After staggering mining job losses under Obama, Clinton vows to continue the war on coal.

[Lucille]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-0...t-his-2nd-term

Unfortunately for the folks employed in the coal industry, Hillary has vowed to continue Obama's war on coal. Per Politifact, Hillary made the following comment at a CNN town hall meeting earlier this year.

"So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?"

Hopefully the people of Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio took some comfort from Hillary's vow to replace their jobs with "clean renewable energy" opportunities. After all, we hear there is huge demand from employers looking for people to watch their solar farms.

So her misstatement was taken out-of-context?



Also nice how the ball-buster treated him like he was uninformed about her big "plan from last summer," and the "facts."

[Zippyjuan]

Unfortunately, those jobs will probably not be coming back anytime soon. China demand has been falling and in the US it is getting harder to compete against the cheap price of natural gas produced in all those fracking wells.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...on-drops-again

China coal consumption drops again

China’s coal consumption fell for the second year in a row, government data showed Monday, as the world’s biggest polluter attempts to tackle chronic pollution that accompanied economic growth.

Coal use fell 3.7% last year compared to 2014 levels, according to a report from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The drop follows a 2.9% decrease in 2014.

China’s rise to the world’s second largest economy was largely powered by cheap, dirty coal. As growth slows, the country has had a difficult time weaning itself off the fuel, even as the pollution it causes wreaks havoc on the environment and public health.

China’s consumption of the fuel doubled in the decade to 2014, reaching more than four billion tonnes a year.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=25392

Natural gas expected to surpass coal in mix of fuel used for U.S. power generation in 2016

For decades, coal has been the dominant energy source for generating electricity in the United States. EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) is now forecasting that 2016 will be the first year that natural gas-fired generation exceeds coal generation in the United States on an annual basis. Natural gas generation first surpassed coal generation on a monthly basis in April 2015, and the generation shares for coal and natural gas were nearly identical in 2015, each providing about one-third of all electricity generation.

The mix of fuels used for electricity generation has evolved over time. The recent decline in the generation share of coal, and the concurrent rise in the share of natural gas, was mainly a market-driven response to lower natural gas prices that have made natural gas generation more economically attractive. Between 2000 and 2008, coal was significantly less expensive than natural gas, and coal supplied about 50% of total U.S. generation. However, beginning in 2009, the gap between coal and natural gas prices narrowed, as large amounts of natural gas produced from shale formations changed the balance between supply and demand in U.S. natural gas markets.



Coal and natural gas generation shares over the past decade have been responsive to changes in relative fuel prices. For example, particularly low natural gas prices throughout much of 2012 following an extremely mild 2011–12 winter led to a significant rise in the natural gas generation share between 2011 and 2012, often displacing coal-fired generation. With higher natural gas prices in 2013 and 2014, coal regained some of its generation share. However, with a return to lower natural gas prices in 2015 favoring increased natural gas-fired generation, coal's generation share dropped again.

[Anti Federalist]

in the US it is getting harder to compete against the cheap price of natural gas produced in all those fracking wells.

She's opposed to that as well.

A whole slew of new offshore oil regulations have killed that for the foreseeable future, and she's opposed to that also.

Bringing us closer to the future: of living in yurts heated by unicorn farts.

[VIDEODROME]

Why can't these coal companies invest in other cleaner energy resources instead of continuing with dirty fossil fuels and mountain topping with polluted water runoff?

[FSP-Rebel]

Hillary wins!

[Keith and stuff]

Hillary wins!

Boo