“Since 1970, the total emissions of the six criteria pollutants have declined by 68 percent, even though energy consumption has increased by 45 percent, vehicle miles traveled have increased by 167 percent, and the economy has grown by 212 percent…. As technology continues to advance, coal-fired power plants will become even cleaner and air quality will continue to improve. “
Coal, which until recently produced 50 percent of the nation’s electricity, has been losing market share to lower-cost natural gas and mandated, highly subsidized renewable energy. Anti-coal environmental regulation has also figured into the decline. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has essentially banned new coal plants and made its continued use in existing plants extremely costly. As a result, coal produced only 37 percent of our electricity in 2012.
One of the biggest stated concerns about coal is air pollution.…
Continue Reading“The United States has enough coal reserves to last at least another 250 years, with reserves that are over one-and-one-half times greater than our nearest competitor, Russia, and over twice that of China. [Including] … Alaska, which contains more coal reserves than all of the lower 48 states combined … the U.S. has enough coal to last 9,000 years at today’s consumption rate.”
– Testimony before the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Committee on Natural Resources, July 9, 2013.
Coal is the world’s most plentiful fossil fuel and is the most abundant fossil fuel produced in the United States. Over 90 percent of the coal consumed in the United States is used to generate electricity. Coal is also used as a basic industry source for making steel, cement and paper, and is used in other industries as well.…
Continue Reading“Although trained as a philosopher, [Alex] Epstein is perhaps best described as a happy intellectual warrior whose main goal is to rewrite the dominant romantic/authoritarian narrative that nowadays underlie energy and sustainability debates.”
To people who lived through them, the “good old days” were more akin to Hobbesian trying times where life was much more solitary, poorer, nastier, brutish and shorter than in our “Age of Energy.”
In a world where no good deed goes unpunished, however, hydrocarbons and the people who locate, refine and deliver them in usable forms are loudly condemned as toxic threats by activists who would rather have energy-starved masses consume little, distant, costly, intermittent, unreliable, and low-density alternative energy cupcakes.
Even more disheartening is how many energy executives have been shamed into paying lip-service (and a fair amount of “sustainability” and “green partnership” consulting fees) to their most virulent detractors.…
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