
First U.S. Coal Plant in Years Opens Where No Options Exist - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-11/coal-s-final-flicker-1st-new-u-s-plant-since-2015-set-to-open
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towelr34dy
What a strange article.

From my understanding it's an article about a family owned business supplying
coal for a newly launched coal power plant in a remote Alaskan college town.

There were 4 quotes from the article: 1- From a representative of the college
(good) 2- From an analyst who did not participate in this situation making a
report that is totally unrelated to this news piece 3- From an analyst
commenting on the news piece 4- From the company's website

There were no interviews with the residents. Nothing about the business
supplying the coal. No comments from students. No mention of town halls or
different sides.

Am I just becoming an old crabby guy or was this... lacking something?

~~~
woodandsteel
The focus of the article was on the question of why this particular facility
makes economic sense when coal generation as a whole is declining in the US.

~~~
towelr34dy
Oh I get that.

But it was lacking any depth.

It seemed one sided. But I can't even call it that. It didn't even give a
side. It was more like... hearsay with a single interview, probably on the
phone, with 1 person on the ground. Even then, they could have published the
interview for some depth. But not even that. Hell, probably browsing local
facebook groups/reddits or calling their local municipality/college
associations you could find more information with a few hours of free time.
It's... surreal in terms of how shallow it was.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd fully expect a tabloid to publish trash rag
stuff, but... I'm seeing it more now in major publications, and even oddly
shared on sites like this.

I'm just... I just find it odd.

~~~
8bitsrule
Feels more like a small-town newspaper writeup.

Could be that an overloaded author, sitting at a Bloomberg desk, was assigned
the story ... with no experience in energy, and given nothing to to work with
but a couple of local Alaskan newpaper clips. Maybe muttering to himself while
he typed.

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cesarb
"The project, financed with university and state-municipal bonds, replaces a
coal plant that went into service in 1964." Does it really count as a new one
if it's just replacing an old one?

~~~
0xffff2
I think it does when nearly everywhere else coal plants are being replaced by
other kinds of power generation.

~~~
KorematsuFred
Not exactly. Newer powerplants are more efficient and have got better at
handling emissions. So even if it is replacement it could be a strict
improvement on the existing option.

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JBReefer
$245 Million for a _17_ megawatt plant seems insane - the Georgia and Kansas
plants both are in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion a pop, and are ~50 times
as powerful. I get that economies of scale are huge in power and that
Fairbanks isn't exactly Georgia, but wow.

~~~
driverdan
That was my first thought too. At $1/W, 17MW of solar power would be $17mm +
supporting infrastructure and that would be very expensive for solar at that
scale. I don't know what coal plants typically cost but this seems an order of
magnitude too high.

~~~
merpnderp
Alaska gets quite a bit less sun than the rest of the US and would need maybe
2x over-provision. And no idea what people will do for electricity the other
20 hours a day where solar panels are either useless or nearly useless. Also,
cloudy days.

~~~
driverdan
I wasn't trying to say solar was a good solution in this situation. I was
giving a cost comparison to highlight how high this seems to be.

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i_am_proteus
The trend is that coal use is declining in the United States. Trends have
outliers. This news is not sensational.

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24gttghh
Uhhh it's still not running yet[0]. Headline says "Opens", but article says
"open in April". It was slated to open last fall.

More details on the "cleanliness" of this new plant[1]:

 _3%_ less CO2 than the old plant

"very low" PM2.5 emissions

[0][https://fm.kuac.org/post/problems-discovered-during-
testing-...](https://fm.kuac.org/post/problems-discovered-during-testing-
delay-uaf-power-plant-going-online-til-march)

[1][https://fm.kuac.org/post/irony-arctic-climate-change-
researc...](https://fm.kuac.org/post/irony-arctic-climate-change-researchers-
still-conflicted-over-uaf-s-coal-fired-powerplant)

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latchkey
I had an interesting meeting with some politically connected tribal elders
from Alaska. Right now they use a lot of diesel generators, so bringing a coal
plant online is probably a better option than that.

There is a few areas in super remote locations within Alaska where the ground
is literally on fire. Building geothermal plants would be a clean way of
capturing and producing power for the entire state. The problem is that the
areas are so remote that running transmission lines would cost ~$1M/mile and
go across some pretty inhospitable land.

I had the idea of building the plant and then housing cryptocurrency mines, on
site in containers, to literally generate the revenue to build the
transmission lines. The problem being of course that in order to that, it
would require quite a bit of capex based on a pretty volatile market. Not
really an ideal investment.

Anyway, just thought it would be a fun story to share here. Cheers.

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jhallenworld
>The university’s new plant is a combined heat and power generator...

At least it's efficient.

Under "bio-mass" did they consider burning local wood? At least it would be
carbon neutral...

~~~
AndrewGaspar
How is that carbon neutral? Aren't you taking carbon that was otherwise
sequestered and burning it?

~~~
ynniv
New trees happen quickly, and remove carbon in the process. New coal not so
much.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
"Carbon neutrality" isn't about preserving known reserves of fossil fuels.
It's about net-zero emissions by balancing new carbon emissions with carbon
reductions or sequestrations.

Regardless, burning a tree is only carbon neutral if you actually plant more
trees, and probably a LOT more trees, since the tree you burnt was presumably
more mature and it still takes a long time for trees to grow. Moreso, you can
achieve carbon neutrality with fossil fuels through the exact same mechanism -
burn coal, then plant trees.

~~~
ynniv
And lots of tree farms do plant new trees, making it neutral. Coal is more
carbon-dense, so you need to plant more new trees than already exist and there
probably isn't room for them unless you clear a forest first, and then what
are you going to do with that wood?

Obviously other sources of energy are better than burning wood, but
efficiently burning wood is better than burning coal or oil.

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opportune
they said "nothing penciled out" but I would be curious to see an actual
explanation of the costs of various energy sources... I can't imagine natural
gas would have been that much more expensive, and in terms of indirect
financial costs would likely have been a better choice (creating much less
localized pollution)

~~~
AlotOfReading
My understanding is that natural gas has to be trucked in from the south, as
the North Slope doesn't export it overland. I could easily imagine the local
coal mine being cheaper, especially accounting for winter supply mitigations.

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jedberg
Especially ironic that it was paid for with money from oil and gas profits.

~~~
theandrewbailey
What was that money expected to be spent on?

~~~
jedberg
This is a perfectly valid thing to spend the money on, I just find it ironic
that of all things it's oil and gas money.

~~~
theandrewbailey
_Ironic_ means that it was contrary to expectations.

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mtw
Not sure if it's a coincidence but I read a report on BBC how most insects
will die/vanish in 100 years except for cockroaches and other insects that
thrive on human waste; butterflies, bees and other insects being too fragile
for human pollution. Sobering

~~~
drak0n1c
Insects and other arthropods thrived in prior warm high-carbon eras, what you
read was a sensationalist pop sci report about pesticides specifically.

~~~
mtw
Your reply is simplistic

(1) This is not pop sci :
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636)
\- it's a research article resulting from a collaboration between 2
universities

(2) The paper mentions pesticides but also mentions climate change (global
warming due to high-carbon), also mention intensive agriculture.

(3) usage of pesticide is highly linked with C02 pollution and climate change.
You cannot consider one without not considering the other.

(4) How do insects thrived in warm high-carbon eras? I'd be happy to read
papers on this

