Against the odds, The Coal Industry is starting to come back
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  Against the odds, The Coal Industry is starting to come back
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Author Topic: Against the odds, The Coal Industry is starting to come back  (Read 1618 times)
Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon
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« on: April 17, 2017, 02:56:15 AM »
« edited: April 17, 2017, 11:07:25 AM by Dwarven Dragon »

While significant policy changes are still needed to ensure the industry will make a full comeback, the industry is already growing: http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/08/coal-industry-poised-for-a-comeback-in-trumps-first-year/


GO COAL!!!!
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Meclazine for Israel
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« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2017, 03:07:46 AM »

You are right, but for the wrong reason.

It's just the coal price.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-17/contract-coal-prices-spike-for-march-quarter/8188066?pfmredir=sm

It has been going nuts since Trump got elected.

The view is that Trump is going to build a lot of infrastructure which requires raw materials.
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Shadows
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« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2017, 03:46:38 AM »
« Edited: April 17, 2017, 08:37:29 AM by Shadows »

Coal is dying & will be gone in a couple of decades, atleast when it comes to power generation. Solar for one has still not matured & cost is expected to fall by 40-50% odd further the next few years. There are still many scale & efficiency increases (cost of material for panels is coming down, cost of installations & customer acquisition is coming down, new technology in panels are much more efficient etc ) will bring costs further down. Solar prices have crashed, gone down by 70-80% odd in the last few years.


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/california_leads_the_way_in_solar_power_20170415

For the first time, on the day of March 23, 40 percent of Californian grid power between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. was generated by utility-scale solar plants. California has so much solar power now that sometimes the price of electricity turns negative. If you count in the electricity generated by rooftop solar panels, then on that day at that time, California was actually getting 50 percent of its electricity from solar.

Jobs in solar energy in California expanded by 67 percent year on year. California wants a third of its grid energy to come from renewables in only 3 years, in 2020. It wants the proportion to rise to 50 percent by 2030

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Adam Griffin
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« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2017, 04:15:52 AM »

Coal employs fewer people nationally than textile does in my tri-county area. Nobody works in coal anymore and most of the people who claim to be "coal miners" or "coal households" are people who either haven't worked in the field in ages or who had parents/grandparents who long ago worked in the mines.

Even if it did "come back", it's not going to mean any meaningful change in the quality of life of those who obsess over it.
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Ebowed
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« Reply #4 on: April 17, 2017, 05:33:58 AM »


Your contempt for humanity is revolting.
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« Reply #5 on: April 17, 2017, 05:41:27 AM »
« Edited: April 17, 2017, 05:44:24 AM by Çråbçæk »

While significant policy changes are still needed to ensure the industry will make a full comeback

Don't be a fool Wulfric. the industry (or more pertinently the stable jobs it provided in Appalachia) will never make a full comeback, even if trump bans fracking and cripples renewable energy. The Appalachian coal is almost fully exploited and other coal basins are mostly automated transient flexijobs. There is no significant export market that will pop up in the next few years. Your idealogy has crippled all the protections and unions that made coal work a rewarding job in the first place.

Basically thermal coal is dead or dying. Met coal is probably in a better shape,  but the idea the economy will rebound based on that is pretty delusional
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SoLongAtlas
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« Reply #6 on: April 17, 2017, 06:49:26 AM »

Coal will never fully come back and will be completely gone within a matter of a few decades http://www.mining.com/us-coal-industry-decline-even-2017-ieefa/ and employs fewer people than Arby's https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-surprisingly-small-industries-that-employ-more-people-than-coal/?utm_term=.3a31bacb2009

It's sad for Appalachia but it needs to die due to its harmful impact on global warming and the need for energy diversification.

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America Needs R'hllor
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« Reply #7 on: April 17, 2017, 06:54:09 AM »


Some people would go a long way to ignore scientific facts for their ideology, even if it means selfishly endangering the whole world.
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SoLongAtlas
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« Reply #8 on: April 17, 2017, 07:12:22 AM »

OP, please consider this (and this is 3 years old)
  -WaPo
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Phony Moderate
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« Reply #9 on: April 17, 2017, 07:20:39 AM »

The Thatcherites in the Democratic Party will be pissed.
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ApatheticAustrian
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« Reply #10 on: April 17, 2017, 07:26:46 AM »

OP, please consider this (and this is 3 years old)


interesting graph - recently i read we are only talking about 50 something thousand people anymore.

just one question...is that graph about national employment?

thought there would be more people employed in the whole of the US selling flowes for example.
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SoLongAtlas
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« Reply #11 on: April 17, 2017, 07:33:48 AM »

OP, please consider this (and this is 3 years old)


interesting graph - recently i read we are only talking about 50 something thousand people anymore.

just one question...is that graph about national employment?

thought there would be more people employed in the whole of the US selling flowes for example.

It may well be 50K. CNN did a feature on it the other day on Fareed. Will try to find it. Yes, that is the overall national employment in those sectors.
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SoLongAtlas
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« Reply #12 on: April 17, 2017, 07:41:55 AM »

"So how many coal miners are there? In the most recent jobs report, the mining industry accounted for 183,300 jobs. But that includes a lot of mining unrelated to coal and a lot of support occupations, too: supervisors, truck drivers and so on. In May 2015, there were 69,460 jobs in coal mining itselfonly 15,900 of which were extraction workers or helpers, mining machine operators or earth drillers.

That’s 0.019 percent of the American workforce that month."

Source, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/20/there-are-fewer-coal-miners-than-you-might-realize/?utm_term=.039f52db5e4d
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Shadows
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« Reply #13 on: April 17, 2017, 08:29:21 AM »
« Edited: April 17, 2017, 08:44:34 AM by Shadows »

The second annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER) from the US Department of Energy (DOE) showed that in 2016, solar energy employed more people than the traditional coal, gas, and oil combined.



http://www.iflscience.com/environment/solar-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-in-the-us/

Major energy sources and percent shares of U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in 2016

Natural gas = 33.8%
Coal = 30.4%
Nuclear = 19.7%
Renewables = 14.9%
Hydropower = 6.5%
Wind = 5.6%
Biomass = 1.5%
Solar  = 0.9%
Geothermal = 0.4%


https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3


Coal, Natural Gas contribute more than 60% of the energy but provide less than 150K jobs. Solar does around 1% & has 373K jobs.

Can you imagine the amount of jobs created when in 10-15 years solar takes over from coal & natural gas ? This has to be the biggest employment opportunity that has ever come. No wonder China is massively investing in solar, they want to monopolize solar panel manufacture!
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Wiz in Wis
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« Reply #14 on: April 17, 2017, 09:01:32 AM »

The second annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER) from the US Department of Energy (DOE) showed that in 2016, solar energy employed more people than the traditional coal, gas, and oil combined.



http://www.iflscience.com/environment/solar-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-in-the-us/

Major energy sources and percent shares of U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in 2016

Natural gas = 33.8%
Coal = 30.4%
Nuclear = 19.7%
Renewables = 14.9%
Hydropower = 6.5%
Wind = 5.6%
Biomass = 1.5%
Solar  = 0.9%
Geothermal = 0.4%


https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3


Coal, Natural Gas contribute more than 60% of the energy but provide less than 150K jobs. Solar does around 1% & has 373K jobs.

Can you imagine the amount of jobs created when in 10-15 years solar takes over from coal & natural gas ? This has to be the biggest employment opportunity that has ever come. No wonder China is massively investing in solar, they want to monopolize solar panel manufacture!


Additionally, when a stable/profitable form of energy storage becomes widely available, the number of jobs refitting the US electrical grid to decentralize from a "power plant model" could be in the millions.
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SoLongAtlas
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« Reply #15 on: April 17, 2017, 09:09:25 AM »

The second annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER) from the US Department of Energy (DOE) showed that in 2016, solar energy employed more people than the traditional coal, gas, and oil combined.



http://www.iflscience.com/environment/solar-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-in-the-us/

Major energy sources and percent shares of U.S. electricity generation at utility-scale facilities in 2016

Natural gas = 33.8%
Coal = 30.4%
Nuclear = 19.7%
Renewables = 14.9%
Hydropower = 6.5%
Wind = 5.6%
Biomass = 1.5%
Solar  = 0.9%
Geothermal = 0.4%


https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3


Coal, Natural Gas contribute more than 60% of the energy but provide less than 150K jobs. Solar does around 1% & has 373K jobs.

Can you imagine the amount of jobs created when in 10-15 years solar takes over from coal & natural gas ? This has to be the biggest employment opportunity that has ever come. No wonder China is massively investing in solar, they want to monopolize solar panel manufacture!


Additionally, when a stable/profitable form of energy storage becomes widely available, the number of jobs refitting the US electrical grid to decentralize from a "power plant model" could be in the millions.

That's what most power companies are afraid of. They don't want each house independent or near-independent of the grid. Solar allows you to be off the grid or near to that. Tbh, we should be pumping more money into fusion research not just standard fission. That could really allow us to solve most of the supply problem in the near-term.
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #16 on: April 17, 2017, 09:29:19 AM »

While significant policy changes are still needed to ensure the industry will make a full comeback, the industry is already growing: http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/08/coal-industry-poised-for-a-comeback-in-trumps-first-year/


GO COAL!!!!

The coal-mining activity has shifted to the western states that have abundant resources of coal -- and generally weak unions.  An increase in coal mining will do little good to miners in Appalachia, where underground mining has largely played out.

Coal as an energy source is very much on the decline. It could become more valuable in the iron and steel industry

Fe3O4 + 4C >> 4Fe + CO

and (with coal tar) as a feedstock for plastics, which are higher uses than energy. Coal is one of the dirtiest fuels available and much less desirable than other sources of energy.   
 
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The Other Castro
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« Reply #17 on: April 17, 2017, 11:34:28 AM »

People are not strictly bound to work in coal related jobs for their entire lives. The coal industry will die, and accepting that is necessary. It is not an attack on the people that work these jobs to recognize that. Rather than propping this up, we should be finding new work for people currently in coal related jobs (possibly in alternative energy) so they're not left holding the bag when the inks hits the fan.  
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Gass3268
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« Reply #18 on: April 17, 2017, 12:13:19 PM »

Why aren't we talking about the demise of the Department Store?

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The Other Castro
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« Reply #19 on: April 17, 2017, 01:47:46 PM »

Why aren't we talking about the demise of the Department Store?

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Perhaps department stores aren't as regionally concentrated, and thus lack a natural representation of politicians to defend it. That and Amazon is a lot more convenient.
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Shadows
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« Reply #20 on: April 17, 2017, 02:20:14 PM »

How on earth does solar & wind not have more representation when the 2 combined give around 500K jobs? Why aren't there strong national unions for Solar Workers like say Nurses which was a huge bloc behind Bernie.

Solar could exert pressure on Republicans. There's huge jobs which are at stake & massive amount of money which could be saved. Forget Florida, look at what is happening with Lpuisiana, that state is getting destroyed. The GOP leaders must grow their senses !
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Hermit For Peace
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« Reply #21 on: April 17, 2017, 02:28:14 PM »

Coal will never fully come back and will be completely gone within a matter of a few decades http://www.mining.com/us-coal-industry-decline-even-2017-ieefa/ and employs fewer people than Arby's https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-surprisingly-small-industries-that-employ-more-people-than-coal/?utm_term=.3a31bacb2009

It's sad for Appalachia but it needs to die due to its harmful impact on global warming and the need for energy diversification.



It's really not sad for Appalachia because the health problems that the workers incur from working in coal mines is horrible. And if their dear President whom they voted for guts their health care, they are left with nothing.

Sometimes change hurts in the beginning, but it's got to happen. Coal is a dying commodity. And so are it's workers.

Time to get with the times.
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Phony Moderate
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« Reply #22 on: April 17, 2017, 02:42:22 PM »

Sometimes change hurts in the beginning, but it's got to happen. Coal is a dying commodity. And so are it's workers.

Time to get with the times.

So how's Denis?
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #23 on: April 18, 2017, 08:49:47 AM »

People are not strictly bound to work in coal related jobs for their entire lives. The coal industry will die, and accepting that is necessary. It is not an attack on the people that work these jobs to recognize that. Rather than propping this up, we should be finding new work for people currently in coal related jobs (possibly in alternative energy) so they're not left holding the bag when the inks hits the fan.  

True. The middle class got its idea of what coal mining was like from the hit "Sixteen Tons"... that with the hard work and danger one still endured poverty. After hearing that song they wanted to do anything other than coal mining as a career. Of course Tennessee Williams related the conditions before the once-powerful United Mine Workers were able to get collective bargaining and good wages. The mine owners wanted miners' kids to consider coal mining a suitable career, so it had to have adequate pay to compensate for the consequences. The politicians who depended upon the votes of miners and their families could concur with the coal barons that minimal expenditures in public education (why teach kids to be accountants or veterinarians when they might as well work in the mines?) or long-distance roads (why build good roads that allow people to leave for Chicago or Cleveland and seek their fortunes elsewhere?)

People who get jobs as coal miners will be lucky to keep them. But for those who live in Coal Country and never get a job as a miner -- inadequate education might stick one in Wal*Mart or Waffle House.  Republicans have been kissing up to the coal barons while kicking the miners.

A parallel is to "Detroit" -- if by "Detroit" one means the Big Three American automakers. OK -- there were four before Chrysler bought out American Motors, five when Studebaker was alive, and six when Packard was making a go of it.  But Michigan has better universities than does West Virginia, and the automakers could never make the state fully dependent on automobile manufacturing (Michigan has big agriculture). Auto workers made enough money to send their competent kids to college to become teachers, accountants, and medical professionals, etc. Michigan has a strong tourist trade. Michigan still reels from the decline of the auto industry, but it is doing better than West Virginia and Kentucky from the demise of coal. 

Coal is a commodity; one can't really make it better. One cannot extract more once the seams are spent. Automobiles are products that could be improved from the awful gas-guzzlers from the 1970s. Yes, people are keeping their cars longer, so they don't buy or lease cars as often. But the cars that we now have are more economical in space, safer, more comfortable, and more fuel-efficient. Coal mining is still a dangerous industry destructive to the health of those who toil in it. If I had to choose between working in an auto plant and mining coal -- I'd work in an auto plant. That is an easy choice.

People may be adapting better than the politicians and business executives.   
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