The Kansas City Star reports:
Electric bills are poised to soar for customers of utilities building coal-fired power plants.
Coal-based electric utility executive responds:
We're moving forward regardless of what you namby-pamby, cheap-energy-loving hippies think.*
Michael Dworkin then raises the obvious question:
You've got to ask: "Do you think we have reached a point where it economically doesn't make sense?"
It will be interesting to see how this affects the Sunflower Electric debate, since the state does now seem to be getting beyond the false belief that coal is cheap.
*Italicized text implied but entirely fabricated by the author.
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:53 am
21 Mar 2008
Grist explores coal, nuclear and wind and solar extensively.
But what about the "clean hydrocarbon", natural gas?
http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=9013383&co ...
" The world will rely on fossil fuels as its main source of energy for decades to come. And natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel of all"
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -- Galileo
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Sean Casten Posted 12:03 am
22 Mar 2008
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Pompey Road Posted 8:18 am
22 Mar 2008
When the long term contracts expire and as new ones are entered into, watch and see how cheap coal really is!
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Sean Casten Posted 11:12 am
23 Mar 2008
But keep in mind that even though the price of coal as a fuel is up dramatically, the majority of the costs of a new coal plant are capital recovery. So the big spike in prices is coming not because of fuel price fluctuation (which will always have a certain degree of volatility) but because of capital costs that are innate to building Clean Air Act-compliant coal plants.
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