RK ARCHIVE - Mountain Monday: Is Coal the New Oil?

Big industries exploiting high prices as an excuse for unnecessarily increasing extraction at any environmental cost...

Sound Familiar? And if so, are we on the verge of seeing electricity rates pull a "gas-prices?"...
One of the most dramatic and pivotal price shifts in the weakening economy over the last 7 years has been the price of a gallon of gasoline. As we turned over the millenium in 2000, gas was at a balmy $1.26 according to the Energy Information Administration. Since then, the price has more than tripled, breaking $4.00 nationally for the first time just last month. The increase in fuel costs is already having dramatic impacts on our food and supply costs, making it more expensive to buy anything across all markets.

A little less conspicuous than the price of fuel for our automobiles has been the insane upward spike in price of America's "most abundant fuel" for electricity - COAL.

From a low of roughly $30 in 2000, the cost of a ton of Appalachian coal has increased 5 fold from 2000-2008, now fetching roughly $150/ton. Roughly half of America's electricity is produced by coal, and a Appalachia produces a large percentage of our fuel for electricity. Most of this production in central Appalachia is from "mountaintop removal coal-mining" . This is a barbaric process by which entire mountains are blasted apart for coal. Their toxic corpses are then dumped into adjacent river valleys, poisoning the fountainhead streams for many of the major rivers in the east. Over 1 million acres of Appalachia, and over 1200 miles of streams have been destroyed by mountaintop removal and the dumping of mountaintop removal waste according to government statistics.

See if you are connected to mountaintop removal at the My Connection page at iLoveMountains.org, and check to see if your Congressman is a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169) here.

We also need you to join the iLoveMountains.org Bloggers Challenge. Over 470 bloggers have participated, but we need to spread the word until every American and every politician is hearing about mountaintop removal on a daily basis.

2) Mountaintop Removal Fact of the Week
Appalachian coal cost $40 in 2007 (low).
Appalachian coal costs $150 in 2008 (high).

4) Featured Activist:
Larry Bush, from Wise County Virginia:

Himself a former miner and American veteran, Larry Bush traveled with other Appalachian residents to Washington DC last month to lobby Congressional Representatives to co-sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169)" which now has 146 co-sponsors thanks to the efforts of Larry and others. Larry has also been an outstanding organizer in SW Virginia and a leading voice against the dangerous new coal-fired power plant proposed by Dominion in his home of Wise County. In Wise County, 25% of all the land has been strip-mined, and there is already another coal-fired power plant 4 miles away from where the proposed coal plant would go. Despite all of this, Wise County suffers from 20% poverty, and according to the County profile:

Thanks to the efforts of Larry and others, the people of Wise County and SW Virginia may yet be able to stop the efforts of Dominion and Governor Kaine to build another deadly, GHG emitting, mountaintop removal using coal-fired power plant in their backyard.

Indulge in watching a few of the best musicians in the world - Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas , Sam Bush , Mark o'Connor, and B+Źla Fleck rip through Rice's classic version of "Freeborn Man."

Comments

Looks to me like the price can only go up (phaedrus - 8/5/2008 11:58:54 AM)

Its hard to say for sure just how much coal is left. The coal industry front groups like ACCCE like to say there are 200 years left of coal. But this number comes from a 1974 study that used some data from the turn of the century, how can they be sure? Meanwhile, industry respected consultants like EIA report that there is most likely a third or less of what the 1974 report found. With dwindling supplies and hugely increasing demand, prices can only continue to go up.

In an NPR interview late last month about the price of coal I saw this quote "Scott Tong: The central government says there are 32 power stations that are doing nothing, they're idling right now, because there's such a big coal shortage in China. And in many parts of the country, including Beijing, the power stations have less than a seven-day stockpile, which is considered dangerously low."

Considering how high prices are right now, China buying up an additional 32 power plants worth of coal from the world market scares the hell out of me.

Like Oil, coal prices are driven by the world market. Appalachian coal is being shipped to places like Europe and China. I am a strong proponent of investing in efficiency and renewables to help us ease ourselves off our dependency on coal in the face of global climate change, but it seems increasingly clear that we also have huge economic and national security incentives to quickly wean ourselves off coal as well.

Oh yeah, Dominion Power claims their recent 18% price hike is due largely to gas prices. I wonder why they would have a vested interest in keeping their customers thinking that coal is still cheap. Well actually, I don't wonder at all.