don barrett

Coal-Lighting Our Future

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As most of you know by now I think coal will be the key to our future energy needs and oil will play a much smaller part in the future. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal and this coal is what we should be focusing on for future uses. I have done some research this weekend and some major advances in clean coal technology have been made. I still think coal is the future and oil is a huge bubble ready to burst. And the latest fallacy out of the media is the connection between oil and coal. There is no connection between the two. Oil is used to mainly power our automobiles and oil usage is dropping worldwide as the higher speculators drive the price of oil up,the less is being used. Most of us can easily cut back on the use of oil some as you just drive less.The media and some oil people have said for years oil usage for autos hasn't dropped. But,if you take a poll,most people will say they have made some attempt to slow their oil usage. The Asian countries by dropping their oil subsidies to the public is going to slow oil usage there. Chinas gas and diesel prices went up 18% or so when they dropped the subsidies and a 18% rise will slow oil usage!
Coal as most of you know plays a large part in the generation of electricity worldwide. Arch Coal is a favorite of mine and their coal alone produces about 6% of all the electricity used in America. Of all the energy China uses about 70% comes from coal mainly in the generation of electricity. Arch Coal already has the contracts to deliver coal to several new coal fired plants in the next few years at several dollars a ton more than today's prices. I think nuclear plants could slow coal usage in the future but a lot of Washington has to get their heads out of the sand. No drilling,no nuclear plants,no oil refinerys,no coal plants. Well just exactly what do you propose? I am a firm believer in solar,wind,and other alternative energy sources,but you have to live until these other sources of energy can have a larger impact on our energy needs.
The United States has enough coal to last an estimated 200 years or so. President Bush set aside $10 billion in 2002 for the research of technology to have a cleaner burning coal. I read yesterday that South Africa uses coal to produce about 30% of all the fuel to power their vehicles. We have enough coal to last us for a couple of centuries and we need to get the politics out of our energy policies and dance with what we take to the dance floor-coal. We have the coal and soon we will have a technology for a clean burning coal and a processes to convert coal to a liquid fuel to run our vehicles. This seems to be the most feasible path to take to me. I read on The Street yesterday where a published author had suggested that we continue to buy foreign oil until we deplete their oil reserves and then oil prices will be so high that our oil would then be worth the investment to drill. This must be the new thing I keep hearing about"reverse psychology" I think this strategy will really fool the Saudis!