Topic starter
05/07/2013 3:13 pm
The other day, Travis, Keith, Chief Howe, Kevin Mullen and myself were having a "hot stove" conflab in Keith's office at the museum. One thing led to another and the conversation got around to the present day "war on coal" and what it will mean to the river industry. Power plants all over the region are already converting from coal to natural gas, here in Louisville one LG&E plant is being completely converted from barge hauled coal to gas. Down in the deep south, one plant which receives coal barged from a terminal in St. Louis is converting one of it's units to gas.
What will this mean to the river industry? Can you imagine barge traffic on the Ohio River if coal is reduced?
05/07/2013 3:52 pm
This is, IMHO, another Pseudo Science attacks on present technology. They managed to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, so we may not win this one either. The naturally-occuring volcanoes around the world spew something like ten times what we do with all our fossil fuel burning.
And if you don't understand my frustration with the light bulb, consider this: the amount of raw materials and energy used in the manufacturing process for one incandescent bulb (some sand for glass, a small amount of metal for filament & base connections) and that for one CFL (Iron core coil in base, ceramic base, glass, mercury & other elements to make the bulb glow--oh and about twice the amount of sand for the glass part, then all the energy used to make these parts)--the energy savings of product use does not equal the increased natural resources cost, nor the manufacturing cost--and then there's all that packaging too.
Sorry; when the public gets flim-flammed by big business & monied politicians, I just get upset--not unlike why the DQ was docked in 2008.
05/07/2013 3:58 pm
It's fine for the US to try to reduce polluting emissions, but many places in the rest of the world are doing far less than we are doing now. The Chinese will certainly want the American coal that the US is apparently not wanting. Even though they are a big economy these days, they seem to have little regard for air pollution. So, even though the US might have a "war on coal", the "other kids in the neighborhood" will probably just keep on doing what they've been doing, in my opinion.
05/07/2013 6:15 pm
If the Ohio valley powerplants go to natural gas, I guess Crounse, AEP, Ingram and others could start towing special LNG barges to serve the powerplants... until the plants get hooked-up to pipelines. I prefer to see barges of inert coal come by my landing, as opposed to more dangerous red-flag LNG barges!
05/07/2013 10:32 pm
Kentucky & Southern Indiana coal might be going by barge to export--probably the only chance during this administration for survival of a lot of KY coal mines.
10/07/2013 3:01 pm
MOOO (or ship the coal to Shreveport)
Oh, and how do you think we are getting all that natural gas? Cows?
In the last several decades, Texas, abundant in oil and gas, converted to burning coal, some of it shipped in from Wyoming by train (air polution) and some of it locally from enormous strip mines (environmental disaster). Now what are they going to do? Since then, gas was deregulated and fracking became economically feasible. You would have a hard time finding anyone in Louisiana or Texas that considers fracking a bad thing. Or coal. Or anything dug or drilled out of the ground, without which we would become cave persons (PC).
10/07/2013 4:51 pm
Yes, and the "America Revealed" series on PBS explained how Wyoming has become the new king of coal, since apparently its coal has much less sulphur in it than coal coming from traditional WV, KY, PA mines.
10/07/2013 4:59 pm
High Sulphur Coal
Giant power plants on the Ohio like the Indiana-Michigan plant at Rockport, IN use Wyoming coal instead of the high sulphur coal found in the same county and neighboring counties of Rockport.