War on coal? Matthew Yglasias posted a short note on Slate anticipating that coal advocates will call emerging regulations on CO2 emissions from coal plants as a new battle in the war on coal. He doesn't dispute this, but says a ware on coal is a good thing. He says that the EPA-mandated CO2 limits (per unit energy produced (MW-hr)) will prevent any new coal plants from being constructed.
He linked to an earlier story he'd done describing results from a report documenting the societal costs of different energy installations. This report, from the Hamilton Foundation is the one I mentioned in class a couple of weeks ago, but couldn't relocate. Here is the figure I was hoping to find:
This figure shows that if you sum the costs of operation and the externalities (pollution, CO2 emission costs borne by society) coal is actually not cheap - even existing plants are more expensive to run than new natural gas plants and new coal plants are more expensive than anything put solar w/ gas backup..
He linked to an earlier story he'd done describing results from a report documenting the societal costs of different energy installations. This report, from the Hamilton Foundation is the one I mentioned in class a couple of weeks ago, but couldn't relocate. Here is the figure I was hoping to find:
This figure shows that if you sum the costs of operation and the externalities (pollution, CO2 emission costs borne by society) coal is actually not cheap - even existing plants are more expensive to run than new natural gas plants and new coal plants are more expensive than anything put solar w/ gas backup..
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