Repukes at work - Legislating "YOU WILL USE COAL, DAMMIT"

[packman]

?itok=tC9Mr45V

"While many U.S. states have mandates and incentives to get more of their electricity from renewable energy, Republican legislators in Wyoming are proposing to cut the state off from its most abundant, clean resource—wind—and ensuring its continued dependence on coal.

A new measure submitted to the Wyoming legislature this week would forbid utilities from providing any electricity to the state that comes from large-scale wind or solar energy projects by 2019"

They just won't stop ----


https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12012017/wyoming-coal-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-denial

[randr]

1. Insanity

[mindem]

2. Not surprising.

The stupidity of these people takes the breath away. It seems that most of what they are doing is driven by pure nastiness, pure and simple.

[muntrv]

3. These are the same idiots who told Henry Ford to get a horse and buggy.

[grantcart]

4. Unlikely to pass for this reason:

Coal is no longer competitive especially if you factor in any cost of carbon capture or environmental cost:

http://fortune.com/2015/10/06/wind-cheap-coal-gas/

Electricity generated by large wind farms is now cheap enough in many places around the world to compete effectively with electricity generated by coal and natural gas.

At the same time, solar panel farms aren't quite low cost enough to be as competitive with fossil fuels as wind energy is. Still, the cost of electricity generated by solar panels has also come down significantly this year.

These are the findings of a new report from Bloomberg's New Energy Finance research unit, which looks at the costs of electricity from various sources of energy around the world for the second half of 2015. The report focuses on the overall cost of electricity—from generation, to upfront investment, to the cost of financing—called the "levelised cost electricity," or LCOE.

Gas, made cheaper by fracking, also is more competitive than coal and the trend lines will make it even more so in the future.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Won't matter if its cheaper to use wind. They can pass any law they want

and as long as the coal industry pays them off for doing so, they don't even have to get re-elected. That's what Citizens United is all about. Get rid of career politicians! Get elected once, take the money, give even more money to your donor---and then cash out while you are ahead. The biggest con job ever. Soon we will see ads in business journals--"Looking for white male heterosexual no criminal history to run for elected office. We bankroll you and pay you off and you vote for us." Totally legal protected free speech according to the SCOTUS.

[politicat]

6. There won't be any people in Wyoming to use the coal they are running out of anyway.

Wyoming has a serious brain-drain problem -- their top high school students either stay at their universities long enough to get their degree then leave, or they hop the border, work in Colorado long enough to get residency, and attend Colorado universities. Very few of Wyoming's talent pool goes back once they've left. There are more sheep than people. It's lovely, sure, and there are some tourist dollars, but it's mostly just cold, dry, empty space with little industry.

Their coal industry is under the same pressures facing the Colorado coal industry -- the seams are no longer profitable for large labor force mining, and won't be profitable at all in about 20 years. It's not that the machinery is better -- though it is -- but that the seams are harder to reach. Physics always wins, which they would know if they could keep even 10% of their young brains.

Wyoming is barely replacing their population -- 4% growth over the last 10 years. Colorado is growing by 10%, and having more babies and attracting more young people.

The whole state has fewer people than Seattle or Denver. If they're determined to use coal... it's not good for them or anyone else, but they're also not numerous enough to do a lot of damage.

[packman]

7. Yah, but the damage is done by exporting ENERGY

Wyoming creates power in their coal-fed plants and sells that energy to surrounding states making money for the plant owners. Eventually that shit smoke oozes out of the area and infects other states like a cancer. If it just stayed in Wyoming and choked just its population that would be no concern to me - let them wallow in their own creation. Unfortunately wind moves things around.

[hunter]

8. The big boys version of rolling coal...

wikipedia

All the charm of an old geezer masturbating in public.

Funny thing is that it's not really regulations that are killing coal, it's gas.

To increase coal use it would have to be further subsidized and onerous regulation would have to be applied to other sources of energy.

Which may be exactly what the Republicans intend to do.

The Republicans claim they support free markets, but then they do everything in their power to protect dirty, regressive, and corrupt industries that are no longer carrying their own weight.