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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized stronger regulations for Wisconsin and 26 other states aimed at curbing air pollution from long-distance sources. The rules will help those states fight ozone and particle pollution caused by power plants in Illinois, Indiana and other states. But Wisconsin utilities - whose pollution can contribute to air-quality problems elsewhere - will also need to find ways to reduce their own emissions. The likely result: Higher electric bills in the coming years. A group of power companies known as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity called the action one of the most...

Major utility announces proposal to retire power plants, layoff workers and spend billions to comply with 'pending' regulations. It is no longer a secret that President Obama's administration is willing to allow electricity prices to "necessarily skyrocket," in order to accomplish his green energy agenda. Although he has so far been unsuccessful at instituting cap-and-trade, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hard at work running coal companies and consumers into the ground. Not that you'd know it from ABC, NBC and CBS news coverage. According to Paul Bedard's June 8 Washington Whispers column in US News & World Report, "two...

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. He wasn’t kidding. In January, 2011 the Obama Administration, for the first time ever, blocked an already approved bid to build one of the largest mountaintop removal coal mines in Appalachian history. And, today it was reported that Obama’s energy plans will cause electricity rates to necessarily...

American Electric Power on Thursday announced it plans to shut down several coal-fired power plants, convert or retrofit others, and cut as many as 600 jobs in the next few years to comply with regulations proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Based on the proposed regulations, AEP will have to retire nearly 6,000 megawatts of coalfueled power generation; upgrade or install new advanced emissions reduction equipment on another 10,100 megawatts; refuel 1,070 megawatts of coal generation as 932 megawatts of natural gas capacity; and build 1,220 megawatts of natural gas-fueled generation.

The Solution to the Energy Crisis is Right HereMark W. Hendrickson  Saudi Arabia has long been the dominant producer of petroleum on the planet. Nature endowed the Arabian Peninsula with gigantic deposits of this vital source of energy. Many of us have lamented the quirk of nature that placed much-needed oil in the most geopolitically unstable region in the world.Although Saudi Arabia is the king of oil producers at present, there is another country that has far more extensive deposits of fossil fuels. Because fossil fuels are the most economical and reliable energy sources known to man, the country that...

Guest Post by Ira GlicksteinThe December 2010 issue of the Atlantic shows an amazing turn-around by some of the Global Warming warmists! Yes, they are still tuned in to the CAGW crowd predicting imminent climate change disaster, but … BUT, some have reversed themselves on their previous ‘ol devil coal! Turns out we need coal to generate Watts of electricity for our electric cars and, they say, we can do it in a way that is environmentally correct.The cover story, by respected author James Fallows, is titled Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal. {Click the link to...

BILLINGS, Mont. — Leaders of the Crow Tribe warned Wednesday that a $7 billion coal-to-liquid fuels plant proposed for the Montana reservation could founder unless the federal government throws more support behind the industry. Crow Chairman Cedric Black Eagle said a perceived anti-coal attitude in Washington, D.C., is scaring off potential plant investors. A federal tax credit for coal recently expired. Unless the political climate for coal improves, Black Eagle said, the tribe could be forced to suspend its project, which has been billed as a means to pull the rural reservation out of poverty.

(VIDEO AT LINK) When Democrat Joe Biden said on the campaign trail in 2008: “Guess what? We’re not supporting Clean Coal… No coal plants here in America,” liberal reporters rushed in to protect Barack Obama. They passed it off as a gaffe. Typical was this report from Jonathan Martin of Politico: “McCain seizes on Biden coal gaffe”: Barack Obama is actually on record supporting the expansion of such technologies, but Biden’s words are prompting Republicans to lick their lips about the potential resonance of the issue in key coal states such as Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado. To drive the...

When Senators Kerry and Lieberman say the phrase 'Clean Coal', I feel like screaming. They give the impression that if they throw enough money at it, then it can be made to work. Why don't they get someone to explain what Carbon Capture and Sequestration really entails, and then maybe they'll see that the scale of something like this will mean that it is one dream too far, and will probably never be realised.

Colloidal coal-water suspensions may rise to the challenges of clean coal technology with the help of a new production method.  At the very least, they won't settle - thanks to new research led by Gustavo Núñez of Nano Dispersions Technology in Panama. Combustion of a hanging drop of the colloidal coal suspension Coal-water slurry fuels are currently burned in some industrial boilers, and are becoming increasingly economical to use as oil and gas prices continue to rise. But Núñez points out that there are practical difficulties involved in using slurries as the coal particles can form a sediment during storage or...

The Air Force is testing a jet fuel made from coal and plant biomass that could replace petroleum-based fuel and emit less carbon-dioxide compared to using conventional jet fuels. The fuel is made with a process developed by Accelergy, based in Houston, using technology licensed from ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company and the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota. Planting jet fuel: Ben Oster, a research engineer at the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota, holds a sample of jet fuel made from plant oils. Accelergy has licensed the technology...

An extraordinary recent statement by Sen. Robert Byrd has stunned his coal-dependent home state and left West Virginia politicians and business leaders scrambling to understand the timing and motivation behind his unexpected discourse on the future of the coal industry. In an early December op-ed piece released by his office — also recorded on audio by the frail 92-year-old senator — Byrd argued that resistance to constraints on mountaintop-removal coal mining and a failure to acknowledge that “the truth is that some form of climate legislation will likely become public policy” represent the real threat to the future of coal....

The clean-coal industry has been shut out of the global emissions trading scheme at the Copenhagen climate change talks, dealing a blow to the UK, US and Australia. The three Western countries and Saudi Arabia had strongly argued that advanced new clean-coal plants, which trap emissions underground, ought to earn credits for being a low-carbon source of energy. But a United Nations committee decided not to include the industry in its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which rewards companies that invest in green energy. Ed Miliband, Energy and Climate Change Secretary, is a strong supporter of the fledgling technology, which attempts...

Vast coal deposits lying deep beneath the North Sea will be burnt in situ to generate up to 5 per cent of Britain’s energy needs, under new plans approved by the Government last week. The UK Coal Authority has awarded licences to Clean Coal, an Anglo-American company, to develop five offshore sites for a technology called Underground Coal Gasification (UGC). The method, which has not been used on a commercial scale in the UK, although it is widely used in Australia, taps the high energy content of coal while doing away with the costly and labour-intensive need to mine it...

WHILE President Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal to reduce greenhouse gases has been the big topic of recent environmental debate, the White House has also been pushing a futuristic federal project to build a power plant that burns coal without any greenhouse gases. Sounds great, right? Except the idea is a rehash of a proposal that went bust the first time around. More important, the technology already exists to make huge reductions in greenhouse emissions from coal, allowing power companies to begin cutting the carbon footprint of coal today. Instead, advanced-technology coal power sits on the shelf while regulators wait to see...

Just two weeks after the federal government revived plans to build the FutureGen power plant in eastern Illinois, two of the experimental coal plant's financial backers said Thursday they are withdrawing. The exit of American Electric Power Co. and Southern Co. leaves the nine power and coal companies that are still part of what's known as the FutureGen Alliance searching for new partners to help cover building and startup costs they expect to reach roughly $2.4 billion. The Department of Energy said June 12 that it would provide just over a billion dollars in stimulus money as it agreed to...

<p>American Electric Power Co. (AEP) and Southern Co. (SO) are pulling out of Futuregen, a U.S. government-backed project to capture and store the greenhouse- gas emissions from a coal-fired power plant, the companies' top executives said Thursday.</p> <p>The companies, two of the biggest coal-burning utilities in the U.S., are exiting the Futuregen Alliance just weeks after it won renewed support from the federal government. The Obama administration earlier this month all but guaranteed almost $1.1 billion for the project, to be based in Mattoon, Ill., reviving a project that had suffered a major setback in early 2008 when the Bush administration backed out of funding plans after costs almost doubled. The companies' departure from the alliance was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.</p>

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports on the loophole -- big enough to drive the White House visitor's log through -- in the Obama administration's "transparency" policy: As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies.

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series

China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet. But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost. While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant...