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Only in Indiana.
Coal is eighteenth-century technology. If Rep. Soliday aims for consistency, he should try to prop up other obsolete eighteenth-century technologies. To protect horse breeders he should require travel in horse-drawn carriages. He should ban steamboats, that pernicious nineteenth-century innovation, to protect flatboat operators. He should make our militia fight with muzzle-loaded muskets and ban breech-loaders. And anyone using a fountain pen will face severe regulatory sanction. If grandpa made do with a quill pen that’s good enough for Rep. Soliday.
Soliday does not realize that these business are making business decisions. When a 30+ year old coal fired power plant needs a major overhaul and maintenance, they look at the cost, usually in the $100,000,000+ range, and ask if I invest that kind of money, will I get a payback over the next 30 years? In light of the radical changes happening in the energy business, the answer is almost always NO. Even if the answer might be yes, when they go to a bank and tell them they want to finance this project, the banks don’t have a crystal ball, but they can see the change coming, and tell them to get lost. Coal is dead because money to support it has dried up. No amount regulation will bring it back. Only direct subsidies will prop it up, and guess what, that costs money.
This will cost Hoosiers a lot on their energy bills as they have to pay for failing plants and higher cost coal over cheaper (and cleaner) options. Not to mention, diminished health, particularly children who are more susceptible to asthma and other lung problems, will make us sicker and live shorter lives.
There sure are a lot of geniuses reading Indianapolis Business Journal and commenting…such an incredible wealth of untapped energy-producing knowledge, it would appear.
Did it occur to anyone that it is possible to design and install better scrubbers on existing coal plants to reduce harmful emissions while other technologies are being perfected, so that facilities already bought and paid for may be “used up?”
And this is to say nothing of one of the biggest untapped sources of energy lying around serving as mosquito breeding grounds; old motor vehicle tires. Don’t laugh; for all practical purposes, they are free for the taking by the millions and possess an enormous number of BTUs…ask anyone in fire-fighting who has tried to extinguish a large pile of discarded tires that has caught fire. Sure, they are dirty when burning but, again, cleaning up their smoke would seem to be a solvable problem, given existing technology….and using them for this purpose would be a good example of end-use recycling.
This doesn’t even make sense from a business perspective, let alone an environmental one. When natural gas, solar, and wind are rapidly declining in price per kilowatt and efficiency is increasing, why would a utility pump money into a 30-year commitment on a technology that is more difficult to deal with and dwindling in supply?
Or simply some people who own utility stocks and read the annual reports. Educated investors.
See my first comment. It is all about money.
Bob P, if the scrbbers work so well, why is it that Indiana has some of the worst air in the country? How about if you and Mr. Soliday and your families move just downwind from the coal plants? I would agree that if a plant has had major, expensive retrofiting in the last 5-10 years and has a 10 year useful life remaining, it’s costly to just abandon it today. But they are a business and have decided to make the move – notice, though, that their proposals are to close plants over the next 10-20 years, not tomorrow. What possible reason is there for a legislator to intervene other than to kowtow to the lobbyists who support him. As Tom W. points out in the first comment, “Only in Indiana”!