The Washington Post and other media is reporting the most unsurprising event of the Trump Administration. Obama Era regulations about coal ash are being given another look.....with the goal of rejecting them or at least diminishing them. The Post reports:
It was a major coal ash pond failure in Tennessee that really got Alabama involved. Hundreds of tons of the spilled coal ask was loaded on trains and transported hundreds of miles to Perry County Alabama where it remains buried in the larges commercial landfill operation East of the Mississippi.
The Southern Company, parent company of Alabama power, gave up the ghost on coal ask and started transforming coal fired plants to natural gas...and made plans to eliminate the potentially expensive coal ash ponds.
In Alabama the huge Green County Alabama Power plant is running on gas. What happens to the huge coal ash ponds at that plant and others? Uncertain at this time. The report in the Post and elsewhere appears to predict fewer regulations. But some companies may very well decide to eliminate them anyway, instead of being at the whims of new Administrations and lawsuits by impacted parties. And in the long run, natural gas is cheaper than coal. And the bottom line usually wins.
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com]
PLUS: The NY Times has published an editorial saying pretty much the same thing a day after the above post: "the head of Duke Energy, America’s largest utility, defended the closing of 12 coal plants across five years, with more to come, in order to cut the company’s coal-fired energy output by a third: “Our strategy will continue to be to drive carbon out of our business.”
"Utility operators produce more than 110 million tons of coal ash annually, according to the EPA, and a rule the agency finalized in December 2014 established stricter guidelines for constructing and maintaining coal ash storage pits. The regulations said new pits had to be lined — to prevent the waste from seeping out — and that companies must conduct local water quality tests as well as disclose more information about their operations on a publicly available website"
The Southern Company, parent company of Alabama power, gave up the ghost on coal ask and started transforming coal fired plants to natural gas...and made plans to eliminate the potentially expensive coal ash ponds.
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| The Coal Ash Pond at Alapowco's Greens County plant |
In Alabama the huge Green County Alabama Power plant is running on gas. What happens to the huge coal ash ponds at that plant and others? Uncertain at this time. The report in the Post and elsewhere appears to predict fewer regulations. But some companies may very well decide to eliminate them anyway, instead of being at the whims of new Administrations and lawsuits by impacted parties. And in the long run, natural gas is cheaper than coal. And the bottom line usually wins.
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com]
PLUS: The NY Times has published an editorial saying pretty much the same thing a day after the above post: "the head of Duke Energy, America’s largest utility, defended the closing of 12 coal plants across five years, with more to come, in order to cut the company’s coal-fired energy output by a third: “Our strategy will continue to be to drive carbon out of our business.”
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