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EPA set to bring regulations down on the coal industry

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Faster horses

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I was cooking at a hunting camp the fall of '08 and I had nothing for
news except the Gillette, Wyoming radio station. They carried Shawn
Hannity and I listened every day. Shawn told his listeners then
that Obama said he would regulate the coal industry out of business.
Well, folks, here it is. One promise that he's kept. This is going to
affect everyone in the USA and maybe around the globe in higher
prices and a shortage of energy. This will have a lot to do with making
the US a third world country.

----------------------------------------------------

By my count, the Obama administration's energy-related rhetoric now irrefutably falls into the category of a false narrative. His "All of the Above" approach to energy? Stick a fork in it; it's done.

I've already written about how Team Obama has been aggressively perpetuating misleading statistics to try and make it appear that his White House has been plenty friendly to the oil industry (when, in fact, they've only put a damper on it), and how his administration has been waging war on the all-but-innocuous technique of fracking. But, of course, no form of hydrocarbon energy is safe with Obama at the helm, and his administration's plans to persecute the coal industry are finally coming to fruition. Coal is the most widely-used energy source for generating electricity in the United States –and the EPA is all set to introduce new rules on Tuesday that will target greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired plants.

--Cowboy Byte
 
and that is part of the reason for oil/NG price increases.

What happens when you increase demand and decrease supply?


the obama administration is doing both
 
Coal is the most widely-used energy source for generating electricity in the United States –and the EPA is all set to introduce new rules on Tuesday that will target greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired plants.



The Great River Energy Spiritwood Plant in North Dakota, which came online in 2010, now sits idle because it is too expensive to run. The plant cost $400,000,000 to build.

The plant has the capacity to generate up to 99 megawatts (MW) of electricity for the regional energy market. The combined heat and power plant also supplys steam to the Cargill Malt plant near Spiritwood, North Dakota. Otter Tail Power Company, as the local service provider, will supply electricity to the Cargill Malt plant.

Highly efficient

Combined heat and power plants such as Spiritwood Station are highly energy efficient because they make use of the energy in the steam which, at most plants, is released to cooling towers. Spiritwood Station sends some of the steam it produces to Cargill Malt for use in its production processes. Some interesting facts:

Most conventional coal-based power plants are 30 to 35 percent efficient; Spiritwood Station will be 40 to 66 percent efficient depending on the amount of steam provided to the site partners.
Plant efficiency is increased to 40 percent by sending steam to Cargill Malt.
A second steam host could help the plant achieve nearly double its efficiency, to 66 percent.

Technology that controls emissions

In addition to utilizing beneficiated lignite, Spiritwood Station uses Best Available Control Technologies to control emissions. State-of-the-art technologies make Spiritwood Station one of the cleanest coal-based power plants in the world.


Even critics of coal point out that Spiritwood is cleaner-burning than other operating coal plants. But free-market pricing and grid bottlenecks can mean that cleaner energy sources, even wind power, are unable to compete against dirtier generators.

"They invested extra resources to do the right thing environmentally and to build the most efficient advanced-combustion power plant in the Midwest region, but they are not rewarded in the marketplace."

Spiritwood Station has gotten bad breaks almost from the beginning.

In 2008, power demand by the co-op's customers fell. Forecasts of future needs were cut, and the price of power sold to the grid dropped, Lancaster said. Then the ethanol plant project was canceled, taking away a key steam customer and making the power plant less efficient to run.

Lancaster said. It's not technically feasible to quickly cycle coal-fired boilers on and off for peak loads only.

as more investors find an uncertain future they will avoid energy development in the US and with out energy... we will fail...
 

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