Four cents? What is that supposed to mean? Good question. Four cents per kilowatt hour, is what it costs to generate electricity with coal. Coal? You mean that dirty black stuff that comes from a mine? Yuk! Yes, coal. Coal, which we have hundreds of years worth in America. Coal, which generates 44.7% of America’s electricity. Coal, which emits virtually no pollutants, thanks to modern filtering and ash capturing methods. Good old coal! I love it.
You think that wind farms generate electricity cheaply, since the wind costs nothing? Wrong. Wind farm electricity coasts a lot more than coal generation, and is also subsidized by the D.C. Gang. Try 5.7 cents per KWH. Why? Because wind power has huge blades, each one weighing many tons, and tall, huge steel posts to support each turbine. A central power plant can equal a whole wind farm in generating capacity, with one generator, and one engine to power it. Wind farms have lots of small, wind powered generators, which cost a bunch to build, install, maintain, and hook together. Naturally, they are only effective when the wind blows. Cheap electricity? Nope. The cost of wind generation does not include the cost of installations, maintenance, and equipment cost. Is it cheap to climb a hundred foot pole to fix a wind generator with 80 foot blades?
How about natural gas? Isn’t that cleaner? Yes, by a small amount, but it still costs more to generate electricity than with coal, by about a penny a KWH. America seems to have a lot of natural gas, assuming the fracking gets by the drinking water pollution problems. Fracking, which is absolutely necessary to produce natural gas, uses very strong, harsh chemicals which are injected thousands of feet below ground, and some say it ruins well water.
Nuclear power? Isn’t that clean? Sure, but it isn’t cheap by any means, because of the cost of construction, insurance to operate them, plus disposing of waste. Nuclear can be as high as seven cents per KWH, when total costs are figured. That’s assuming that any more nuclear plants will ever be built after Japan, which is doubtful. They scare me to death.
Hydro power? As I wrote in a previous column, no hydro plant has ever paid for itself nor showed a profit, due to maintenance of not only the wearing turbine wheels and generators, but maintaining the dam itself.
Then there are those who would use tides and waves to power generators, and of course solar generated electricity. All subsidized by the D.C. Gang. Both are off the scale as to cost per KWH, because of costs to install, life of solar equipment, and yet to be proven wave technology. The thought of the complexity of using waves and tides to generate electricity economically, blows the mind.
Next, we must come to Texas’ plan to built 11 new, coal fired power plants, costing a billion apiece. It already has 20 coal plants in operation. Coal is mined in Texas, and there is plenty of it. The greenies came undone, and the protests started, because of the so-called “greenhouse gas emissions.” What bunch of Texas cow manure. Cows produce greenhouse gasses by the millions, as do cars, trucks, and people! Just one big volcano eruption of the Chile type, produces more ’greenhouse gases’ than has ever been produced by all the cars and coal power plants in history! How many small volcano eruptions occur in a single day? Quite a few. Hundreds? The “Big” Hawaiian Island’s volcano produces ’vog’, 24 hours a day, which contains hundreds of tons of ’greenhouse gasses.’ Anyone figured out how to stop volcanoes from erupting? The greenhouse gas nonsense, propagated by Al Gore and his imbecilic, liberal, camp followers and hangers on, is simply untrue, and not anything to be concerned about. Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) makes plants grow, in case you didn’t know.
There are over 600 coal fired power plants operating in America today. Liberal California, only has eight, but Pennsylvania has 78, Kentucky 56, Ohio 119, and Indiana 90, just to name a few, and no one is choking to death in those states. People are choking to death in California, but not because of their measly eight plants, but because they burn 42 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel IN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES each year on their hundreds of freeways. Living and breathing California air, is said to equal smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Coal fired power plants are EXTERNAL COMBUSTION, and do not produce smog. See my column on June 23rd, by clicking on ’archives.
P.S. Wanna cut spending Republicrats? How about eliminating a couple hundred absurd federal agencies and fire the bureaucrats running them? There are close to a hundred agencies beginning with the letter “A” alone, and probably a lot more. Do we really need the “Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Interagency Coordinating Committee?” Or maybe the “Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board?” Or just at random, do we need the “White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance?” There are literally HUNDREDS of federal agencies and commissions which eat us alive cost wise and harassment wise also. Does Michelle Obama really need a staff of hundreds to keep her hair and makeup in order? Are all the trips around the world and dates in New York, which have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions so far, really necessary, Mr. President? Maybe we need a real TEA PARTY, rather than Republican Party, since the Tea Party element is the one which has captured America’s attention?