What has River Hill Coal Been Doing Lately to Help the Environment?

It is hard to think of an industry with a worse reputation than coal mining. Years of environmental neglect, among other sins, have left permanent scars on the earth’s surface and, particularly, in the minds of many Americans. Even though times have changed and the government regulates our industry to an extreme degree now, we nevertheless continue to suffer from the poor image that our forebears created.

At first glance from a casual observer, it would make sense to just get rid of the coal mining industry and leave the bad memories in the past. This seems to be the attitude of many in Washington and we can certainly understand their position. Unfortunately, it is not just the economics that makes the removal of the coal industry impossible; the scientific realities of physics prevent the energy industry from becoming independent of coal. The world simply cannot support human life at its current population without our industry. To make matters even more challenging, the Department of Energy’s U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the world will consume 49% more coal by 2030.

At our company, River Hill Coal, we are trying to reverse this trend by achieving a middle ground where coal companies can minimize the impact they make on the earth by becoming more efficient while simultaneously enhancing their revenue. This shift in our business approach can transform our industry into better stewards of the environment, thereby bringing us more in harmony with the earth.

The coal mining industry has been paying lip service to this goal for a while, now it is time to act. Government subsidies and grants are useful to do the basic research that is necessary to prepare green products for market, but we have been stuck in the research and development stage for too long. What the industry requires now is the active implementation of already existing green technologies and the only way companies will support implementation of these technologies is if they have some impact on the bottom line.

Our company’s approach to introducing profitable green technologies to the coal industry has been two fold. First, we have been implementing carbon reducing technologies with the company GTECH (Growth Through Energy and Community Health). We are growing bio-fuel on our reclamation sites to offset the carbon dioxide we release from our coal that is used in steel making and electricity producing processes. Second, with the aid of the companies like Optimus Technologies and Fossil Free Fuels we consume the bio-fuel in a fashion that reduces our costs and brings price stability while enhancing our revenues from our coal production. We then coordinate these two efforts with the help of Idea Foundry, a company that provides seed money to entrepreneurs who run these companies. We feel that this balanced approach to carbon reduction and enhanced environmental protection is the only feasible way to properly develop and manage the “Green Economy” and are the best first steps on the road to coal independence.

Why didn't we get rid of coal 40 years ago?

On this Earth Day celebration one may ask, why are we still dependent on fossil fuels? To answer this question let's look at a 'revolution' that was happening in the steel industry in the mid 60's and early 70's.

During this time before the Three Mile Island accident, the steel industry had perfected the electric arc furnace. Basically, this process would melt iron or recycled steel to make new steel. Many thought the old technology from the days of Andrew Carnegie, the blast furnace which relies on coal, would be totally replaced by the new electric arc furnace. The electric arc furnace would only use electricity from nuclear plants and there would be no need for any coal or coke (a coal product). They encountered a problem, however. Without the right carbon additives, the steel was weak. To this day, there is not a clear technology where we can introduce carbon without coal to strengthen steel. Electric arc furnaces now are a secondary process that rely on blast furnaces to make a preliminary steel product. Because the electric arc furnaces require a lot of electricity they take a lot of power from the coal fired grids. Because transmission of electricity is not efficient, the blast furnace ends up having a smaller carbon footprint than the electric arc furnace! So by trying to become more independent of fossil fuels, we actually became more dependent on them!

As detailed in previous posts on this blog, new technologies with the best of intentions have backfired much like the electric arc technology and are increasing our addition to fossil fuels. The moral of the story is that before we get carried away with a 'revolution' we must first examine the science behind the 'breakthrough'.

Electric Cars are Part of the Solution

One truth out there about "going green" is the efficiency of the electric car. Loss due to transmission of electricity tends to be about 30% which is approximately equal to the loss of efficiency from oil after it has been extracted, refined and transported. The boiler at the electric plant has less heat efficiency losses than the liquid fuel engine. Where the electric car really gains over the standard car is on vehicle design. Electric motors provide direct energy to the drive train without the need for several gear reductions. Also, electric motors do not require heavy oil maintenance and provide power on demand, with very little start up or stop energy loss. These gains in efficiencies result in a fossil fuel expenditure savings of approximately 30%. Therefore, if we want to take a large chunk of carbon dioxide emissions out of our economy, the sooner we introduce electric vehicles, the better.

Nuclear Energy Turns Your Electricity Bill into a Mortgage Payment!

Let's assume that we replace all coal electricity with nuclear energy. Currently the USA consumes approximately 2 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity each year from coal. The average nuke can produce 8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Therefore, we would need to build 250 nukes. Estimated costs for nuclear plants today are approximately 20 billion per plant and that's an optimistic number. That means we need 5 trillion dollars to build these plants! Let's also assume that, when is all said and done, the cost of running all of these plants is about the same number, $5 trillion. With these optimistic numbers we would have $10 trillion in costs. However, let's assume that the nuke plants get financing at 6.5% (property tax 1.25%) and spread the cost over 30 years. This gives them a cost of roughly $77.79 billion per month. Of course these companies are not charities, they will want to make a profit, so let's assume they charge their customers double their cost or roughly $150 billion per month. There are about 115 million households in the United States. This translates into an electricity bill of $1,300! The latest data shows an average price of a US home to be $180,000. Assuming you have the same payment plan the nuclear plant has, this work out to be $1,400 per month. In other words, the average American is spending the same amount on his or her mortgage as they are on their electricity bill! In essence, replacing coal with nuclear energy gives the average American a second mortgage.

The Sad Truth About Bio-Diesel

Back during the Clinton administration there was a push for ethanol to be a revolutionary new fuel. The thinking then was that we would grow our own fuel from corn and it would be a source of domestic energy. Unfortunately, the physics just didn't add up. No matter what process is used, it take more energy to create ethanol that it will ever provide. Therefore, using ethanol as an additive in our fuel has made us MORE dependent on fossil fuels. The same situation is occurring now with bio-diesel. Taking vegetable oil and 'cracking' it with methanol to produce fuel requires sodium hydroxide, an expensive, toxic, and energy intensive chemical. Not only that, methanol comes from fermented trees and requires intense energy use to make as well. Bottom line, after all is said and done, bio-diesel, ironically, only intensifies our need for energy and thus makes us even more dependent on fossil fuels!

However, there is a way around this. When Rudolf Diesel invented his engine more than a hundred years ago, he envisioned that straight corn oil or sunflower oil would burn efficiently in his engine. This is actually true. A diesel engine can handle 20% straight vegetable oil. The energy put into harvesting and crushing oil rich seeds is much less than the energy we would extract. Now, we're talking! If we modify diesel engines to burn 100% vegetable oil, this would be an efficient solution to eliminating our need for fossil fuel oil. No one ever pursued Diesel's idea of converting his engine to 100% vegetable oil, because the oil that comes out of the ground was so cheap back then. As we all know, things have changed and it now makes sense to revisit this issue.

LTE: On the River Hill Project

LTE: On the River Hill Project

Mixed reaction to demise of River Hill project

By Wendy B. Lynn Staff writer

KARTHAUS - The Quehanna Industrial Development Corp. in Karthaus has been trying to bring to fruition a multi-million dollar project for the region in the form of the River Hill Power Plant, a facility that would burn waste coal in order to produce electricity.

Recently, board member Ray Savel informed The Progress that plans for the power plant are dead. The Progress also received a press release on the power plant from the Sierra Club in Pennsylvania, which said Sithe Global, the company behind the project in Karthaus as well as the Toquop coal plant in Nevada and the Desert Rock plan on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, is canceling its proposed $600 million River Hill plant due to financing difficulties.

"We have suspected for a long time that the River Hill project was very tenuous at best," said Randy Francisco of the Sierra Club in Pennsylvania in the press release. "It says a lot about these dirty coal plant proposals when they can't get taxpayer bailouts and they can't make them viable even with the backing of a company with pockets as deep as Blackstone's," he added, referring to the Wall Street equity firm, The Blackstone Group, which was a financier for the project.

According to the press release, the plant would have emitted tons of global warming pollution every year along with harmful levels of soot and smog pollution.
Savel disagrees with Sierra Club's assessment of the situation. He said the plans for the project, which was to be a state-of-the-art power plant, included cleaning up the waste coal piles dotting the landscape around Karthaus, which would help clean up the water and acid mine drainage. Savel called it a "win-win" situation because not only would the plant help clean up the area, it would also provide jobs during construction and operation, jobs Savel pointed out that are desperately needed. Savel added that the coal plant would have been clean burning as well.
"I'm an environmentalist," he said. "That's why we need to get these coal piles cleaned up." Savel was also instrumental in spearheading efforts to clean up the Quehanna Wild Area north of Karthaus. The wild area is home to elk and one of the largest stands of white birch trees east of the Mississippi.

"We're not going to give up," Savel continued, saying it was a shame, disappointment and disgrace the government didn't go along with helping to finance the project with a guaranteed backed loan.

The next meeting of QIDC is scheduled for Wednesday and the directors will be looking at possibly trying another route to have the power plant built.
Savel suggested that maybe the Sierra Club has a better way to get jobs into the area.

The press release from the Sierra Club stated that the end of the power plant plans was an opportunity for the development of clean, renewable energy sources for the area and to create more jobs for the people of Pennsylvania.

"We are relieved that we will not have to breathe the pollution this plant would have spewed," said Michele Babin in the press release. Babin is part of the Sierra Club's Moshannon Group. "Pennsylvania needs to shift toward a cleaner, healthier and more secure energy future that creates jobs and protects our environment," she said.
The press release said Sithe Global's other two coal projects have also stalled.
Sithe Global could not be reached for comment.