Wyoming Wind--and Coal

Posted by Edith Cook on Monday, November 14, 2011 Under: Reading Life
 It’s windy in Wyoming, particularly this time of year as autumn morphs into winter. Wyoming is my home now, for better or worse. I watch with interest its wind-development. Legislators debate back and forth on wind taxes, but it looks like wind energy is on the march, now that Wyoming transmission likes have become part of a federal program that has put electric transmission projects on the fast track.

All the more surprising that coal is still king in this part of the country. One of the big reasons that oil displaced coal as fuel source in the first half of the century: oil is liquid. It can be piped, pumped, processed, and stored with relative ease. Moving coal is a dirty, difficult, and expensive endeavor. Coal is dependent on the rails, and over the past thirty years, the two major railroads that haul coal out of Wyoming’s Powder River basin, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) and the Union Pacific (UP) have spent “hundreds of millions of dollars to build the most technologically sophisticated rail networks in the world,“ writes Jeff Goodell in Big Coal. The train traffic is staggering: in 2004, BNSF hauled 220 million tons of coal out of the basin, and today UP hauls even more coal than BNSF. “The 231 miles of track between Gillette, WY, and Alliance, NE, carry more coal per mile than any other stretch of rails in the U. S. Some thirty loaded coal trains, each more than a mile long and each carrying more than ten thousand tons of coal, pass along this route every single day." 

Railroad executives love coal. It is a high-volume, low-hassle business: no stops to unload freight cars, no hazardous chemicals, no passangers, just an endless back-and-forth between mines and power plants. More than 20 percent of BNSF’s annual revenues are from coal, with the vast majority of it coming from the Powder River basin. In 2004, a ton of Wyoming coal delivered to a plant in Georgia sold for about forty dollars, and as much as 80 percent of that money went to the railroads. They are “the monster in the middle.”

The spread of Wyoming coal has had a dark side. Wyoming’s low-sulphur coal has lower heat value than most eastern coal and so, power plants have to burn more of it, causing carbon dioxide to rise when plants switch to Wyoming coal. And the spread of Wyoming coal has put price pressure on Appalachian coal companies, causing them to close union mines and pursue the lowest-cost mining techniques, mountain-top removal. BNFS and UP are the 800-poud gorillas of the coal industry, with a virtual lock on the movement and price of nearly half of all the coal burned in America. One of the most disturbing aspects of the coal business is the control of one industry by ever fewer, ever bigger corporations. Not surprisingly, the railroads are all big supporters of coal and have used their influence to help kill any legislation that might cut consumption. 

It was the 1970 amendments to the Clean Air Act that set limits on the sulphur content of coal and thus created the market for Wyoming coal from which the railroads now profit so handsomely, explains Goodell. 

“I think the future looks bright, with one exception,” Big Coal executive Matt Rose told a gathering of BNSF employees in late 2003. “If an environmental bill is passed [that caps carbon dioxide emissions] employment would be cut by half or more . . ." 

In : Reading Life 


Tags: "big coal" "wind energy" "railroad industry" "bnsf" "union pacific" 

About Me


Edith Cook Though I now live in Wyoming, I make frequent return trips to California with visits to travel club members along the way. At home I play classical guitar, enjoy gardening and cooking, and participate in group yoga. Getting together with family and friends is high on my agenda. I value people who write or make music and love it when my adult children and their offspring play their instruments, sing songs with me, or discuss what they read and write. Such gatherings help me cope with the losses in my life, which have been severe. Next year I hope to visit family in Germany.

 

Tags

#nokxl 350.org 350cheyenne 350org addiction adverse childhood agriculture als altitude andrew knoll apg media of the rockies arizona autism beijing bet the farm big bend national park big coal bill mckibben bill roorbach birthday bitumen blossoms bnsf botanic gardens bottled water bp brother buddhism california california" cancer cannabis casper casper star tribune change cherry cheyenne cheyenne guitar society china christopher hitchens christopher merrill christopher potter church climate climate change climate cover-up climate wars coal oil gas college station columns comfort zone confessional writing conversation cousin cousin edith cowboy indian alliance dachau danish oil december democratic women's forum desmogblog.com james hoggan division of labor dr. slobochikoff drought durango dzongsar jamyang khyentse east texas empathy epa essays ethics of writing ex-wheatfarm extinction events family family life family matters flourish frans de waal gardening germany global warming governor mead grandchildren health profile hemp hemp production henry louis gates jr horses and autism http://groups.google.com/group/edith-cook hypoxia in in animals israel-palestine conflict it's japan jonathan balcombe jourard kabat-zinn keystone xl oil pipeline klx leaving for places unknown lemon letting go life lions lives of animals los angeles guitar quartet malcolm gladwell marijuana" martin e. p. seligman memories michael mann mike magner mindfulness miwas neibsheim newspaper writing norwegian wood oil gas coal our planet our universe paris park poisoned legacy prairie dogs qi deng railroad industry rainfall patterns ranching recycling richard leakey richard littlemore robert kelley roberta flack rupert murdoch schoolchildren sea level self-awareness sidney sidney jourard sketches from my life smoking social relations something good sonya huber stephen chao still storms susan abulhawa tap water tar sands temple grandin tennessee" terry tempest williams texas thanksgiving the end of food the tree of the doves tokyo tony judt toyota prius travel turtle rock union pacific unitarian universalists utah uwyo hydraulic fracturing forum vedauwoo viktor frankl visa application visiting friends wednesday walkers wheat farm wheat production wheatland wind energy winter women in orchestras writing autobiographically writing confessions wte www.sidneyjourard.com wyoming wyoming tribune eagle wyoming tribuneeagle wyoming wheat farm wyoming's deq xi'an yoga 2015

Tags

Make a free website with Yola