27 Comments - Da Big Bad Wolf - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:21 pm: Mercury in the atmosphere has been linked to increased miscarriages. How will the pro life community react to increased abortions to reduce “bureaucratic red tape”? - Jocko - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:27 pm: ==working to remove the bureaucratic red tape that has threatened a major industry== Like preventing coal ash from seeping into the Vermilion river? - DarkHorse - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:30 pm: I think the dumbest thing Harold has done in her campaign was to appear before a coal and mining company gathering, and say “the last thing we need is a ‘radical” environmentalist as AG. Red meat, and it seems to have gotten her some contributions. But no surprise if Raoul harps on this in one of his TV ads. - Last Bull Moose - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:37 pm: The War on Coal is over. Coal lost. The economics are working against coal. The fight over regulations moves its demise a few years one way or the other. There are few coal miners left in Illinois. As old power plants are retired, they will go the way of buggy whip makers. - Cheryl44 - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:39 pm: If my grandfather who was a coal miner were still alive my guess is he’d be switching to hemp farming. - Well Regulated Militia - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:46 pm: =Frontline communities across IL + Midwest deserve real climate and economic solutions not corporate handouts to coal barons.= Climate (CO2) is a bad argument because it distracts form the immediate threat of toxic chemicals and coal waste pollution. Only most dense would dismiss the toxicity argument. - JS Mill - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:49 pm: You would think the ILGOP would be blasting the coal industry, especially in Illinois. In their constant harangue against pensions they always harp on how the majority of Illinoisans are having to pay the price for public employees pensions. With coal, the majority of citizens will have to pay the price with their health so a few thousand people can have a job in an industry that has been dying for a century. - VanillaMan - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:53 pm: There is room in this world for all kinds of energy. Germany freaked out over nuclear, banning it, and now burns more coal as a result. We don’t want to do that. The idea that a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats know enough about energy, CO2, pollution and health impact is laughable. I don’t care if you walk, use hydrogen, burn coal, gas or muppets - diversity is best. The threats to the environment are being made by people only interested in being in control. Scare tactics. A society completely dependent upon a few sanctioned energy sources is letting too few exert too much control. Diversity - energy diversity - is best. Quit looking for single-source utopia. - CWLP - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 1:56 pm: We buy coal from the Viper Mine in Elkhart at a rate that is twice the cost of Midwest basin coal. We want to give Texas billionaires, the Hunt family, as much money as possible. We save money by disposing of poisonous coal ash as close to Springfield’s drinking water as possible. Natural gas, solar, and wind would be cheaper, but then we wouldn’t have a rationale for employing 450 of our friends and family members. - Blue Dog dem - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 2:14 pm: I am wholeheartedly in favor of building more nuclear plants in Illinois and phasing out our coal fired plants. I am also in favor of continuing coal mining for overseas consumption. - Give Me A Break - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 2:18 pm: CWLP: Hey those 450 friends and family members are SHG grads and they have to work somewhere ya know. - Lester Holt’s Mustache - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 2:21 pm: Even leaving out the health aspect of coal, I’ve never understood the GOP’s reliability in supporting coal as much as they do. In certain areas, like WV or KY or southern IL, I get the gop (and dems) strongly supporting it. Usually republicans are at the forefront of supporting new and growing industries. Policies that hinder the growth of solar and wind while propping up the failing coal industry makes no sense to me, but’s it’s been the party standard a while now. Do coal execs donate that much more money than clean energy execs? - Deadbeat Conservative - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 2:35 pm: CWLP for the win. Also don’t forget the 1/2 billion dollar mortgage CWLP took out for an uneeded coal plant they tout as a “crown jewel”. After interest payments they don’t have enough money to maintain the water supply - or even operate a beach for that matter. - Going nuclear - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 2:49 pm: Despite the Trump administration’s proposal to roll back the Obama-era restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, most utilities are moving toward cleaner power generation for economic reasons. Just two weeks ago, Northern Indiana Public Service Company announced plans to retire its remaining coal-fired generating facilities within 10 years. The utility is looking at wind, solar and battery storage technology as likely replacements and believes they will provide lower-cost power options for its customers. - Demoralized - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 3:12 pm: Well, our resident environmental expert VMan apparently has it all figured out. End of discussion. Nobody is looking for a “single source utopia.” Striving towards cleaner energy shouldn’t be a controversial goal. Yes, it can be costly and we should try to figure out ways to do it to make it less costly. But only a climate change denier would brush the concerns over burning coal under the rug. - MWNMNWWNM - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 3:26 pm: ** wind, solar and battery storage technology as likely replacements and believes they will provide lower-cost power options for its customers. ** Wind and solar are supplemental energy sources only, they cannot satisfy our power needs on a large scale, 24×7x365. Nuclear is the only viable, reliable, large scale option, but try getting a building permit for a nuclear power plant. - Ok - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 3:34 pm: Let’s spend hundreds of millions to billions of dollars per year on bailouts to Texas coal plant companies and Wyoming coal mining exec’s, all so we can save a few hundred jobs, and about 20 million in property tax payments a year. Makes total sense. - VanillaMan - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 3:46 pm: The fear of mercury poisoning is overblown. I’ve ridden in a Monarch, a Sable, a Villager and a Cougar. While eating tuna. Nobody is telling anyone to move there. - Downstate Illinois - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 3:58 pm: You can’t grow an economy with inefficient overpriced electricity. The anti-fossil fuel campaigners are delusional as there’s no existing technology that could get us there unless we switched to higher cost nuclear power which no one seems to want. - Going nuclear - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 4:37 pm: = Wind and solar are supplemental energy sources only, they cannot satisfy our power needs on a large scale, 24×7×365. Nuclear is the only viable, reliable, large scale option, but try getting a building permit for a nuclear power plant.= You left out the third option NIPSCO will be investigating to replace its remaining coal generation: battery storage technologies that can be paired with variable energy sources like solar and wind. The interesting thing is that energy storage can act as both a source of energy and a way to absorb it. I’m fine with nuclear power, but we need smaller, modular and cheaper reactor designs for the future. In many places, the existing nukes are being phased out, and nuclear has gone from “too cheap to meter” to “too expensive to run.” - Da Big Bad Wolf - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 4:40 pm: You can’t grow an economy with inefficient, sick employees and brain damaged children. - Deadbeat Conservative - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 5:35 pm: @Downsate proclaims: =You can’t grow an economy with inefficient overpriced electricity. The anti-fossil fuel campaigners are delusional as there’s no existing technology that could get us there unless we switched to higher cost nuclear power which no one seems to want.= DS, You seem to know alot about… being delusional. The CWLP coal plant is a big economic drag on businesses who are stuck with its high rates. In California there microgrid projects are power by a mix of renewable resources, provide many jobs, and aren’t public enemy number one to health. You MAGA (Make America Gag Again) types seem to actually believe your own nonsense. - VanillaMan - Monday, Oct 1, 18 @ 8:31 pm: ==You can’t grow an economy with inefficient, sick employees and brain damaged children.== Is that your problem? - yinn - Tuesday, Oct 2, 18 @ 6:58 am: ==Wind and solar are supplemental energy sources only, they cannot satisfy our power needs on a large scale== Some days I wonder where the traditional American can-do attitude has gone. Sure, we don’t have the capacity today, but if you’re paying attention, you can see the innovation that will get us there with technologies like solar thermal, better batteries, and continual improvements in turbine design. - theCardinal - Tuesday, Oct 2, 18 @ 8:06 am: Coal being burned in China and other places where they are far less stingent on clean emissions if at all. Why pound away at the companies here that have invested billions into clean emission plants ? - Da Big Bad Wolf - Tuesday, Oct 2, 18 @ 10:05 am: ==Is that your problem?== Maybe. I dunno. I had no idea I had a problem. If the coal producers and the coal plants had to pay for the medical bills and pain and suffering of people they affected, coal would be a lot more expensive than alternate fuels. Since they don’t coal only appears cheap. - Da Big Bad Wolf - Wednesday, Oct 3, 18 @ 7:20 am: Who cares about babies and fetuses? Let’s get a lower electric bill. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/opinion/chemicals-epa-children-health.html Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.