14 replies to this topic

[diogenes227]

Europe is burning coal at the fastest pace since 2006 as imports from U.S. producers surge

Coal accounted for 30 percent of global energy consumption last year, the highest share since 1969, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2012.
Demand grew 5.4 percent in 2011, the fastest among fossil fuels.

Demand for coal, the dirtiest fuel for making electricity, grew 3.3 percent last year in Europe while sales of less- polluting natural gas fell 2.1 percent, the steepest drop since 2009,

Lower prices resulted in gas increasing its share in electricity generation in the U.S. to 32 percent in April, compared with 23 percent a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Industries.
Coal’s share dropped to 32 percent from 41 percent a year earlier

http://www.bloomberg...u-s-energy.html

Europe is burning coal at the fastest pace since 2006, as surging imports from U.S. producers such as Arch Coal Inc. (ACI) helped cut prices 26 percent in a year and benefited European power companies including EON AG.

Those "surging imports" are doing wonders for Arch Coal's stock. According to the Bloomberg story, ACI's profit margin is virtually zero. I guess they're giving it away. Maybe that explains the stock's trend.

Might take a few years, but it's possible the coal sector gets renamed "buggy-whip land."

http://stockcharts.c...41864163578.png

[stocks]

How Democrats have shifted on climate, energy since 2008

What a difference four years makes. Domestic oil and gas production has been booming thanks to new shale drilling techniques. And, in response, this year’s Democratic platform is a lot more ambivalent
about oil, gas, and even coal:

The platform tries to balance talk about clean energy and efficiency with a nod toward the boom in oil and gas drilling. (“Our dependence on foreign oil is now at a 16-year low, and a new era of cheap, abundant natural gas is helping to bring jobs and industry back to the United States.”) Environmental concerns haven’t vanished. But in an era in which oil and gas companies are adding thousands of jobs in the United States, those green concerns are now being tempered with a big nod toward America’s fossil-fuel resources.


http://www.washingto...rgy-since-2008/

[stocks]

Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. are at their lowest level in 20 years. It’s not because of wind or solar power.

The cause is an unprecedented switch to natural gas, which emits 45 percent less carbon per energy unit.

This flies in the face of conventional thinking, which continues to claim that mandating carbon reductions—through cap-and-trade or a carbon tax—is the only way to combat climate change.

But, based on Europe’s experience, such policies are precisely the wrong way to address global warming. Since 1990, the EU has heavily subsidized solar and wind energy at a cost of more than $20 billion annually. Yet its per capita CO2 emissions have fallen by less than half of the reduction achieved in the U.S.

Because of broad European skepticism about fracking, there is no gas miracle in the EU, while the abundance of heavily subsidized renewables has caused overachievement of the CO2 target. Along with the closure of German nuclear power stations, this has led, ironically, to a resurgence of coal.

The amazing truth is that fracking has succeeded where Kyoto and carbon taxes have failed.


http://www.slate.com..._20_years_.html

[stocks]

2012: Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. are at their lowest level in 20 years.

The cause is an unprecedented switch to natural gas, which emits 45 percent less carbon per energy unit.

This flies in the face of conventional thinking, which continues to claim that mandating carbon reductions—through cap-and-trade or a carbon tax—is the only way to combat climate change.

But, based on Europe’s experience, such policies are precisely the wrong way to address global warming. Since 1990, the EU has heavily subsidized solar and wind energy at a cost of more than $20 billion annually. Yet its per capita CO2 emissions have fallen by less than half of the reduction achieved in the U.S.

The headlines from 2002: "Bush's Kyoto Alternative Criticized by Allies, Democrats and Activists"

"The Bush administration is sticking to the polluting policies that the energy industry asked for rather than taking the sensible steps that can protect our health," Executive Director of the Sierra Club Carl Pope said Thursday.

"It's been written, paid for and delivered by Exxon," said Greenpeace spokesman on climate change Steve Sawyer.

"As near as we can tell, the emissions intensity being talked about... would leave the United States with an increase in emissions of 25-30 percent in 1990 levels by 2010. This compares with their commitment under Kyoto of minus seven percent."

Bush, in one of his first actions upon taking office in January 2001, yanked US support for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires wealthy nations to cut to 1990 levels the emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Bush sparked a worldwide uproar with his decision to abandon Kyoto because he said it was likely to cost millions of US jobs.


http://www.commondre...s02/0215-01.htm

[stocks]

The big green rent-seeking machine

New gas-fired power stations will be built in the UK and the lights will stay on, greens will be bought off by the continued expansion of the renewables programme. The costs will be astronomical – we are talking about a hundred-billion pound face-saving measure — but the big green rent-seeking machine will roll on.

The news that the Bowland Shale, a humungous beast of a gas field under Lancashire, is actually 50 per cent bigger than previously thought, points clearly to a shale gas-dominated future for the UK. This is an outcome that should in theory please everyone since plentiful gas will unequivocally reduce carbon emissions as well as energy prices. But of course, in reality some parts of the climate debate will not be pleased at all, for the simple reason that the beast from Blackpool puts a fairly hefty wrench in the works of the big green rent-seeking machine. If gas gives you cheap energy and lower carbon emissions, why do you need windfarms?


http://blogs.spectat...eeking-machine/

Edited by stocks, 13 December 2012 - 08:32 AM.