“The four producing members who started this effort have all shifted their operations away from the production of thermal coal, which is used to generate electricity, and more toward metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel….”
The utility of coal goes beyond generating electricity. The high temperatures need for producing steel, in particular, come from blast furnaces fueled by coked coal. Coking coal, or super coal, comes from a process where regular coal subject to high temperatures in a declining atmosphere becomes a plastic before resolidifying.
Enter a new trade association, the The Metallurgical Coal Producers Association (formerly the Virginia Coal & Energy Alliance), self-described as
… Continue Readinga non-profit organization made up of metallurgical coal producers and those who support our producing members’ operations. Our emphasis is on metallurgical coal, the issues related to it, and the opportunities metallurgical coal brings to our region.
Fiction: “All signs are that cheap solar power is coming and that’s really good news”. — Ronald Bailey, Reason.
Fact: “California’s rollout of solar baseload power, advertised as cheap and otherwise worthy, failed despite a raft of government subsidies. Think rolling blackouts, time-of-use price spikes, and dropped green-related powerline fire disasters.” (below)
Fact: “Like running out of oil, solar predictions are perennial and wrong.” (below)
Ronald Bailey, a libertarian science writer at Reason Magazine online, has for years claimed that “unlimited free solar power” is the wave of the future. Thus, it comes as no surprise that he has recently posed the question “Is King Solar Now the Cheapest Electricity Source Ever?” His conclusion is yes, and “that’s really good news”.
To energy experts, this is new news.…
Continue ReadingEnergy, as Julian Simon emphasized, is the master resource. Without energy, other resources could not be produced or consumed. Even energy requires energy: usable mineral energies requires energy to manufacture and to power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel energy.
Fossil fuels upgrade renewable energies to be part of electricity grid. Short of prohibitively expensive storage, natural gas-generated power, in particular, fills in when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.
As an input to all products and services, energy must be affordable, convenient, and reliable. To this end, public policy should respect consumer preference and allow energy entrepreneurs to meet the demands of the marketplace. This requires a respect for private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law to facilitate the global exchange of energy and its innumerable subcomponents.…
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