***Part of the runup in coal has to do with rail freight.***
At the coal plant I worked at (31 years) the rail cost of hauling coal was more than the cost of the coal in the car.
We used low sulfur coal, low ash and had electrostatic precipitators to clean the fly ash from the flue gas.
The exhaust gas had so little pollutants it was negligable. We had strip charts to prove it.
Now, the EPA has made new standards so tough the plant is debating whether to shut the plant down or add the new equipment (scrubbers for the LOW SULFUR coal)and a bag house to remove the .0099 % ash that does get out, along with anti-mercury and anti-lead equipment.
We all had to work shutdowns in the ash and no one ever had a mercury or lead poisoning problem. We did have one man die at a very old age of asbestos cancer.
If this plant was so bad why do we now have more deer than I’ve ever seen here, bald eagles winter here and bass are the largest in the cooling lake.
This plant also provides high dollar jobs for those employed at the plant, and help break the economic stranglehold of the CHICKEN men who wanted to keep this area agricultural so they could pay less than minimum wages.
Coal transportation is often five or six times the cost of the fob coal.