Trump Can't Rescue His Own Government's Coal-Fired Power Plants

[left-of-center2012]

President Donald Trump vowed to save coal, and he ordered top administration officials to prevent closures of power plants burning the fossil fuel. But his administration couldn’t even rescue two coal-fired power plants in which the U.S. government has a direct stake.

The latest blow came as the operator of a massive 2.25-gigawatt coal plant in Arizona announced it was moving forward with plans to close the Navajo Generating Station later this year, despite the U.S. government’s 24 percent ownership interest, after talks with a potential buyer failed.

And just two weeks ago, the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government-owned corporation, brushed aside last-minute presidential pleas in deciding to shutter its Paradise Fossil Plant Unit 3, which gets most of its coal from mines operated by Trump ally Robert Murray. TVA board members voted 6-1 to decommission the Kentucky facility just three days after Trump urged them on Twitter to consider “all factors before voting to close viable power plants.”

Competition from cheap natural gas and renewable power has prompted a wave of closures, driving utilities to decommission money-losing plants generating electricity from coal and nuclear material.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-01/trump-can-t-rescue-his-own-government-s-coal-fired-power-plants?srnd=politics-vp

[Wounded Bear]

1. Coal is dying, and rightfully so...

time to move on from this primitive power source.

[paleotn]

2. Just look at the picture atop the article...

Look at all that infrastructure necessary to move coal around. Higher maintenance costs from burning bituminous coal. The cost of handling coal ash responsibly...or not in the case of TVA and Duke, it's still costly. It's a dozer and piles of coal, but it's also dollars. Wasted dollars. Dollars that don't have to be spent when burning nat gas. It's antiquated and idiotic. It's dead. Leave it be. Once we learn to store energy generated from renewables, nat gas will follow coal to its grave, and rightly so. Try and stand in the way of the natural progression of technology and you'll just get run over.

[mr_lebowski]

3. Thanks OBAMA!!! (nt)