Voice of Reason wrote:
Sorry, Tom, I was being facetious. Also, believe it or not, there are people who actually don't know that natural gas is a f****l f**l.
Anyway, the push to replace coal-fired power plants with natural gas ones is ideological and political, not economic. It's all part of President Obama's war on coal, in which his EPA threatened huge fines daily for operating coal-fired plants.
The chart below shows the cost of natural gas vs equivanent-energy cost of coal. Turns out Appalachian coal is about the same price as natural gas. Powder River Basin coal is about 1/3 the cost of both. So, even with the current abundance (and low prices) for natural gas, it is still significantly more expensive to produce electricity with it than coal from the Powder River Basin.
But aside from the cost, another aspect of using natural gas for electricity production that I find disturbing and short-sighted, is that both coal and natural gas are finite resources. Yes, we currently have lots of both, but eventually they'll run out. Natural gas is a wonderful fuel for heating homes, cooking and can even be used for t***sportation. Coal is pretty much worthless for all of that, but wonderful for producing electricity. To me it makes a lot more sense to use the abundant coal resources for what they're best at and thereby save the natural gas for important uses that coal can't easily fill.
Sorry, Tom, I was being facetious. Also, believe i... (
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Thanks for the information. Did you know that Coos Bay has coal deposits all around it and that our Southport mine once supplied all the coal from Seatle to SanFrancico and all of the Steam ships on the west coast? Now you do. The mine kept a thousand men working until 1956. It is still a viable mine.