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Coal on the outer as US goes green

Coal on the outer as US goes green
THE AUSTRALIAN Peter Beattie | September 05, 2009
“………Projects to build new coal-fired power stations are being abandoned from Florida to Utah. Money is pouring in for renewable energy and legislation is being enacted to support it…………….

Too often the coal industry sees its advantages as being too strong to be ignored. These include the abundance of cheap coal against the expense of building new power stations, the cost of gas and solar, and the unreliability of wind and wave power. Lehman Brothers, the big American merchant bank, thought coal was too big to be ignored. That bank doesn’t exist any more.

World energy use is changing and, as so often happens, US innovation is pivotal to that change.

This is notwithstanding that the US has the world’s largest known coal reserves – enough to last about 225 years at today’s level of use ………..
Hawaii has become a proving ground for renewable energy technologies. With one eye on national security, the US Department of Defence is pushing to make the state self-sufficient in transportation fuel. At the same time Hawaii’s policy calls for 70 per cent of energy to be produced from renewables by 2030. By any measure these are ambitious targets that are already driving innovation and changing the energy use mix. There are opportunities here for Australia

Coal on the outer as US goes green | The Australian

September 5, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, climate change, ENERGY, USA