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Pastimes : All Clowns Must Be Destroyed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (28368)	4/22/2000 10:18:00 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42523

I will try to find a figure on ac saturation for you. I'd like to be able to quote a figure nationally and for our state. It is something I should know ... Regarding what recent rates should be used to predict need --it depends. In the area of electric demand I don't think one to two years is sufficient data to extrapolate 5 - 10 years into the future -- that is what is happening. In the past there have been "outliers" but the growth has always reverted to a longer term trend ... Regarding natural gas you are largely correct. There is a large supply for the near term, i.e. next 10 - 15 years at least, but coal reserves are far greater. That is not really the point. Natural gas plants, whether they be simple turbines or combined cycle plants have an operating cost that is at least 2 - 3 times the operating cost of coal units -- that relationship is not likely to change for the better (i.e. to favor natural gas generation). Hence, persistent or "baseload" requirements are more economically met by coal. As natural gas units are moved further and further down the load duration curve (used to supply needs for still longer and longer periods throughout the year) electrical energy prices can be expected to increase ... Electrical energy is no small input to the overall economy. As a result of the current environmental approach -- i.e. a punitive one instead of looking for the best way to make use of a resource that the US has plenty of -- utilities are afraid to construct coal plants. We currently get something like 50% of our electrical needs from that "dirty" fuel. Are you willing to cut your usage in half and have your bill double or treble to eliminate your contribution to our dependence on coal? There are technologies that can help coal burn more cleanly -- much pollution has been reduced by many of the utilities switching to burning low sulfur western coal and adding SO2 scrubbers already. Electricity generated by coal isn't going away. What Gore and his ilk would like to do -- at least this is all I can figure -- is add taxes to all the emissions of coal and raise the price to the extent that gas becomes favored regardless of economics. It is dumb with a capital D, IMO. So much money poured into lame-brain ideas. why not try to make what we have work? I don't think Gore and his buddies have a clue. I wonder if you asked him: How much of the US' electrical energy comes from coal? What his answer would be. I wonder if he has a clue about the cost to produce that amount of electricity every year and what it would cost to produce from other means. I mean, I know he invented the internet and he is a pretty smart guy and all ... Seriously, there's a lot of money at stake here and not all scientists are agreed that CO2 <causes> global warming. All we have is a correlation ... there are some longer term historical records from which one may infer that the correlation may be a fluke ...