Banner Day for the Coal Industry, Wish We Could Say the Same for Your Health
The toxicity of coal ash, and the fact that the Trump administration couldn’t care less about it, are two well-established facts.
Here we have an article that chronicles the unraveling of previous guidelines by a) easing regulations on what pollutants coal plants can dump, and then b) by changing the standards for the containment systems they dump that waste into.
This isn’t a trivial matter, btw; there are still 336 coal plants operating in the U.S., each producing about 125,000 tons of ash per year.
The good news is that my client whose proprietary chemical processes convert this into stable and nontoxic building materials is gaining real traction.
Craig,
You seem confused, that’s often the problem when you try to wear two faces at once!
On the one hand you want to close down the coal industry and with that closure, lose 34% of all US power (54% of US industrial power) yet on the other hand you have acquired a new penchant for advocating clean technology uses for coal waste, simply because you are being paid by a clean coal enterprise.
Two years ago, when I pointed out the increasing value to coal generation of valuable by-products you sneered at such technology, condemning it as a “scam”, “fiction” and useless.
I welcome your change of heart! However, wearing two masks always leads to a certain amout of confusion.
The new regulations have been modified to accommodate an industry whose profitability took a huge battering during the Obama years from both government policy and competition from a fracking boom in natural gas production.
The Obama era regulations were designed to dissuade new investment in “clean(er) Coal technology and hurt Coal financially.
The Obama fanatics in the EPA didn’t care if with soaring energy prices US industry would simply relocate to friendlier nations and the US would become noncompetitive.
Nor did they care if Coal companies simply gave up the struggle and went bankrupt leaving the industrial waste pollution to either remain untreated or cleaned up at public expense.
The Obama era saw the development of amazing new technology which could turn Coal fired generation into the most environmentally positive of all methods of generating industrial power.
This technology was invented in the USA, but driven offshore to China and India by the policies of the Obama administration.
It’s nice to see you have been lured away from the “leave it in the ground” crowd of fanatics