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Obama Vows to Destroy Coal Industry As Quickly As Possible

Posted by Duane Lester on Nov 19th, 2008 • Clicks

In his first post election speech covering the myth of global warming, Chairman Obama pledged to work quickly to enact programs that will cause electricity prices to skyrocket and will destroy the coal industry:

“Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,” Obama said. “Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high, the consequences too serious.”

He repeated his campaign promise to create a system that limits carbon dioxide emissions and forces companies to pay for the right to emit the gas. Using the money collected from that system, Obama plans to invest $15 billion each year in alternative energy.

Just so you fully understand what he wants to do, I’ll break it down. He is going to go the already established coal-fired power plants and make them pay a tax to put carbon dioxide into the air. He is going to take this money, which he admits will trickle down to you and cause prices to electrical prices to skyrocket, and he is going to give it to companies that make windmills and solar panels. (He says nuclear power is part of the plan, but I’m not holding my breath.)

This will prevent the creation of new coal-fired power plants in America, which is why Forbes is warning us to prepare for blackouts and brownouts:

Right now the nation has 760 gigawatts of power plants to meet current consumption, with another 154 in reserve capacity to maintain grid reliability. But in fact only 10 gigs is truly excess capacity. The other 144 is utterly essential to keep lights on when unexpected demand arises from heat waves, outages or maintenance downtime. That reserve will begin to shrink quickly. NERC estimates that over the next decade 135 gigawatts of new capacity will be needed to meet the growth in consumption. But right now plants producing a total of 57 gigawatts are planned.

Ninety percent of electric power is fueled by nonrenewable coal, natural gas or nuclear power. Renewable sources will not cover the growth in demand. While wind is gaining ground (and now supplies 1% of power), hydro’s share (7%) is shrinking as dams are dismantled. Solar, at 0.01%, is an inconsequential contributor.

And:

So how will this scenario play out if more plants don’t get built? The first thing is that utilities will burn more natural gas. There is excess capacity now in gas-fired electric generators, currently used for peak loads and for filling in gaps during maintenance and plant breakdowns. (Electricity has an unresolved, annoying feature–it cannot be stored in any useful quantities, and must be produced the instant it’s needed.)

But that margin of safety will disappear in only a few years, according to NERC. Electric rates, especially at peak times, will then soar–as much as tenfold. After that, we may see forced conservation, meaning voluntary or involuntary rationing, or even blackouts in rotation among business and residential customers. Utilities could give consumers the choice of staying cool by paying a lot more for the privilege.

Recall the summers of electric discontent for California in 2000 and 2001? Wholesale electricity prices skyrocketed, reflecting tight supply conditions (conditions that were exploited, but not created, by traders at Enron). The consequences were a bankruptcy filing by the state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., and the early departure of a governor.

Sounds like things are going exactly as the Chairman said they would back in February, when he pledged to bankrupt the coal industry and make electrical prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

Sometimes “change” is a bad thing.

And for the record, the Earth has cooled a third of a degree since Al Gore’s crockumentary was released, telling us we were all causing the global to heat up.

Hat Tip on the Forbes article: McQ

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