coal

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The chief executive of Duke Energy, James Rogers, is an unlikely advocate for policies to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. But the man who is building two new coal power plants is just that.

Rogers delivered a keynote speech at the MIT Energy Conference here on Saturday where he called for policies and technologies to bridge the fossil fuel-based energy industry of today with low-carbon alternatives.

Rogers heads a company that generates 90 percent of its electricity from burning coal or nuclear power to serve its 4 million customers. So it's not surprising that he says that "… Read more

The U.S. does not recycle nuclear waste from power plants because it could be used for weapons, but that might change.

Pete Domenici, the Republican Senator from New Mexico, said the country should start to examine the benefits of recycling fuel, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

France and most other nuclear energy-producing countries recycle fuel. Doing so cuts down the amount of fuel that needs to be mined, as well as the amount of nuclear waste that needs to get buried. Recycling, however, leads to byproducts that can be used to build bombs.

Domenici also said he wants … Read more

In the wake of setbacks to new coal powerplant construction in the face of likely carbon legislation, the coal industry has mounted a serious PR blitz, led by a group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC).

ABEC is a national non-profit organization with a claimed membership of 150,000, whose acknowledged primary funding source is "America's coal-based electricity providers" -- including such big-boys as American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP), Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), First Energy (NYSE: FE) and Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Not to mention large coal companies such as Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) and CONSOL (… Read more

Coal is burned most days in my neighborhood in central Beijing. Even the newer electric heaters installed this year didn't stop my neighbors from cooking and keeping warm with smoke-spewing briquettes. Coal is a fact of life. But some businesspeople are marketing boilers that make the best of coal by burning it in a cleaner way, reports Feng Yongfeng of the Guangming Daily in a story republished at China Dialogue.

One such technology was developed by the Beijing Xiongcai Group, whose chairman, Wang Yongjiang, explains:

"Normally coal is burned from underneath," he explains, "but our boilers … Read more

Prominent environmental author Lester Brown predicted on Thursday that coal-fired power plants will be banned in the United States because of climate change concerns and the financial liabilities of greenhouse gas emissions.

In a conference call and paper, Lester, president of the Earth Policy Institute, compiled a number of setbacks for coal projects in the past year from governments, local opposition, and financiers.

A cheap but dirty power source, coal supplies about half of the electricity in the United States and is growing rapidly in China, India, and other developing countries.

The most recent investment barrier came from Bank of … Read more

Demand in China and a host of other factors are pumping coal prices to new levels, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As a result, coal prices could begin to push up the price of electricity, food, imports and other products that directly or indirectly rely on coal-burning power plants. (Coal supplies 40 percent of the world's electricity and roughly 50 percent of the U.S.'s electricity.) Demand is growing so fast that China in fact imported more than it exported in the first half of 2007 last year. Oil has already contributed to rising prices.

Thermal coal … Read more

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--It's going to take one big pile of money and a lot of work to go green, according to CEOs of two of the country's larger utilities.

By 2020, approximately $750 billion to $800 billion will have to be invested in the electrical grid and generating infrastructure, said Jeff Sterba, CEO of PNM Resources at the Clean Tech Investor Summit taking place here. That's as much as has been invested in the grid to date.

"In 13 years, we will double the amount of investment that has ever been made," he said. … Read more

The coal industry isn't happy with the Department of Energy's cancellation of an ambitious clean coal project, and has issued a bulletin to correct what it considers inaccurate statements about the cost of the project.

Earlier this week, the DOE said it was pulling out of the FutureGen Alliance, a coalition of coal and oil companies banded together to create a coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, Ill., that injects carbon dioxide emissions underground. The cost, the DOE claimed, had become prohibitive. The budget for the 300-megawatt demonstration plant had ballooned to $1.8 billion because of price increases … Read more

We could put a bigger dent in greenhouse gases, says Patrick Moore, if it weren't for environmentalists.

Expanding the use of nuclear power would let the U.S. and other nations reduce dependence on coal, one of the biggest producers of carbon dioxide and other pollutants (and industrial accidents). Nuclear plants emit virtually no greenhouse gases, and more plants would also give the green light to the electric car industry.

"They (environmentalists) are the ones who are screaming that the sky is falling and that the climate catastrophe is coming and it's going to be global and … Read more