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From this article I learned that we export $107MM in domestic coal every year to Asia and Europe. For some reason, that really surprised me.
If we are serious about energy independence, this is a profoundly bad idea. Worse still, coal mining damages the environment, sometimes irreparably, and adversely impacts local populations - our people. The externalities are huge. That might be a tolerable trade-off if the coal were needed domestically and reduced our reliance on imports. But in this case it just enriches large corporations, damages the living environment of Americans, and enables foreign countries to sit on their resources while we deplete our own.
you sell your product where you'll make the most money.
No country is sitting on its resources, China is building on average 2 coal powered plants a week (I read that a while ago) to meet their booming energy demands.
you sell your product where you'll make the most money.
Unless there's a law in place that prevents it. As there ought to be in this case. Let's get serious about energy independence or shut up about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by qr5667
No country is sitting on its resources, China is building on average 2 coal powered plants a week (I read that a while ago) to meet their booming energy demands.
China is sitting on precisely the amount of coal it doesn't use because of American imports.
Questionable, China is expected to mine 3.79 billion tons of coal this year, the U.S mined 1.17 billion tons in 2008.
We are moving away from Coal, China is expanding any form of electricity production it can. Point is, China is expanding as fast as it can, it consumes as much as it can produce, and that still isn't enough. It's coal mining industry is booming.
Ever stop to consider how many people work in the coal industry ? How many states depend (to some externt) on coal as part of thier economey ?
Sure. It's a legitimate consideration. If we're talking about exporting wheat, corn, automobiles, televisions, or some other manufactured product, that makes the calculus easier. But this is coal, a finite and non-renewable resource that we're going to need in the future.
Last edited by WesternPilgrim; 09-23-2012 at 04:55 PM..
We have more coal than we could ever use and China, India really want it. The real kicker is the green lobby is trying to block coal exports. Amazing..when we need jobs, exports, they want to block it for the sake of "clean air". The real truth is money. They want their little windmill projects to continue despite 30 years of failure and massive rebates from the taxpayers.
We have more coal than we could ever use and China, India really want it. The real kicker is the green lobby is trying to block coal exports. Amazing..when we need jobs, exports, they want to block it for the sake of "clean air". The real truth is money. They want their little windmill projects to continue despite 30 years of failure and massive rebates from the taxpayers.
We have more coal than we could ever use? That's a mighty big claim - fact is, we don't know how much we have, or how much the world has, or how long it'll last, or how long it'll be feasible to mine it.
There might be a crap ton of oil down there, but the harder it is to go, the more expensive it is to get, so at some point, even if there still is oil or coal, it'll be easier and cheaper to slap solar panels on everything.
We have more coal than we could ever use? That's a mighty big claim - fact is, we don't know how much we have, or how much the world has, or how long it'll last, or how long it'll be feasible to mine it.
We don't know the exact figure obviously but it's a lot, "recoverable reserves" which is the amount that is known and expected to be recoverable will last 168 years based on projections for an annually increasing amount. Most likely there next estimate will be considerably longer based on the drop of coal usage, if the CO2 caps go into place it might as well be an infinite amount.
It is impossible to know exactly how much coal there is, because it is buried underground. But we can make estimates.
"Total resources" is our best estimate of the total amount of coal, including undiscovered in the United States. Currently, total resources are estimated to be about 4 trillion short tons.1 Total Resources includes several categories of coal with various degrees of geologic assurance and data reliability.
But not all coal is feasible to mine. The Demonstrated Reserve Base2 is the sum of coal in both measured and indicated resource categories of reliability, representing 100% of the in-place coal that could be mined commercially at a given time. EIA estimates the Demonstrated Reserve Base to measure 484.5 billion short tons.
"Estimated Recoverable Reserves" include only the coal that can be mined with today’s mining technology, after accessibility constraints and recovery factors are considered. EIA estimates there are 259.5 billion short tons of U.S. recoverable coal reserves, about 54% of the Demonstrated Reserve Base.
Based on U.S. coal production for 2010, the U.S. recoverable coal reserves represent enough coal to last 239 years. However, EIA projects in the most recent Annual Energy Outlook (January 2012) that U.S. coal production will increase at about 0.4% per year for the period 2009-2035. If that growth rate continues into the future, U.S. recoverable coal reserves would be exhausted in about 168 years if no new reserves are added.
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