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White House Reportedly Exploring Wartime Rule To Help Coal, Nuclear (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to reports from Bloomberg and E&E News, the Trump Administration has been exploring another way to help coal and nuclear generators: the Defense Production Act of 1950. The Act was passed under President Truman. Motivated by the Korean War, it allows the president broad authority to boost U.S. industries that are considered a priority for national security. On Thursday, E&E News cited sources that said "an interagency process is underway" at the White House to examine possible application of the act to the energy industry. The goal would be to give some form of preference to coal and nuclear plants that are struggling to compete with cheap natural gas.
If the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to "demand priority for defense-related products," "provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity," and establish "a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment," among other powers. (Some even more permissive applications of the Act were terminated in 1957.) Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established. The Administration could apply the Act to "provide or guarantee loans to industry" for material-specific deliveries and production. "The president may also authorize the purchase of 'industrial items or technologies for installation in government or private industrial facilities,'" reports Ars.
If the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to "demand priority for defense-related products," "provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity," and establish "a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment," among other powers. (Some even more permissive applications of the Act were terminated in 1957.) Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established. The Administration could apply the Act to "provide or guarantee loans to industry" for material-specific deliveries and production. "The president may also authorize the purchase of 'industrial items or technologies for installation in government or private industrial facilities,'" reports Ars.
Seems that the fabled fossil fuel industries must be carefully fed taxpayer dollars just to stay afloat.
So who's the leech here, oil barons?
Solar? Wind? Geothermal? Biomass?
Nope, it's YOU fools.
The horseshoers of America have been having a tough time as of late since the Army isn't using as many warhorses as they used to. #MakeAmericaShodAgain
Yeah. Because of fracking in the USA and Russian natural gas producers and others World wide, the price of Natural Gas plummeted to where is was much cheaper than coal. Power plants that had no legal reason to do so, switched to NG because it was cheaper.
The Free Market in action.
But it hurt the coal miners. And they paid off certain Senators like, Mitch McConnell and Orin Hatch to lie and say the Obama administration started a "war on coal." (He backtracked after Trump was elected.)
Hannity and Limbaugh (both liars themselves) propagated the lie among their gullible listeners as well as Trolls on facecbook and other places.
Bit as we see, it was all the coal miners bribing Republican Senators to keep their outdated business profitable for themselves.
Coal is not clean at all. It causes lots of air pollution, especially in the form of carbon. The carbon dioxide is causing global temperatures to rapidly warm and is threatening mass extinctions. Yet you right wing nutjobs are obsessed with coal. Your obsession with coal is helping to destroy the Earth, along with your obsession with huge SUVs that waste gasoline. Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth?
Even if you cut renewables out, Natural Gas is cheaper to extract, requires fewer workers, and is safer both to burn and acquire. This isn't propping up fossil fuels, this is preferring an industry whose workforce doesn't want to adapt or change.
I don't read AC
Seriously, we have been at war in the Middle East for decades for one reason: energy. It's why we had Gulf War I, Gulf War II, and so many others. Fun fact, did you know the reason we refuse to withdraw from Syria despite the fact that ISIS has been defeated is energy? Yup. A proposed pipeline to supply from Qatar to Europe would weaken Russian influence. That's why we can't stop making war there. So let's not trot out the fiction that energy has nothing to do with national security, because it absolutely does.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I keep hearing all this bullshit from one side of the aisle about the "free market" being the best thing ever but then when the free market stops promoting their favorite industries then they suddenly need to swoop in and bail them out. What's worse is that they are rapidly expending shared capital: our uncontaminated environment.
The truth of the matter is that goods (including energy generation) should have to pay for the pollution caused by their production. That money can then in turn be used to remove said pollution from the environment. This is how the free market should really be and it would be utterly devastating to regressive industries that pay no mind to the damage they do to our environment.
Unleash the free market and destroy those who are hellbent on destroying the planet.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
A big issue is this: Coal has been steadily automating its mining systems. In 1950 underground mining was at the rate of 0.68 tons per man hour and surface mining was at the rate of 1.9 tons/manhour. By 2011 underground mining was at the rate of 2.76 tons/man hour and surface mining was at 8.8 tons/man hour. There were productivity peaks in 2003 of 4.04 and 10.75 tons/man hour.
So assuming coal had maintained the same level of production between 1950 and 2011, the coal industry would have shed 75% of its manpower due to automation and has proven it can get to 80% reduction if it needs to. Then add in the reduction in coal consumption and it is a no-brainer as to why no one is being hired to work in the mines.
So it Trump tries to boost coal consumption (which is the goal of his actions here); more coal may get produced and purchased, but very few additional workers will be hired. If anything, the mine owners will buy more automated equipment.
Its not like any local town is going to build a coal power plant. Those take years of planning, approvals, oversight, and construction. Power plant planning and construction can easily take five to ten years, beginning to end. So any of this "make people buy more coal" rhetoric is not going to produce more jobs in any of the coal towns that are out there.
Cited Reference:
https://www.eia.gov/totalenerg...
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Is more R&D into advanced GenIV designs like MSR, VHTR, or small modular reactors, and a less punishing regulatory review process. We are abdicating our leadership to China, India, and Europe.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Natural gas is not merely cheap, it also has a relatively low time to spool up for on-demand loads. Coal has a much harder time. Solar and wind have both problems with intermittency and peak loads. While grids can smooth that a bit there's no solution for that in the power source itself. Someday we will have flow batteries to handle surges and bridge short intermittencies, but even when those become technologically mature it's not likely they will have capacities in the giga-joule hour range. So that means some sort of base production with reasonably fast spin up times.
Germany perversely solves this problem by burning coal (cause it's cheaper there than gas, and nukes are out). They solve the spin up time problem by just running the plants all the time whether power is needed or not, then selling the power they don't need to their neighbors over the grid. Sometimes they even sell at a loss. It makes sense to sell at a loss since some money is better than no money if you were going to produce the power anyhow. So ironically the more they deploy solar the more coal they burn.
But if we do have things like flow batteries working for us, it's not just good for solar. It's also good for nuclear power too. These have slower spin up times than gas, but they may be cheaper (depending on how you factor in the externalities of waste and CO2 pollution and mining and fracking). So having stored energy like a battery also helps these become a reliable power source too.
Thus it seems like the future ideal power mix is Nuke+Solar/wind+battery and some off line gas plants for emergencies.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The time period seems quite in line with Trump’s thinking on most things.
#DeleteChrome
If by imminent, you mean in a year or less, there's nothing we can do but evacuate half the country. If you mean in a hundred years, quite a bit. We can:
There are probably many more mitigation strategies that I haven't thought of. Those are just the first four off the top of my head.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.