Even in Illinois coal communities, Trump's anticipated impact on industry is a source of debate

[pstokely]

Source: STL Post Dispatch

But there are skeptics, including some coal industry insiders, who say the momentum of market forces and technology will be tough to overcome.

“The real culprit here is not necessarily EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] regulations,” said Steve Earle, the vice president of the United Mine Workers of America district that encompasses Illinois, at a recent meeting about threatened benefits for coal retirees. “What we’re competing with is low natural gas prices.”

On the campaign trail, Trump made contradictory promises about restoring coal while also promoting the same oil and gas extraction largely responsible for undercutting coal in the first place. And since being elected, Trump has picked cabinet members who largely represent oil and gas interests — not coal.

“When you put oil executives in charge of our energy policy, what direction do you think we’re going to go?” said Gary Bartolotti, a retired coal miner and the mayor of Christopher, when asked about a potential rebound for coal. “I don’t in the foreseeable future see coal coming back like it was in the ’80s and ’90s around here.”

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/even-in-illinois-coal-communities-trump-s-anticipated-impact-on/article_1d1890d6-3042-5b3f-9680-11d620861cf2.html

[Grins]

1. Bwahahahahahahaha!!

Suckers!

Now just sit back and wait until the Republicans gut the Obamacare that covers your black lung disability checks. You won't be the first counties in coal country to have that fear. Justifiably. But, as Mencken put it, you deserve the government you voted for, so you should get it - good and hard.

In the link: “Proud Union Home” signs still dot the yards of retirees..."

What a joke. And how stupid can you be? Two coal counties are mentioned in the link. BOTH went for Trump by more than 70%. Seventy. Freaking. Percent. They overwhelmingly voted against their own best interests. Willingly. No, determinedly.

Which brings me back to "..the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

[Botany]

2. The power plants have all switched from coal to natural gas because it is ....

... cheaper and cleaner and they are not going back. The old steel mill towns and
cities are not going back to making steel either.

[modrepub]

5. Absolutely right

One only has to look at their electric grid reports to confirm this. The PJM grid notes that coal fired power plants have an average marginal cost (their break even point) of $40/MW. On average, PJM says marginal prices on its grid are about $34/MW. Coal plants can only turn a profit when grid prices are over $40/MW, which isn't often.

Why are coal plants more expensive than gas? Part of the reason is efficiency. A new combined cycle gas fired power plant has an efficiency of about 67%. That means 67% of the fuel burned is actually recovered for generating electricity. Smaller combined cycle gas units can reach 80% if their steam is utilized for other purposes. For comparison, most coal plants are on the order of 34% efficiency. In addition to this difference in unit efficiency, coal plants typically need hundreds of employees to run. Gas plants can probably operate with under 50 people. Gas plants have become so prevalent on the PJM grid that even some of the old nuclear plants can't turn a profit; last I heard Three Mile Island was turning in bids to run at cost (nuclear plants in NJ are scheduled for shut down). You'll almost never hear this explanation in the MSM.

[Botany]

6. thank you for this info

Coal is really dirty and hard to work with and the power plants are left
w/tons of fly ash too.

BTW what is PJM?

and MW is megawatt, right?

And Trump knows those old western PA, W.V., and OH steel mills are not coming back ...
years ago I had a friends father who was in the steel industry tell me that the old
steel mills that I knew in PA no longer are worth to run. Back in the day those plants
that were located along rivers or twisty little roads in the valley were very good @ making
steel but the business of steel production has changed and those mill towns are never getting
their steel jobs back.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. "BTW what is PJM?"

Pennsylvania, (New) Jersey, Maryland - big electric grid (which I am in as well).

As a sidenote, I think US Steel is still operating in Pittsburgh. Most of the rest are gone there. I once had a boss from Pittsburgh and he said back when he was growing up, whenever anyone hung up clothes on a line in the area around the city, they ended up being covered in soot - the smog was that bad. Now its gorgeous around the area thanks to the clean air. Of course that meant the city had to find alternatives which ended up mostly being hospital/clinical-related.

[modrepub]

9. Another Story

Here's another little tid bit that you'll never see in the MSM. Homer City is one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the state of Pennsylvania (~1800 MW). The owners decided to finally put on sulfur dioxide controls to meet the Clean Air Act; they had originally decided to retire the plant after 40+ years of operations. The controls they decided to put on were decidedly different than typical controls. They are called NIDs or "dry scrubbers". It was a roughly one billion dollar investment. The owners ran out of money and GE Capital decided to invest $750 million in the plant to finish the project. During the permitting stage the company found out the controls didn't work as advertised and they had to go back in and renegotiate the permit to set higher emission rates.

Meanwhile the power plant did not run as often as it needed to because it's PJM bid was higher than most of the baseline bids. Less operating hours meant less money pulled in for electric generation. Less cash flow meant the owners were in danger of missing the debt payments on their 660 million dollar bond they floated to finish installing their dry scrubbers (that don't work as advertised). Starved of revenue, the power plant went back to GE Capital and asked for more money. GE Capital wisely told them no and promptly wrote off their $750 million investment in the company. Now the bond market is panicking because the power plant may not make it's October bond payment. Homer City responded to all this by putting itself up for sale. The bids came in reportedly between $250-525 million dollars (that's after investing over a billion dollars in the plant). Homer City's owners rejected the bids. October came and the plant, not surprisingly, missed its bond payment (and reported that they only had $20 million on hand, that's right after all this investment the plant had only $20 million in the bank). Are you crying yet? Well here's the kicker. Homer City is being sued by their coal supplier for breach of contract. Like most companies, Homer City signed an agreement with their coal supplier to purchase coal at some fixed price years ago. That contract price is now higher than the current spot market price for coal so Homer City stopped buying from their contracted supplier to save money. Their supplier is trying to force Homer City to make GE Capital buy their coal (at the higher contracted price).

Folks, you can't write stories better than this! I'm beginning to think the energy industry is becoming a financial time bomb.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

16. Great post. Thanks. I've seen pix of that plant at Wikipedia.

Like everything else, it has its own Wikipedia page:

Homer City Generating Station

It has the tallest chimney in the United States.

[Botany]

20. and we are going to get more acid mine drainage now too.

Under Obama we have seen much progress but now the GOP
is going back on trying to clean up the environment.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141655426

[modrepub]

22. In Pennsylvania

the economics is making it harder to clean up legacy coal mining that contributes to acid mine drainage and uncontrolled burning of culm (waste coal piles). In the 1980s a number of waste coal-fired power plants were built mainly in the anthracite coal regions in the NE and around Cambria county in SW PA. Basically these plants burned a mixture of dirt and coal in the mine waste material leftover after 50-100 years of mining. The material was treated with lime, burned then used to stabilize areas that had been leaching water with pHs typically on the order of 2 or less. As the decades have gone by most of the high BTU material has been "reclaimed" and less desirable material (much further away from these fixed plants) has become the feedstock. Since the plants were usually located near the best feedstock it has now become more expensive to transport the remaining material to the plant. These plants already get generous tax breaks from the state of PA. Given rising costs, they have asked the state for additional tax cuts. In the long run, again, the economics of running these waste-coal plants (even though their fuel is essentially "free&quot seem to be working against their continued operations.

Here's a story for Seward Station (the largest waste-coal plant in the state): http://www.tribdem.com/news/rothfus-tours-seward-power-plant-plugs-sense-act-to-support/article_f0a480cc-ed2f-11e5-84d6-0b60ae39b5e5.html

[benld74]

3. Gonna reap what they sowed , unfortunately

[T_i_B]

4. Things are always more complicated....

...than politicians would have you believe. And even here in the UK there's no shortage of bad politicians making unrealistic policy pledges aimed at people in old coal mining areas.

The way things are going is such that we need to hear more from politicians about fracking and biomass energy.

[Cryptoad]

8. King Coal may not be Dead but,,,,

it is in the Dying Quivers. Sorry all the coal miners but they are to follow the buggy whip industry.

[T_i_B]

13. It's already died in the UK

In part thanks to a major industrial dispute between Margret Thatcher and the miners in 1984.

There are still those who pine for the return of the coal industry. It was a major employer, and without Britain's coal reserves the industrial revolution would never have happened. The appalling conditions in coal mines were also a major factor in the rise of socialism. Vast swathes of the country (including the area where I live) were dependent on the industry and some of the old coal mining towns and villages have never recovered from the closure of the pits.

However, the awful truth is that it would be cripplingly uneconomical to reopen the mines even before you consider issues such as flooding, subsidence and the stuff we've built on old mining sites. For instance, the old Manvers colliery site in South Yorkshire is now a large industrial estate employing more people than a reopened coal mine ever could.

[raging moderate]

18. What does the large industrial estate produce?

Do you know any particular information that might inspire a similar success story in the US? We have to do something for our old coal mining families.

[T_i_B]

21. A wide variety of stuff

From a large retail warehouse to the production of air conditioning systems. Steel and metal manufacturing as well, as that's still a big part of the industrial landscape in South Yorkshire.

A lot of the old colliery sites are now industrial estates. Some are now being used for housing, or as retail parks (as is the case with Cortonwood, whose closure sparked the 1984 miners strike). Most of these sites have been redeveloped in the past 20 years, often with EU money. Which makes the strong support for leaving the EU round here even more idiotic.

[raging moderate]

23. Thank you.

We can file this information for later use.

[elleng]

10. So the 'debate' with real FACTS makes 'news' AFTER the election,

right?!

[TeamPooka]

11. Suckers get what they deserve.

[Scurrilous]

12. K & R

[SHRED]

15. PV solar and wind are cheaper also

[weissmam]

17. you have to wonder if the loosers that voted for the GOP

will ever realize they have bene conned

[Blue_Adept]

24. They'll blame liberals and Democrats

Plain and simple.

[bhikkhu]

19. NPR interviewed a coal executive the other day, who had a plan

he said (if I remember correctly) the main three things were:

First to end support and subsidies for alternative energies, solar and wind power

Second, to eliminate emissions restrictions on power plants and factories

Third, to relax or eliminate EPA standards for water contamination, arsenic, lead and so forth.

I would have almost thought it was satire, but those were his ideas, and he was hopeful.

[ProfessorGAC]

25. Well, That's Silly, Isn't It?

Up thread a poster shows the operating economics. More efficient systems are operating at $6 per megawatt less than coal. So, prices to the grid are based upon that lower number and the coal plants can't compete.

Hard to believe that eliminating restrictions is going to lower the operating costs by $6/MW. This guy is living in fantasyland.

[LonePirate]

28. We are so screwed because this type of idiocy is now welcomed in Washington.

[no_hypocrisy]

26. Coal industry should have been fighting fracking, not the EPA.

[Historic NY]

27. A couple old plants that were mothballed near me have come

back on line due to natural gas. The old coal fire plant was dismantled, they were dirty and costly. For decades we would look north up the Hudson River and see the dark hazy spew coming from them. Coal is dead, here in decades past one would see train cars of coal lining the sidings awaiting to be burned. I remember the belch of factories powerhouses cranking up for the day, we don't see that any more. We don't deal with the settling of ash on our houses, our cars and yards. Trump can promise but the customer base for coal has slided away.

[T_i_B]

29. The trouble is....

Plenty of voters in old coal mining areas do pine for the return of coal mining, resent the new industries that have taken its place and in the UK at least are still very bitter about the way the industry was killed off by the Tories.

Add in a very insular nature to the local culture, an aging population and you have fertile ground for bad politicians telling tall tales, as we saw over here during the EU referendum. Many old miners are looking for scapegoats rather than looking to the future, and there's no shortage of bad politicians egging them on.