Let me start by saying that Dynegy started out as a green kind of company, and always built new or very clean emitting power plant sources.  My dad the certified engineer explained that even with natural gas, three-step steam turbines or what they call "combined cycle" were probably the most efficient power source unless you got into nuclear, which he admitted was a long shot.  

I've got a question for the smart girls and boys out there: what's the difference between burning exactly the same BTU or therms with natural gas or coal in terms of carbon dioxide? In theory, I say it is very much the same except with natural gas you don't get all the dirt.

Whups!

Perhaps I've just exposed a major flaw in environmental thinking, that natural gas is cleaner than coal in terms of CO2 and methane stack emissions. Of course coal is dirty as heck but same BTU, the reaction works just as well. If you're going to go after coal as being dirty, that is a complete different issue from greenhouse warming gases.

A rough translation of what Mr. Williamson said was that the new power market was not making commitments for future power and transmission investments because of the blown economy, and that he has existing plants that can be managed to be improved with enough efficiency under any stupid regulatory "cap" or whatever trading scam the government invents because it has no clue what it is doing: it's uncertain and I don't blame the guy.

The fact of the matter is we'll need more electric power in the future and we'll need more lines to carry the juice, and we have an aging infrastructure that is literally falling down, at least in some crucial places. More old plants must be mothballed and taken offline simply because they cost too much to run and are falling down. Literally, they are about to turn into rust.

So much hedge fund money dried up that nobody is investing now, perhaps a great thing for air quality concerns but not so good for bringing us Americans cheap, reliable electric power. Same for crude oil, and that's why it is below or at $40 a barrel instead of $100 more. Well with low prices, business will contract and not expand, so it's tough making progress to say the least.

As a footnote to history, you can ask the American steel mills to make about 100,000 wind turbine pylons (think thousands of tons of steel) and whatever solar collector parts you need. That with the transmission line tower metal and what we need to do is perhaps a good part of a trillion dollars, not a bad estimate if you include bridge reconstruction and transit steel rails. People want buried cable in their neighborhoods too! Wow, as John Lennon said, "Imagine."  -sammie

Onward through the fog

"burning exactly the same BTU or therms with natural gas or coal in terms of carbon dioxide?"

We don't burn natural gas or coal just for BTU's, we make electricity from those fuels.

Using coal to make electricity produces 950 g CO2/(kW·h), while natural gas produces 600 g CO2/(kW·h). That's a significant reduction and clearly shows that natural gas and coal are not the same in CO2 production.

Sorry Sam Wells, but with all due respect, you don't know what you are talking about.

Sierra Club's campaign had next to nothing to do with Dynegy's decision, tho as Abe says, you can fool some of the people all of the time . . .

The fact of the matter is we'll need more electric power in the future and we'll need more lines to carry the juice

Not if we focused on energy conservation and more local-source energy soultions.