Free Republic

The utility’s 1.6 million Colorado customers will see their bills rise 4.4% — about $4 on the average residential bill — on Sept. 1 ... lectricity bills for 1.6 million Colorado customers of Xcel Energy will rise 4.4% — about $3.99 on the average residential bill — on Sept. 1, under a settlement approved Wednesday by the state Public Utilities Commission. In 2022, Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electricity supplier, filed for a $312 million rate hike, but under the settlement it will get an increase of $96 million. The reduced revenue figure was reached in a settlement between Xcel Energy...

Although it's reported the world is going through a transition away from fossil fuels to so-called 'green energy,' the data doesn’t support it. The use of coal in China has exploded thereby making overall coal consumption increase. As much as it’s reported that the world is going through a transition away from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy, the data doesn’t support it. The International Energy Agency released its 2023 Coal Market Update on Thursday, which shows that global coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to a record 8.3 billion tons. While the use of coal in European...

The supposedly evil energy source saves the day in Europe. Germany did itself and Europe a favor by managing to avert an energy-shortage recession this winter, and now we know how they did it: supposedly evil coal. Data released Thursday show coal’s role in electricity generation growing in Germany for the second year running. Coal accounted for 33.3% of electricity production in 2022, according to the Federal Statistical Office, up from 30.2% in 2021... coal’s resurgence started in 2020, before the Ukraine war triggered fears of a gas crisis. ... wind and solar don’t work when the winds are still...

Forget solar, wind, hydro, and wave power. The capacity to burn coal for electricity generation rose in 2022 despite global promises to phase out the fuel with a defiant China leading the way ... The coal fleet grew by 19.5 gigawatts last year, enough to light up around 15 million homes, with nearly all newly commissioned coal projects in China ... New coal plants were added in 14 countries and eight countries announced new coal projects. China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe were the only countries that both added new coal plants and announced new projects. This boom in coal...

At least two people have died and more than 50 are missing after a mine collapsed in northern China. President Xi Jinping has ordered a search and rescue mission following the collapse at around 17:13 local time (09:13 GMT) on Wednesday. Six injured individuals have been rescued from the site so far. More than 200 rescue workers are at the scene, according to state news agency Xinhua. The mine is located in Alxa League, in Inner Mongolia region.

A wind farm in Germany is being demolished to make room for a coal mine expansion. German energy giant RWE is tearing down wind turbines to expand a neighboring coal mine in an effort to deal with the country's energy crisis. The area of the wind farm near the small town of Lützerath will be used to expand the Garzweiler open pit mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The wind farm features eight wind turbines. One wind turbine was dismantled last week, two more are scheduled to be deconstructed some time next year, and the final five will be...

The explosion occurred 6:45 p.m. at the state-owned TTK Amasra Muessese Mudurlugu mine in the town of Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin. Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said a preliminary assessment indicated the explosion was likely caused by firedamp — a reference to flammable gases found in coal mines. There were 110 people in the mine at the time of the explosion, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, who traveled to Amasra to coordinate the rescue operation, told reporters. Most of the workers were able to evacuate following the blast, but 49 were trapped in a higher risk area...

At Greece's largest coal mine, controlled explosions and the roar of giant excavators scooping up blasted rock have once again become routine. Coal production has been ramped up at the site near the northern Greek city of Kozani as the war in Ukraine forced many European nations to rethink their energy supplies. Coal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war. Electricity generated by coal in the European Union jumped by 19% in the fourth quarter of...

The coal plant is closing, along with the mine that feeds it and has nearly 115 more employees, and all the workers will lose their jobs over the next decade ... The same scenario is playing out in other small towns across the U.S. After decades of relying on coal for their workforce, tax base and way of life, the towns face uncertain futures as new state and national legislation forces the retirement of fossil fuels ... The impact spreads beyond the plants workers and is felt by the rest of the community, too. In Craig, much of the infrastructure...

The incident started when coal dust in a ventilation shaft caught fire on Thursday, filling the Siberian mine with smoke and killing 11. By nightfall, a failed operation to reach dozens of missing miners had turned to tragedy after several rescuers reportedly suffocated. An emergency services source told one news agency "no one is left alive". The majority of the 285 people in the the Listvyazhnaya mine, in the Kemerovo region some 3,500km (2,175 miles) east of Moscow, escaped in the immediate aftermath of the incident, at around 08:35 local time (01:35 GMT) on Thursday. Officials said 49 had been...

An abandoned stretch of roadway that snakes through a mountainous region of Pennsylvania known as "Graffiti Highway" is now getting covered in dirt after a reported spike in crowds during the coronavirus pandemic. Pennsylvania State Route 61 has been closed since 1993 due to damage from an underground mine fire in the nearby town of Centralia, about 60 miles northeast of the state capital of Harrisburg. The pavement on the roadway eventually was covered with graffiti, which then became its own tourist attraction. In recent weeks, though, as the coronavirus pandemic has swept the nation, closing schools and forcing people...

OKD, the company that operates the CSM mine near the city of Karvina, said 11 of those killed were Polish miners provided by a contractor agency, while two were Czech. A further 10 miners were injured in the blast, with one in a critical condition, the Czech national news agency CTK reported. OKD’s managing director, Boleslav Kowalczyk, said search and rescue operations had to be called off because of poor conditions in the mine. The explosion occurred 800 meters (2,625 feet) below the surface just after 5 p.m. local time on Thursday. All underground work at the hard-coal mine was...

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) sent a letter to Bank of the West President and Chief Executive Officer Nandita Bakhshi pushing back on the bank’s decision to no longer conduct business with companies engaged in the exploration and production of coal, oil and natural gas. Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, has 23 branches with dedicated employees who work hard to serve communities and families across Wyoming. In his letter, Barrasso condemned the San Francisco headquarter’s attack on Wyoming’s communities and businesses that depend on fossil fuels for energy security, jobs and economic growth. “This misguided and...

Rural residents turn to cheap heating fuel ... Monte Miller shovels a load of coal into a bucket and makes the short journey from his storage shed to his home on the edge of Bayfield, joking aloud that his wife likes to keep the temperature at a steady 75 degrees. “But we don’t have any problem doing that with coal,” Miller and his wife, Marsha, have been using coal as their main source of fuel since they moved to their home in 2000. Each year, the couple uses about 2 tons of coal to keep their 2,500-square-foot house warm throughout...

PHOENIX — Hopis and Navajos who work at a coal mine near the Arizona-Utah border said Tuesday their family lives and earning power will suffer greatly if the power plant fed by the mine is shuttered as planned. The Navajo Generating Station in Page is set to close at the end of 2019 unless a new owner can be found. That’s considered a long-shot, but the company that owns the supply mine says it has identified investors interested in one of the largest coal plants in the West. More than 200 workers, their family members and supporters in blue T-shirts,...

Boulder - Remember that unsuccessful attempt in the legislature to toughen penalties for vandalizing oil and gas equipment? Child’s play. It turns out the author of a letter to the editor in Boulder’s Daily Camera that got a national media mention last week — for appearing to endorse outright violence against fracking operations — is the author of a pending statewide ballot issue to hike Colorado’s severance tax on oil and gas production. Reached by phone today, Andrew O’Connor, of Lafayette, unapologetically reiterated his hardline stance ... “I wouldn’t have a problem with a sniper shooting one of the workers”...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

Two thousand environmental protesters blockaded a coal mine in Germany on Friday as part of an international campaign against the use of fossil fuels. The activists, dressed in white overalls and equipped with breathing masks, blocked access to the open cast Proschim mine close to the Polish border, according to an AFP journalist at the scene. The group unfurled banners on excavation machinery, with slogans including “Keep it in the ground” and “Climate crime scene” as organizers said that the action would last all weekend. […] The “Break Free” campaign was the brainchild of several environmental lobby groups including Greenpeace...

Bowie Resources Partners’ purchase of Peabody Energy Corp.‘s Twentymile Mine in Routt County has fallen through, and Peabody has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Peabody, the world’s largest privately owned producer of coal, joins other major coal companies including Arch Coal, owner of the West Elk Mine in the North Fork Valley, in going bankrupt. Arch Coal also is in Chapter 11 reorganization. Bowie, owner of the Bowie No. 2 Mine near Paonia, had agreed to buy Twentymile and two mine properties in New Mexico for $358 million. But Peabody previously had said Bowie was still trying to find...

the U.S. Supreme Court .. issued an injunction blocking the EPA from implementing its Clean Power Plan, which would end America’s use of coal, its cheapest and most abundant source of electricity. ... Western Colorado’s economy is so dependent on coal. It employs more than 2,000 people and generates $58 million in federal and state royalties, $28 million in private landowner royalties, $4.5 million in reclamation funds, and pays $28 million in property, severance, and sales taxes — all of it on the Western Slope. EPA has never tried anything so unpopular in its 45-year history, and that is saying...