Marlo Lewis:
A new study by Heritage Foundation analysts Nicholas Loris, Kevin Dayaratma, and David Kreutzer clarifies the economically-devastating potential of the war on coal.
In effect, the study asks: What if anti-coal ‘progressives’ get everything they wish for?
Using the Heritage Foundation Energy Model, which is based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Model System (NEMS), the three researchers analyze the economic impacts of a regulatory agenda phasing-out coal electric generation between 2015 and 2038. They find that by the end of 2023:
- Employment falls by nearly 600,000 jobs.
- Manufacturing loses over 270,000 jobs.
- Coal-mining jobs drop 30 percent.
- A family of four’s annual income drops more than $1,200 per year, and its total income drops by nearly $24,400 over the entire period of analysis.
- Aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) decreases by $2.23 trillion over the entire period of the analysis.
What accounts for those losses? First, phasing out coal generation will dramatically increase demand for natural gas, boosting gas prices by 28%. Gas is a key feedstock for several manufacturing industries:
Natural gas is not only a critical source of electricity generation; natural gas and liquids produced with natural gas provide a feedstock for fertilizers, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, waste treatment, food processing, fuel for industrial boilers, increasingly used as a transportation fuel, and much more.
The main reason, though, is simply that killing a major source of affordable electric power will increase business and household energy costs:
There is a larger issue. Lets say something were to happen in the world and the US needed to place an order right now for 1000 tanks, 1000 planes, and 100 ships. We couldn’t build them. We don’t have the steel or the aluminum. Our steel mills are gone. Even if we could build the steel mills, the coal mines are closed. Even if we opened the coal mines, the rail lines were abandoned. Even if we could open the mines, rebuild the railroads, rebuild the steel mills to BEGIN production, we have no shipyards. We would have to build those, too. Then we would have to build the airplane factories. The large military aircraft plants are gone. The plant the built the C-17 in Long Beach, CA is a park (Douglass Park). There is one tank plant left that is mostly in mothballs. The FMC plant that built thousands of Bradley Fighting Vehicles is gone, it is an “affordable housing” complex now.
Our military is equipped with gear built in the 1980’s and 1990’s that we just keep refurbishing. Much if it was left behind in Iraq or will be left behind in Afghanistan. Our military works well, as long as we aren’t taking any significant losses. We can’t replace losses. If we were to get into any kind of a situation that resulted in real losses to equipment, it would take us 5 years or more to rebuild the infrastructure to BEGIN to replace it. Most of our initial steel production would have to go into building the factories and shipyards.
When you kill coal, you eliminate any possibility of a home grown defense industry that requires steel. At present we are at mercy of steel from China, India, or Brazil.
@crosspatch: Liberals always fail to think beyond the shiny object in front of them. Calling themselves progressives is a real joke unless progress is shorter life spans, lower income per capita and increased taxes.
Kill coal = Kill Eagles.
The rule will give wind farms thirty year permits for the “non purposeful slaughter of eagles.
http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201310&RIN=1018-AX91
“Green” is so fickle!
In 2008 “Delta Smelt”, was placed on the endangered species list and almost all of what was called the breadbasket of the USA dried up.
A judge and the EPA decided that tiny fish was more important than our most fertile land getting the water it needed to grow…..everything from soup veggies to nuts!
Remember when almonds were inexpensive?
Avocados?
Artichokes?
California rice?
So, why kill hundreds of thousands of jobs for a minnow and raise prices on almost everything fresh that we eat but KILL eagles (just off the endangered list) to get enough electricity to erratically power 700 homes?