20% Wall Tax

weilke said:
I know, it has absolutely nothing to do with the 2011 change in cross state polution standards, the 2012 changes in the mercury and air toxic standards or the changes in how PSD permits were handled . Because you know, before 2009, people were dropping like flies from mercury poisoning and the prior rules basically allowed one state to dump toxic waste into the next states air and water supply. Has nothing to do with it, its all economics, no political interference at all.
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Though that caused a bit of a blip in consumption, the writing has been on the wall since the 90's. NG was inevitably going to overtake coal (see below).

I do agree that government should in general stay out of this stuff. However, at this point, let's say President Trump reverses the coal regulations - which I assume he'll do, it won't bring coal jobs back. NG is still cheaper. Renewables are also starting to get cheaper than coal. You'd actively have to subsidize coal or alternatively put tariffs on NG and renewables. And nobody on either side of the isle wants any of that.

Some jobs are just meant to become obsolete.

CoalVsNg.png
 
Believe me, coal is in big trouble in the US. It's pretty much only used for power generation (our steel production is declining and our use for rail is no longer exists). I've got a close friend who's counsel for the mineworkers union. They're scrambling to do two things: retrain the coal mining families to something else as the jobs aren't coming aback and trying to make sure the economically-challenged companies don't wipe out the medical benefits for the miners, many of whom are suffering from severe occupational-related health issues.
 
I wonder how much "renewable" energy we would have if it wasn't heavily subsidized by the Federal Government.

Cheers
 
X3 Skier said:
I wonder how much "renewable" energy we would have if it wasn't heavily subsidized by the Federal Government.
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Or on the flipside how much there would be if ethanol wasn't, or oil wasn't, or nuclear wasn't etc. All energy subsidies & regulations just need to go. The Federal Government should be responsible for maintaining the strategic oil reserve, and that's it.

Even if you're passionate about CO2, if things were just left alone nuclear would have probably been the predominant fuel by now, and CO2 would be at a fraction of its current levels.
 
Matthew said:
Here's the 2015 US electrical production by BTU:

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electricity.pdf

the impressive(?) part is how much energy it takes to produce energy.
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And here's where all that energy goes:

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/total_energy.pdf

Looks like we import about 24% of our energy, and then export about 13%. This chart is from 2015. I thought that the US had recently become a net energy exporter. I'll have to look into that.
 
deonb said:
Or on the flipside how much there would be if ethanol wasn't, or oil wasn't, or nuclear wasn't etc. All energy subsidies & regulations just need to go. The Federal Government should be responsible for maintaining the strategic oil reserve, and that's it.

Even if you're passionate about CO2, if things were just left alone nuclear would have probably been the predominant fuel by now, and CO2 would be at a fraction of its current levels.
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Except for that pesky waste problem, which still exists, even after having had billions spent trying to solve it. Hard to figure out what to do with stuff that remains deadly toxic for 250,000 years.

The advantage developing economies have is that they can skip the inefficient old technology and go right to he new. Like cell phones instead of stringing cable.
 
Matthew said:
I thought that the US had recently become a net energy exporter. I'll have to look into that.
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It's not. It produces more energy locally than it imports, but that doesn't mean it's a net exporter yet (since there is also local consumption). The gap was 11% last I looked - it's probably smaller now.
 
deonb said:
It's not. It produces more energy locally than it imports, but that doesn't mean it's a net exporter yet (since there is also local consumption). The gap was 11% last I looked - it's probably smaller now.
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Yeah, that 11% gap shows up in that 2015 chart. (24% import - 13% export)
 
X3 Skier said:
I wonder how much "renewable" energy we would have if it wasn't heavily subsidized by the Federal Government.

Cheers
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None, except for where it makes sense, like remote areas, road signs things like that.
 
deonb said:
I do agree that government should in general stay out of this stuff. However, at this point, let's say President Trump reverses the coal regulations - which I assume he'll do, it won't bring coal jobs back.
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Of course, by now we are 8 years further down on the trajectory. The coal plants are closed, industry has made investments in gas plants (2 gigawatt in our county alone), so yes all those regulations could revert to the status quo and it wouldn't reverse the damage already done.

Renewables are also starting to get cheaper than coal.
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Which unsubsidized renewable is cheaper than coal ? And what is the standard for coal ? Plants already in operation or future 'clean coal' plants powered with unicorn farts ?
 
Art VanDelay said:
I think it was a great rule ! It forces F/Os to acquire exposure which in many cases leads to experience.
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But it didn't address the problem of why the accident happened, and was a knee-jerk reaction by people who didn't know better.
 
I guess I'm the slow kid on this.

Are we prohibited from discussing politics or not? All of this policy discussion is highly partisan and yet it continues.

Is it because a MC member has enjoined herself to the topic, or because no one has said pee pee or poo poo (yet)?

You can't ban political discussion and then partake in it. Unless of course you are choosing to illustrate the selective enforcement that some have pointed out in the past.
 
weilke said:
Which unsubsidized renewable is cheaper than coal ? And what is the standard for coal ? Plants already in operation or future 'clean coal' plants powered with unicorn farts?
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Thin Film Utility Scale PV is now cheaper than standard coal:
https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf

The un-subsidized chart is on page 2. In there when they mention "high end incorporates 90% carbon capture and compression" - that's clean coal (the $143 number). The $60 number on the low end is standard coal. Thin Film PV is cheaper than either.

Keep in mind PV costs fall dramatically every year, so what you know one year may not be applicable to the next. The cost of PV has come down by 50% in the last 4 years alone.

Of course the sun doesn't shine at night, but if a utility were to invest right now along the southern states, and doing so without subsidies, the cheapest choice would be to use PV in the day and NG at night.
 
Ravioli said:
Are we prohibited from discussing politics or not? All of this policy discussion is highly partisan and yet it continues.
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If this thread is an indication of what 'highly partisan' looks like now, I have a lot of hope for this country!
 
deonb said:
If this thread is an indication of what 'highly partisan' looks like now, I have a lot of hope for this country!
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Say goodbye to hope.

This thread started with a potentially sterile comment on a tariff (it really wasn't).

Now it is about energy policy. If the Democrats didn't pander to Environmentalists the coal industry would still be providing well paying jobs to hard working people. Instead we have more expensive energy and higher taxes to support people who would rather be working.

Truth be told, we should concentrate on nuclear energy. It's the most 'bang for the buck' so to speak.

Try to get a Democrat to believe THAT science. They only like the science that feels good. "Oh.. my climate change... I love that and if your interpretation of the data is different than mine you are a something-or-other-IST."

But we're not allowed to say these things because that would be political.
 
Ravioli said:
Say goodbye to hope.

This thread started with a potentially sterile comment on a tariff (it really wasn't).

Now it is about energy policy. If the Democrats didn't pander to Environmentalists the coal industry would still be providing well paying jobs to hard working people. Instead we have more expensive energy and higher taxes to support people who would rather be working.

Truth be told, we should concentrate on nuclear energy. It's the most 'bang for the buck' so to speak.

Try to get a Democrat to believe THAT science. They only like the science that feels good. "Oh.. my climate change... I love that and if your interpretation of the data is different than mine you are a something-or-other-IST."

But we're not allowed to say these things because that would be political.
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Well I looked at the last page of posts and it didn't look overly political. Looked like an exchange of positions and opinions with mild baiting. I think if you can manage to have a discussion about energy policy without saying "YOU'RE A DUMB LIBERAL" or "YOU'RE A DUMB CONSERVATIVE!" or "the Nigerian that inhabits the White House" or "the giant Cheeto that inhabits the White House" then discussions in general are allowed on here, even if the particular sides are partisan.
 
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Ravioli said:
Try to get a Democrat to believe THAT science. They only like the science that feels good.
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I'm a Democrat and I agree with what you just said. Democrats can be as anti-science as anybody else. Anti-nuclear, Anti-vac, Anti-GMO etc.

But coal would have been dead anyway though, maybe the policies made it a few years earlier, but the writing was on the wall. Take the graph from #201 and cut it off just before President G.W. Bush left office. Barring coal subsidies, do you not think we would have been in the same situation as we are now but maybe only delayed by a few years?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the intervention. It was wrong. But it wasn't the sole cause of coal's demise.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Except for that pesky waste problem, which still exists, even after having had billions spent trying to solve it. Hard to figure out what to do with stuff that remains deadly toxic for 250,000 years.
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I read somewhere that all of the nuclear waste ever produced in this country would fit on a football field anywhere from 25-50 feet deep. Considering how much energy is produced by those reactors, versus the amount of waste produced, it is FAR better, I think, to run nuclear plants with scaleable demand than it is to run some of the more conventional power production methods. Especially with the new breeder reactors that can eat some of the existing waste.

Most of the concern over nuclear is overblown. The waste product is definitely no bueno, and will be no bueno for a long time. But as long as we're smart enough to not put nuclear power plants in tsunami zones or on active fault lines, we'll be pretty set. With far less negative impact on the environment than what we're currently doing.

I'm no tree hugger. I fly a plane that sprinkles lead on people. And I'm fine with that because I like flying. But if we have the capability of maintaining our first world standard of living AND undoing some of the nonsense that we've done, I'm all for that too. Clean air and clean water are always good things.
 
Most of the current nuclear waste in this country is stored on-site at reactors, either outdoors in steel containers or in pools. Not very secure, certainly not for 250,000 years. The ideal would be to reprocess it into fuel for a new generation of reactor, but we're not there yet. There is a documentary tv series called "Containment" about the challenges faced by long term storage that is eye opening. think your estimate of the amount of this stuff currently laying about far undershoots the mark.

I agree that nuclear would be ideal, if the waste problem were addressed, but currently it's not. We should be working in that direction.
 
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Chip Sylverne said:
Most of the current nuclear waste in this country is stored on-site at reactors, either outdoors in steel containers or in pools. Not very secure, certainly not for 250,000 years.
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That has purely political reasons, not technical ones.

Reprocessing and MOX elements are a mature technology and if we built modern reactors we could use the unspent fuel in those rods. Again, purely political reasons for the lack of a large scale reprocessing plant, not technical ones.
 
Ravioli said:
I guess I'm the slow kid on this.

Are we prohibited from discussing politics or not? All of this policy discussion is highly partisan and yet it continues.

Is it because a MC member has enjoined herself to the topic, or because no one has said pee pee or poo poo (yet)?

You can't ban political discussion and then partake in it. Unless of course you are choosing to illustrate the selective enforcement that some have pointed out in the past.
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Seems like you're the one who is deliberately trying to push the thread over the edge.
 
deonb said:
Even if you're passionate about CO2, if things were just left alone nuclear would have probably been the predominant fuel by now, and CO2 would be at a fraction of its current levels.
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Historically, nuclear was heavily subsidized through its military tie-in. But yes, base load utility power could be all nuclear provided by a network of modern reactors. All that would have been required is political will.

Chip Sylverne said:
And a lot of money. A whole lot of money, nuclear science ain't cheap.
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It would save the polar bears, and that's all that counts.
 
I wouldn't suggest trying to sell it based on being good for the environment, that'd kill it for sure.
 
deonb said:
Thin Film Utility Scale PV is now cheaper than standard coal:
https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf
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'levelized' is the mechanism you have to retreat to when actual cost wouldn't support your point.
Other sources like the EIA disagree with the numbers in the paper you cited.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/Levelizedgraph2.gif

If you use actual production cost as reported to FERC by the utilities, there are significant differences favoring equipment already amortized and paid off. Levelized is somewhat interesting whe it comes time for a generator or utility to decide on installing new generation capacity, to decide which plants to run to keep the lights on at the best price it is irrelevant.

This morning it was 30deg, an inch of fresh wet snow covering everything and both of my ground source heat pumps were running. I doubt that much of the power they consumed came of any of the snowed in PV arrays in the area. Otoh, the 104 car unit coal train to the generating station was not stopped by the weather.
 
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Just another reason to scrap the EPA.
One of the greatest power generating sources we have is water, hydroelectric dams are fantastic and modern life would not be possible without their protections and benefits but they are strangled the same way everything else is these days. If you proposed putting in a new dam, lets say the Fort Peck dam which is in the middle of nowhere almost literally and figuratively, by the time the courts got done arguing over it there would be no reason to put one up there. The same thing with nuclear, no one wants to have the generating station anywhere near them these days. Heck, you cannot even put in a new electrical transmission line without fifteen years of studies and lawsuits.
Years ago i did a lot of work on hydroelectric dams, so naturally we had to deal with FERC. During their re licensing negotiations it was quite amazing the useless stuff they came up with that would extend their ruling for a renewal on a license. We made a bunch of money off of it but it was still just a game they were playing to justify their useless jobs and massive fees.
We were doing a gate repair on a 230 foot dam in North Carolina, the entire top of the dam which houses all the gates for overflow was designed to "snap off" in case of lake levels rising to far which would save the rest of the dam from being undercut from the bedrock. well, on the far end of the dam there was a retaining wall about twenty feet long and eight feet high, it was their to keep out any trespassers who found their way to that side of the river I guess. In that wall was a door made up of iron bars(think jail cell), FERC looked at this and decided that the door needed to be covered up with sheet metal because in their minds if the water ever over took the dam the water would be forced through the opening and would undercut the bedrock causing the dam to collapse? It was one of many odd items that they had found that were of utmost importance to them even though the dam has been there since the 1927 and if the water ever did over take the dam the dam would repair itself by design. That door job cost the company over 300K by time it was repaired and the safety inspections done. I really miss that job but don't miss the bullsnot.
 
Problem with nuclear is every reactor out there comes with 10 mile and 50 mile evacuation plans if the plant melts down. We have had 3 meltdowns in 60 years (if you count 3 mile island also). That is one meltdown every 20 years.

If someone can come up with a nuclear reactor that does not require evacuation in a worse case scenario, we have a solution! And it might be possible!

The nuclear waste can be stored, forever, in an underground tunnel. Biggest problem is transporting it, but it can be done. No one wants that tunnel anywhere near them, but really, it is safe storage. Stuff isn't going to do anything except sit there--forever. Big political problem but not a technical impossibility.
 
I'm just amazed that 30% of power in 1950 was hydro. Guess that's the result of the CCC and the like damming up every available river!
 
Everskyward said:
But it didn't address the problem of why the accident happened, and was a knee-jerk reaction by people who didn't know better.
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The accident occurred because you had two people that were allowed to rapidly advance to a part 121 cockpit without ever building a solid foundation. The system has it was then was flawed.
 
Art VanDelay said:
The accident occurred because you had two people that were allowed to rapidly advance to a part 121 cockpit without ever building a solid foundation. The system has it was then was flawed.
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The 1500 hour rule would not have helped in that situation. Better training and oversight by the operator might have.
 
Everskyward said:
The 1500 hour rule would not have helped in that situation. Better training and oversight by the operator might have.
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Yes it would have. Quite possibly neither one of them would have been in aviation. It's also much more likely they would have been exposed to icing and many other unique emergency situations BEFORE carrying people's loved ones. It's no guarantee but the odds favor it. The only other solution would have been to force the carrier to start and run a training academy - that type of legislation is not so easily crafted.
 
Art VanDelay said:
Yes it would have. Quite possibly neither one of them would have been in aviation. It's also much more likely they would have been exposed to icing and many other unique emergency situations BEFORE carrying people's loved ones. It's no guarantee but the odds favor it. The only other solution would have been to force the carrier to start and run a training academy - that type of legislation is not so easily crafted.
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We obviously disagree about the rule but my point it that it should not have been legislated by Congress. At the minimum it should have gone through the normal rulemaking process involving people in the aviation industry.

The worst part of the rule is this part, which requires this training even if the person may never fly an airplane over 40,000 lbs., yet their job still requires an ATP.

Of the 10 hours of simulator training, six (6) hours must be completed in a Level C or higher full flight simulator that represents a multiengine, turbine airplane with a maximum takeoff weight of at least 40,000 pounds, rendering many corporate aircraft ineligible.
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Acrodustertoo said:
Just another reason to scrap the EPA.
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Yeah. Been to Beijing lately? The air quality is fantastic.:rolleyes:

I had a business associate who was a chain smoker and he jokingly referred to us non-smokers as "pink lung-ers." I'd like to keep 'em pink! Yes, the EPA is overbearing, but let's reform, not replace.

I remember the smog alerts we had as kids in elementary school where we couldn't go out to recess. Things have improved since then.
 
SoCal RV Flyer said:
I remember the smog alerts we had as kids in elementary school where we couldn't go out to recess. Things have improved since then.
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Yup, but when is enough enough ? Nobody wants burning rivers and Bejing level air pollution, but the EPA has gone off the rails when they widened the scope of their activities beyond what they were chartered to take care of.
 
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