Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
HUndreds of coal miners in Arizona, mostly Navajo natives, were told recently that they would be out of work as the mines keeping the Navajo generating station fueled would be closing. The decision has been made to convert the plant to natural gas for economic reasons.
As more and more power plants switch to natural gas, the demand for coal will be dropping. Furthermore, there is something else to consider.
The steel industry.
If more steel mills start using natural gas instead of coal, that will really drop the demand for coal. Times are changing. President Trump can't do anything about that.
Employment in the mines peaked in the 1920's and has been declining ever since.
Technology substitution/ industrial robotics is one of the factors associated with declining employment in addition to environmental and politics have all taken a toll on what were high risk, mostly low wage jobs.
Times and technology have been changing for decades now. That is inevitable. Look at Japan and South Korea. Robots have quickly changed things over in those nations.
Coal has been dropping in demand. More natural gas is being used.
The question is, what will those who depend on such industries do?
Times and technology have been changing for decades now. That is inevitable. Look at Japan and South Korea. Robots have quickly changed things over in those nations.
Coal has been dropping in demand. More natural gas is being used.
The question is, what will those who depend on such industries do?
After a lot of whining, drugs, and helping to elect a liar/swindler, they will either keep scrambling to get on Disability benefits (and good luck with that when Republicans control government purse strings) or get off their rumbled rumps and go get some marketable job skills.
I realize it's no fair they have to give up their shot at black-lung disease to move somewhere there are jobs, but that's been the way of the world for centuries.
Starve where you are or move yourself to a spot with more opportunities.
Here's the numbers, the fracking boom started in 2008:
It should be noted modern gas plants are more efficient but that same tech is coming to coal plants.
Also should be noted is the fluctuations in the gas price. Both are subject to supply and demand but it's much more acute for the gas supply. You can go back decades for the coal costs and find that same line that steadily increases.
Quote:
Coal has been in decline for quite a while. The shale gas revolution that began about a decade ago sparked the first wave of coal retirements.
The wave of coal plant closings was primarily because of the new mercury regulations that will lower the deposition rates here in the US an estimated 1 to 10 percent and increase the average IQ an estimated 2/1000 of one point. These were all older plants and upgrading them was not worth it. If you want an analogy if you had a perfectly operational truck that was older you wouldn't spend thousands upgrading the pollution controls if you knew it was going to the junkyard in the near future.
The other problem with coal is the possibility of CO2 caps, these are billion dollar investments that need to operate over the next 60 years. We can use the truck analogy here again, you aren't going to gamble buying a new truck that is least inexpensive to operate now if there is a possibility it is going to become impossibly expensive to operate in the near future.
As far as the jobs go some guy sweeping in a warehouse full of Chinese made solar panels is not going to replace the $80K a year jobs in the mining industry and the plethora of very high paying jobs they support in particular the heavy equipment industry.
Lastly solar and wind cannot and will not replace base power supplied by coal, natgas, nucelar and hydro.
Employment in the mines peaked in the 1920's and has been declining ever since.
Production per employee increasing is something that occurs in any industry. Those mining jobs were replaced with high paying jobs in the heavy equipment industry.
Natural gas is currently about $2.50 per MILLION BTU.....
It's a volatile market and whether it can provide a dependable price point like coal is up in the air. The average since about 2008 has been about $4....
Quote:
to those bad at math, that would mean is is 1/6th the price of heating oil.
Not really because that is wholesale cost. Retail it's about 1/3 the cost. The very expensive anthracite coal I burn for home heating at $180 per ton delivered still beats retail gas... not by much.
But it IS a governmental responsibility to provide educational opportunities for folks to retrain. Community colleges and vocational education would be an obvious starting place. More such, closer to where unemployed and underemployed people live, or just rehabbing existing facilities to offer additional education/training, would be something I'd think most would support, regardless of political leanings.
Although we haven't yet touched on the frequency of political corruption and good ol' boyism in the coal counties, and how that impacts the local power structures and economies..
This might be a little off topic, but IMO the best use of federal retraining dollars are when they can be used to train workers for a specific new employer that pays high wages. A case in point was the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky is the early 1980's. Governor Martha Layne Collins aggressively pursued Toyota to locate in a spot that was ideal for industrial development, in that it was adjacent to I-75, close by a railroad line and had natural gas access. It was also about 15 miles from a city with a major university and an airport. So it had a lot of selling points on its own, but even with those assets had remained undeveloped for several decades.. State employment offices handled the application processing, aptitude testing and pre-screening. Those ultimately selected by Toyota were placed into a training course that Toyota developed along with the University of Kentucky and state voc-ed. Some of the training cost was off-set by federal training (JTPA) dollars.
The hidden payoff for Kentucky with Toyota wasn't the Toyota jobs themselves, but with the other manufacturers in auto related jobs that built plants in the wake of the Toyota decision.
To me, a more questionable use of training dollars is when it becomes more institutionalized and the money is used to subsidize the cost of an ongoing Voc Ed teacher's salary where there isn't a specific new employer coming in and the ROI is more questionable.
The bad thing for Appalachian development is that the underlying selling points that existed in my example (existing infrastructure and nearby University support) are comparatively non-existent, making landing high value employers very challenging.
Last edited by Bureaucat; 02-20-2017 at 08:55 AM..
The bad thing for Appalachian development is that the underlying selling points that existed in my example (existing infrastructure and nearby University support) are non-existent, making landing high value employers very challenging.
Appalachian mines are going to find it very difficult to remain competitive.... against the Powder River basin. It should also be noted as the coal production continues to shift there the average price declines significantly. In the 70's it was almost nothing, it now supplies about 40 percent of the coal we burn.
One thing to note is while Appalachian coal has higher BTU content the Powder River Basin has lower sulfur content.
As more and more power plants switch to natural gas, the demand for coal will be dropping. Furthermore, there is something else to consider.
The steel industry.
If more steel mills start using natural gas instead of coal, that will really drop the demand for coal. Times are changing. President Trump can't do anything about that.
You can't use natural gas to mix with iron ore to make steel you need coal turned into coke to mix with iron ore to make steel.As the coke heats up it removes the oxygen in the iron ore turning it into metal. New steel plants use electric furnaces now instead of the firebrick lined blast furnaces.Sorry coal turned into coke will always be used in making steel for the carbon.
You can't use natural gas to mix with iron ore to make steel you need coal turned into coke to mix with iron ore to make steel.As the coke heats up it removes the oxygen in the iron ore turning it into metal. New steel plants use electric furnaces now instead of the firebrick lined blast furnaces.Sorry coal turned into coke will always be used in making steel for the carbon.
Speaking of which they have a new coal mine planned here in PA in anticipation of increased steel demand.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The very expensive anthracite coal I burn for home heating at $180 per ton delivered still beats retail gas... not by much.
