a tough thing for some people involved in the industry (and, in the future, the move away from gasoline)... But that doesn't make it bullshit. Real change can be difficult... and necessary. Totally necessary. Presumably, jobs in the green energy sector will be created relative to the growth in that industry. Meanwhile, hopefully the government will be able to offer some useful help to those in the coal and gasoline industries as those jobs dwindle, but yeah, no one hold their breath. Anyway, in the end, we as a society need to support these kinds of changes and think in terms of the long run. Easy for one to say when she's not losing her job, but that doesn't make it any less true.
There's a reason that's being built in Wyoming. No American city can run on a 3000 MW wind farm. That's perfect for Wyoming farmers and small mom and pop business owners. The 4 units at the plant I work at can produce 2800mw at full capacity and we are still buying power to fill the need in the summer time.
I don't disagree with using renewable energy. But i a do disagree with obama throwing regulations down so heavy that it costs me my job.
actually godfather I work in the mining industry so it will be affected. but thats cool. I will suck the coin from it but when its gone our world will be better for it
Don't kid yourself, burning coal will never be gone.
All that's required to wipe it is a cheaper, reliable alternative
Seing how coal in reality is energy from the sun trapped in swamps and wetlands that have been buried for millions of years well why can't we use the energy from our sun right now
Instead of expending massive amounts of other types of fuels to dig up,prepare, then freight coal around the world why not use the sun wherever we are. No transport costs
It easy and lazy to use coal. Simple
It's easy to keep on using it
So let's price the fucker so it's easier on your wallet to use alternates or just use less power
I'll lose my house if this electric bill goes any higher!
I agree get the alternative in place first! gosh darn it! :fp:
they must think we are all made out of money :evil:
exactly....well said...
I'm sure Mitt will be able to help these folks...
Perhaps we can have them ride stationary bikes to generate electricity?
that is quite a jump from 202% vs' using power like there is no tomorrow.
do not get me started on the utility bills a pack of dogs use. some dogs are known to crank the a/c down to friged levels. this will not be tolerated, ever.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce