Is Coal the Solution?

Well the title of this post is really dumb because coal power plants will never be a permanent long run solution to anything, but there will be an influx of coal power plants, in the United States and abroad, to make up for increased energy demand and short comings on the supply side.

It's apparent around the world that nuclear energy will be a huge part of energy in the future of the world. There are large amounts of power plants being built in China, India, Russia, the U.S., and all of Europe. There's a problem with this. We don't have enough uranium to supply all of these projects. Eventually the supply of U3O8 will catch up to the demand, but not for a while here. I little while ago I read some analysis at the EIA and posted that uranium demand would exceed uranium supply to around 2013. Since then, there have been huge reports regarding new plans for nuclear power plants all over the world. First off, the EIA is another agency that I'm a little wishy-washy on. They have been known to spin the oil situation a little bit, but I believe that they are a lot more accurate than any direct government agency. Anyways, I feel that the shortage will last at least till 2015.

So the new question is, how will we meet energy shortfalls in the meantime. Well, it looks like coal is going to be the answer. This is interesting, because it's actually a resource that the United States has. We are sitting on billions of tons of coal. In 2005 (the most recent statistic I could find), the U.S. produced 1.31 billion tons of coal. In terawatts per hour, in the U.S., coal production accounted for twice as much energy as any other energy commodity that was refined on our soil. This is something that I have personally been in the dark about. I wasn't aware of the amount of coal that we have produced in the past, and have the ability to produce in the future.

In the U.S., during the next couple of years, there are plans to build 150 new coal burning power plants. This is the direct result of shortcomings in energy supply according to the EIA. Obviously, coal brings with it some negative environmental impacts. I'm definitely not a tree hugger. I also haven't truly looked into global warming, and I don't have any intentions to do so. Whether global warming is caused by humans, or some other factors, the earth is getting warmer. That fact is not arguable. This will affect agriculture and other industries necessary to human life.

The down side of coal production is that it produces sulfur, carbon dioxide, and mercury particulates. The mercury and sulfur are fairy easily captured by today's technology standards. It's the CO2 that is the problem. Institutions such as MIT and others are working very hard on developing the technology to capture as much CO2 as possible.

This could be a great investment opportunity, both the coal industry, and the technology surrounding it. That is something worth looking into.

But in the mean time, it looks like coal is going to be a part of our immediate future. The greatest positive is that the U.S. is sitting on a huge amount of coal. The negatives are the environmental impacts of such power plants. I believe that there will be many decisions like this, in meeting rising energy demands around the world. Sometimes you just have to pick between the lesser of two evils. Politicians hate this idea, because the public doesn't realize that one negative may be better than a more negative alternative. It will be interesting to see the future decisions in the energy market. You know how much faith I have in politicians.