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Coal Fighting for More Social Acceptance
Oct 6, 2011 Chris Cline, Palm Beach, Uncategorized Comments Off
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Throughout most of his career Christopher Cline, principal owner of privately held Foresight Energy, a coal mining company has shunned attention from the media, claiming there was no such thing as good publicity in coal. However, he is now speaking out in attempt to clean up the image that has tainted the coal industry in recent years.
With new environmental rules applied to coal burning electric producers, high sulfur coal mined from southern Illinois is one of the cheapest supplies of coal in the world. He also believes that coal has gotten a bad rap over the years and that the so-called alternative fuels are too expensive to be readily available and believes that since coal has been the primary source of fuel for over 5,000 years, there is no reason to allow a few alarmists to cause it to be forgotten.
He points out that the industry itself does the worst job of promoting coal and the benefits it reaps and points out that be keeping energy production costs down, people are living better lives. He also points out that environmentalists have a habit of putting all of the blame for any climate changes on coal and ignore other possible causes. For example, he cites sun spots and the physical activity of the planet for helping to affect the climate.
He fails to understand how many want to fault an industry that benefits the world by providing economical energy sources based on what is considered “minimal increases” in the carbon dioxide levels. He does not dispute that global warming may be a real threat, but he also believes that it is over stated. He strongly supports technology to develop cleaner methods of burning coal and provides coal to the power plant in New Haven, West Virginia, the first plant to both capture the carbon emissions and sequestering it thousands of feet underground.
Profits from his mining in southern Illinois is helping to create one of the cheapest energy in the country, allowing him to mine coal at about $19 per ton opposed to other mines in Appalachia that bring the coal out at around $57 per ton. Cline’s coal sells for under $48 a ton, less expensive than other companies can get it to the surface. He points to the comparative cost of power generation with coal averaging about $59 per megawatt hour, which includes operating expenses and capital investment. Power from wind generation offshore is over $176 per megawatt hour and solar energy costs about $240 per megawatt hour.