Posted on 07/03/2012 4:53:42 PM PDT by joeclarke
"As utility companies face new deadlines for coal-fired power plants to comply with tight new EPA clean air regulations, many energy suppliers have plans to shutter plants that employ thousands of IBEW members rather than invest in costly upgrades.
If thousands of megawatts are suddenly taken off-line, this could trigger massive electricity shortages, just as demand is expected to increase, according to a regional transmission organization report.
A report from PJM, a regional transmission organization covering 13 states and the District of Columbia, estimates that 18,000 megawatts of electricity will be lost to the power grid due to expected coal plant shutdowns. That's the loss of enough power to light and heat 18 million homes."
'The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule has received nothing but negative feedback from the affected energy industry, which argues the stricter federal emission law will result in higher costs for electricity and massive loss of U.S. jobs. The plan will also require billions of dollars to retrofit power plants with clean coal technologies.
According to a study prepared by the National Economic Research Associates (NERA), the legislation is among the most expensive EPA rules ever imposed on coal-fueled power plants that will cause electric rates to skyrocket by as much as 23 percent and lead to nationwide employment losses totaling 1.4 million job-years by 2020.
Power-plant closures are expected to increase in the coming months, as utilities complete their cost analyses of complying with the Cross-State rule, according to Industrial Info Resources. The EPA rule has already forced coal facilities in Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas to retire old units, rather than bare the expense of installing pollution-control equipment.
The coal industry maintains that the EPA doesn't seem to care about the economic damage new regulations will cause."
***So how did people live to 95 back then?***
Very rarely. A family might have 15 kids. 5 will die before adulthood, 5 will die in their early adulthood, three die in middle age and one in beginning old age, and one at 95.
My family remembers this one. It was called a dust storm.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
That was awful. I saw movie of that, and that little blow we had was nothing!
:^)
***Come live where I do, and turn off the A/C. Then let’s see what necessary.***
I used to live in Farmington NM. One July 4th we decided to visit kin in Scotland Arkansas. We left Farmington it was 98 degrees and 12 % humidity, and I didn’t notice it at all. No Ac in my truck.
Two days later I am in Scotland, AR and my MIL decides to go to Clinton to do some shopping. It was 98 degrees with humidity about 90%.
We go into the store, and when I walked out I almost went to my knees as the heat just swarmed me. I felt like I had been hit with a hundred fists. Yet it was only 98 degrees.
Well, there you go. I am impressed. Really! That is hot, and that’s humid too. I came home from work one day and the power was off in my house (We have a generator at work). My candles had all melted. ISYN. :^)
Been there done that. I work in a foundry and it’s been above 100 for over a week. Tell me how hot it is where you live in your AC
Aw, it’s worse than that. I track and log the temperature in my lab to make sure I am taking good measurements. It’s locked in at 69F. It’s heck having to go through 110F heat in a prebaked car (180F) the two miles to home where it’s 77F year ‘round.
Oh well.it’s the cross I bear. I wouldn’t trade this for the world. Even with the occasional Haboob. I so hated the snow.
Add 1 part electric utilities that have been cowed from adding Tx and Gen capacity.
Add 16 parts radical BIG government bent on destroying coal (47% of US generation) via shuttering older plants; denying the Keystone pipeline; denying and delaying leases on federal lands; and an entire mindset that one can destroy existing energy infrastructure and replace it with untested and uneconomical resources.
Stir. And you have the Great Depression.
When CA went down in 2000, it created what those in the business call "INDUSTRIAL COLLAPSE" It looks very much like what the AP is trying to pass off as Climate Change.
Yep. All true. What are we gonna do about it?
And then there’s the problem of the tree-huggers - a lot of the outages here in south Jersey were caused by trees being blown over on to power lines - in the rural areas this is to be expected, but even in a lot of built up areas it’s becoming almost impossible to keep trees adequately trimmed and controlled because of the greenies - in our town there is an “Environmental Committee” which must be consulted before any tree larger than 15” in diameter is felled, no matter how diseased or unattractive - they’ve eased up a bit because they’ve received so much resistance from a lot of people - one local cop told one of them that if they tried to interfere with what he did with his own trees they’d never know what hit them - but they’re still a major hindrance in the public’s being able to do what in many cases is known to be best for safety and the environment by those with at least a little common sense.....
Do you have any familiarity with slagging and fouling, fusion temperatures, coke button, B&W Cyclones ?
My opinions exactly fit the facts regarding grid maintenance, improvement, tree trimming and environazi/EPA interference in the same.
Please show where there has been such interference in tree trimming. Usually opposition is more by homeowners who don't want their pretty trees chewed up, but that is more short-sighteness on their part.
But the larger claim by Joe Clark is that the EPA's coal mandates have something to do with this particular outage. They don't.
So tell me again what that has to do with the claims made by this particular blog post - that EPA policies were responsible for this outage, instead of a big thunderstorm complex?
These are terms common to the coal industry.
They don't.
And I am opposed to those mandates. And opposed to the anti-fracking dingbats. But that doesn't change the fact that this was a weather-related phenomenon, possibly aided in places by spot opposition to tree-trimming around power lines. But some storms go beyond that, when they bring down the entire tree on a power line and not just an overhanging limb.
References to coal should be left to industry veterans.
One doesn’t have to know how coal is mined to realize that shutting down coal plants around the country using over-zealous mandates is a bad thing.
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