Bob's Links and Rants

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Saturday, August 26, 2006

Merchant coal

Global warming is accelerating, but speculators like Goldman Sachs are building "merchant coal" power plants in farm fields in Iowa and Texas:
Across the nation, 153 new coal plants are currently proposed, enough to power some 93 million homes. Of those 153 proposals, only 24 have expressed an intent to use gasification technology, which offers a way to handle the large amounts of carbon dioxide produced by coal combustion. A recent report from the National Energy Technology Laboratory anticipates the construction of up to 309 new 500 MW coal plants in the U.S. by 2030. If NETL's projections are correct, U.S. coal-generation capacity will more than triple by 2010, with corresponding air pollution and greenhouse-gas increases.
This isn't just insanely stupid--it's criminal.