A report released this week suggests that US federal regulation of coal combustion residuals, or coal ash, currently being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency would result in as many as 316,000 lost jobs and as much as $110 billion in lost economic activity over a 20-year period.
Coal ash disposal is currently unregulated at the federal level, but the EPA is weighing two options for bringing the post-combustion leftovers from power plants under the purview of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
According to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy coal consumption grew by 7.6% in 2010, the fastest global growth since 2003. Coal now accounts for 29.6% of global energy consumption, up from 25.6% 10 years ago and the highest since 1970. Chinese consumption grew by over 10% and China last year consumed nearly half of the world’s coal.
In contrast just 1.8% of global energy consumption comes from renewable sources such as hydroelectricity, biofuels, wind and nuclear power stations. The comparative figure a decade ago was 0.6%.
On Thursday MINING.com also reported on the first of possibly many conversions of coal-fired power plants to biomass in the US:
DTE Energy has received approval from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District in California to convert a coal-fired power plant to biomass fuel. In July 2010, DTE bought the plant, which was closed in April 2009 after operating for 20 years. It is located at the Port of Stockton, a major deepwater port in Stockton, Calif., that is situated on the San Joaquin River.
Last month MINING.com reported on construction starting on the world’s biggest biomass power station in the United Kingdom:
The German owner of the Tilbury power station on the Thames river commissioned in 1958, previously scheduled for shut down in 2015 under new EU environmental regulations, says it hopes to produce up to 750 megawatts of green power by winter.
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